I saw a comment somewhere else about the need for other services to work at weekends etc. too including connexions et. al and I agree they should, but don’t see that as justification for youth workers not agreeing to do antisocial hours (which surely are social hours for those they’re supposed to be working with?!). Connexions shops must surely have the most ludicrous opening hours ever though – I’ve rarely ever seen any open.

http://cli.gs/EDXnLH

I would say though that the fact this is a debate suggests that youth workers are getting the position they want in so far as they’re not working weekends?

The capitalism debate is a bit heavy for me – I prefer to think instead of preparing young people to function best in society – which does of course include challenging how it runs. But part of that is that we do need people to work unsocial hours – nurses, doctors, firefighters, police……. and if we need people to support young people at weekends it seems somebody has to do it so why not youth workers? I’m sure too that if you were advising a young person on a potential career and they weren’t prepared to work long hours in very challenging circumstances and didn’t have a caring attitude you wouldn’t advise them to be a nurse. Just seems to me the same goes for people considering a career in youth work.

Of course, I’m hopefully exaggerating Masyomo’s position as it is clear that he is motivated primarily by a desire to ensure that young people have the best possible services available to them. However, this discussion does point to what is, in my opinion, one of the key weaknesses of youth work. The sad reality is that, for a profession that often talks about helping young people to effect social change and tackling the inequalities of capitalism there is rarely even the briefest rhetoric whatsoever about youth workers challenging capital through their position as workers. We can talk idealistically about change to the young people as much as we like and that’s perfectly OK (perhaps because it is generally ineffective), but heaven help us if we actually stand up for ourselves!

Personally I have mostly worked part-time during weekday evenings but with lots of weekend ‘projects’ and residentials. But I worked every Saturday for about 3 years at an adventure playground and at a Young Carers project, and at another time for a year and a half I worked on a Sunday project which had a rota (so I worked about three Sundays a month). It was fine, and I agree with Mike that young people are not all drunk on a Friday night, and to be honest I disagree with the received wisdom that there is never any point working with drunk young people! (I think some of my best adult conversations have happened when my friends and I are at least a bit drunk!)

Anyway, I’m off work this evening cos I worked all weekend (!) so I’m off to eat cake. (Leaving the regular Monday night group without my services, but I’m sure they will cope!)

I think the nail on the head is to do with the ‘minority consideration’ – the idea that “the” young people won’t attend/have better things to do etc. From the projects I set up/was involved in it was generally a different set of young people that attended on Friday evenings and Sunday afternoons than midweek evenings. There were a couple who came to both but mostly at weekends they were younger than during the week. I wonder if because of the ‘targeted’ approach the only young people being considered are the small number that attend normal provision?

No need to be concerned about a shrill tone – far from it and I enjoy debates like this!

Let’s take this would-be Friday night. You are right there are a lot of young folk, who aren’t pissed, who are perhaps bored and still the last thing they want is a youth worker. And there are young folk, who might be persuaded by a sensitive youth worker and there are those, who would jump at the chance of somebody being bothered about them. And, as you rightly say there are many, who are involved in this, that and the other run by a lad or lass in their spare time for no reward.

In this sense we open up another Pandora’s box here. Youth Work has only ever touched a minority of young people, which is no problem to me, but can’t be properly admitted. In my time, when I had no child-care concerns and nobody gave a toss about health and safety, I opened on my own a large youth club on Friday and Saturday nights. It seemed to be heaving, around a hundred young folk, between say 12 and 20 years of age. Yet in terms of a percentage of the youth in that age range in that small town it was less than 5 per cent. I can’t run away from the objective dilemma that I was ‘policing’ them, even as I sought to be otherwise. And when we closed up at around 11 o’clock quite a few wanted the place to stay open. This not being the case quite a few went into the park to drink. On occasions I did sit with them there, but to be honest sometimes I went home. Where are the lines to be drawn?

And in relative terms I was paid a decent salary, but I worked 60 hours not 37 and a quarter so the hourly rate was crap. Clearly I lacked also the skills and imagination you talk about. By and large I just hung about with them, chatted critically about everything and nothing and sometimes did something of an organised nature when they fancied it. Whatever ‘maximising the use of my time’ means I didn’t do it, which is perhaps further evidence that I should have been paid peanuts. As for the mantra about ’structuring for positive development’, I’m sure I messed up in this respect. The idea that we all agree what constitutes positive development is another of those little debated myths.

Funnily enough I wasn’t suggesting that folk wearing yellow bibs were at all necessarily without talent or skills. One of my own heresies is that some of the best [in my eyes] youth workers I’ve known had not jumped through the professional hoops. It’s just that wearing a yellow bib does affect the dynamic of being with young people and it is poorly paid.

As for doing it for free, you are quite right to emphasise the significance of the volunteer, but if they do enter the paid ranks, they are beginning to forfeit their autonomy. They start to have bosses and pay masters to obey.

I didn’t say the dilemmas of child-care should prevent there being provision at weekends, but given the levels of staffing available it is an issue. For my sins I was a Chief Youth and Community Officer in my later years for an area with over 300,00 people – roughly 60, 000 were Youth Work targets. After the savage cuts in the early 90’s we were left with 12 full-timers. The figures don’t add up. Inevitably there was an enormous danger of asking workers to do far too much and undermining their own personal relations…..and of course one or two took the piss and didn’t pull their weight. Child-care was a dilemma for even some of the most dedicated. And with that level of staffing frankly it makes little difference when the youth worker works. Fair enough send them out at the weekends, but given how many young folk they could reasonably cope with, their work in midweek was no less or more significant.

Mike, I’m rambling and there is so much more to explore and I’m conscious that this little exchange exposes for me the severe limitations of chatting in this way. We can’t stop one another mid-sentence and say, ‘I didn’t mean it that way’ or ’sorry, mate you’re quite right’ etc… Words on paper, especially when chucked down a waterfall of a response, take on a solidity they don’t deserve. The position put forward sounds more certain than is necessarily intended, which is why I often intend to join in a discussion, but never make it.

All of which is to thank you genuinely for your criticism and to hope this mixed up response is not too shrill in tone.

Best Wishes