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What is Youth Work?
Traditionally, youth work happens with young people aged 11-25 years old. It can take place in any environment such as dedicated youth centres, schools, community centres, prisons, hospitals or outdoors.
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Street work is delivered in two contexts: detached is designed to work with young people in their own environment and outreach which brings young people into a dedicated youth work setting.
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Youth work has come a long way since the Ragged Schools of the 1800s. It is now a "Dynamic process that responds to aspirations, issues or concerns that impact on young people's lives. It is not fixed in time or place". (Coburn and Wallace, 2011 p.2)
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Youthlink Scotland (2018)highlighted that "The nature and purpose of Youthwork" revolves around 3 key themes:
Young people choose to participate
The work must build from where young people are.
Youth work recognises the young person and youth worker as partners in the learning process
From a professional point of view youth work takes on 3 forms (Coburn and Wallace, 2011):
Liberal
Functional
Critical
'open and developmental with negotiated activities and longer term relationships with the location and youth workers.'
'essentially performs a socialisation function by working with young people who need to be fixed in some way.'
'recognises and builds on the capacities of young people, recognising the inherent injustices in society and encouraging them to participate in that society as part of their democratic and human rights.'
From a practitioners perspective youth work is about believing in young people, supporting them, and working together to achieve their highest potential.
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