What is it that we are teaching young people in this day and age? I realised something the other day, I would never have become involved with the youth services I received had it not have been for the fact my mother is disabled, or later on, the fact that I was hanging around at the park with nothing better to do, than hang around with the people who loved to cause bother to people in the area.
These days youth work doesn’t seem to be allowed to work with ALL young people it seems to be almost completely focused on those young people who are ‘at risk’ ‘troubled’ I’m sorry correct me if I am wrong but is it not true that all young people are troubled in some way or another? Puberty is hardly the easiest of life stages nor is adolescence the easiest thing to deal with; are we adults yet? or are we still kids? Can I do this or am I too old or too young? There are endless amounts of these questions that young people ask themselves everyday.
With the introduction of these government papers every child matters and youth matters, it is putting structure into youth work but at what cost, youth groups and projects cannot get the funding they need unless they attract the right percentages of young people each day, month, and year! I know for a fact that at least one person I know works in a project that will not get funding unless they get an increase in newspaper appearances! How stupid is that? Why should the work that workers do have to be publicised, what if the work that needs to be done is of a sensitive nature surely the young people don’t want attention always drawn to them in any case.
Is this how youth work should be conducted, surely all young people have the right to access youth services without having to first get themselves into some sort of trouble, are we not teaching young people that to receive help they must first be seen in a bad light. Where did the idea that young people can just drop into a youth centre and ask for some advice or join in with some activities go? Now each session conducted with a group of young people has to have some kind of objective be it healthy eating, safe sex etc.
I remember when I was at secondary school I was in top set for most of my subjects and I did all my work and turned up to probably almost every lesson but those who were in the lower sets and caused all the disruptions didn’t do their work and didn’t turn up were sent off one or two days a week to college to do something there; painting and decorating even days off to outdoor activity places, to me they were having all the fun while I was sat in my lessons slaving away on ridiculous amounts of coursework. They were rewarded with merits for turning up on time or turning up at all, they received prizes if you like for correcting their bad behaviour when in fact in many cases some of these guys were my friends and they hadn’t corrected anything they just learnt how to play the game hide the fact that they really didn’t care or want to be there they just knew they would get a lot more special treatment if they did what they thought everyone else needed to see.
What did my friends and I in the higher sets and us who were well behaved all the time what did we get, nothing really we got our GCSE’s at the end of year eleven, awards evening came and only those who really highly achieved got an award or those who had shown progress etc got awards for effort us in the middle we just got a well done and that was that, but we worked just as hard as everyone else we worked like mad to get our grades but were given no recognition, other than the recognition we gave ourselves I guess.
We need to get to a balance where every young person no matter how well they work or how poorly they work, they all get the same attention from services in place for them if the services are not there for all young people how can it be generalised as youth work, it should be called working with ‘troublesome’ youths? Or ‘at risk young people’
All young people deserve the same attention different attentions yes but none the less they need something at some point usually.
The point here is that society, government today is moaning about anti social behaviour but young people see that they need to act like that in order to gain the attention from services that at one point were there for everyone to access now they need to be ‘disruptive’ or in some kind of so called problem area or targeted group to access it. Logically what would you do to get the service you needed…. Would you not just try to slot yourself into a group that would be catered for if you needed that service?
© Ann Dempsey 2008
A random rant about youth work by Ann Dempsey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
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