Many of you know that I fell into this profession by accident, whilst scraping to get some money together at University - I had been sick from work for 6 months and a friend suggested I applied for this job - 6 hours a week at a youth centre. So I applied, and got the job. 6 hours "casual whilst I finish Uni so I can go to complete my PGCE" turned into 6 hours "and NVQ, additional work, youth council, rock challenge, special needs, part time certificate.."
So as I finished University I landed myself a part time job at a Sixth Form College as a pastoral assistant, and combined that with the part time youth work I was doing. I was actually offered at this point from two different schools a full time job - one in welfare, and one as a trainee teacher - probably would have been the logical option, however part of me just loved what I was doing so wanted to carry on.
Over the past 18 months, Youth Work has undergone some changes. These changes have been largely due to the cuts that have had to have been made by the government, which has resulted in youth services coming out fairly low down on the agenda. Practically, this has meant that in some local authorities, the traditional "youth service" has been phased out, with youth workers being directed down a different route within the authority, or being given the option of redundancy. For those taking the latter of the two, they may have been fortunate enough to find employment in the voluntary sector - owing to the local authority still having a duty to offer social activities and informal education for young people outside of the school day, funding from some local authorities has been directed into the voluntary sector to deliver this - in a more "cost efficient" way than ever before (funding being released annually, voluntary organisations paying less wages..)
So now we are in a position of "The Big Society", where Cameron wanted community organisations to work for their communities. More and more youth workers are feeling either the pressure of being put into more social work situations, or the fear of losing funding if they do not meet specific targets. This is a big time of uncertainty for everyone.
But, what we can get from this is the fact that there are consistencies in youth work. All youth workers are effectively striving towards the same common goals, to support young people in a child centred way and help them achieve their potential. The services that used to be delivered by a Local Authority are still there - but now being delivered by a number of organisations in a number of ways. Our challenge as youth workers is to stop mourning the loss of our fantastic youth teams (trust me, they were incredible!), and now look to the future and try to work together to achieve the same goals. The difficulties here being that each organisation is different, with different policies and procedures, and different uniforms and buildings - but ultimately any youth organisation is committed to delivering for young people - and with this mission statement being consistent and universal across all young people's organisations, doesn't it just make sense to work together? Whether a uniformed organisation, or local government, or small youthwork charity - if we all helped each other and brought the core of our work back into focus wouldn't we all be doing what we set out to do - when we made the conscious decision to become a youth worker?
Today I attended a fantastic Youth Workers Development Day, which was attended by loads of different people from loads of different backgrounds and organisations - but the one thing we all shared in common was our passion for young people - and I have come away today buzzing with excitement about working in partnership to deliver some really positive outcomes for young people, which is why I made the choice to go into youth work as a profession, and yes it has been a really tough 18 months - but now I feel excited about what I am doing again; whilst my remit of work has changed my overall goals and values have not.
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