Radical Social [and Youth Work] 35 Years On!

ADVANCE NOTICE from Michael Lavalette, Associate Professor of Social Work, Liverpool Hope University.

I’m writing to let you know about a major conference that is being held at Liverpool Hope University on 3 February 2010. The one-day conference is to mark the 35th anniversary of the publication of the seminal text Radical Social Work by Roy Bailey and Mike Brake. We are delighted to announce that Roy Bailey has agreed to open the conference – the first time he has taken part in an event like this for almost 20 years.

The conference is aimed at social work academics, practitioners and students – and those with an interest in more critical forms of social care, youth and community work.

We have deliberately kept the price low to encourage practitioners and students to participate. The cost (£30 for academics, £25 for practitioners, £18 for students) includes two teas/coffees and a three course lunch.

There is a leaflet pdf attached. Could I ask you to distribute this widely to those who may be interested?

The conference will be made up of a combination of ‘plenary sessions’ and an ‘open stream’.

In the plenary sessions we have a fantastic range of speakers, including Chris Jones, Peter Beresford, Sarah Banks, Iain Ferguson, Mary Langan, Charlotte Williams, Laura Penketh and Mark Baldwin.

At present we have a ‘call for papers’ for those interested in contributing to the open stream, with a closing date of 1/12/09. Details of the kinds of topics that would fit into this section of the conference are given on our dedicated conference website at www.hope.ac.uk/radicalsocialwork.

I hope you can manage to the conference – and, as I said, I’d be very grateful if you could distribute this email and the attached pdf leaflet to anyone you think might be interested.

radical social work leaflet- SWAN FEB 3

Thinking Seriously about Work with Girls and Young Women

Thinking Seriously

About Youth Work and Work With Girls and Young Women

Conference

22nd 23rd March 2010

Hinsley Hall, Leeds

The second of the biannual ‘Thinking Seriously’ conferences organized by ‘Youth and Policy’ is to focus on the subject of Work With Girls and Young Women.

The intention of the ‘Thinking Seriously’ conferences is to offer participants an opportunity to discuss youth work and other approaches to work with young people in a serious, reflective and analytical way, benefiting from analysis and research as well as practice experience across a range of settings and localities. The events are deliberately structured to be small scale to encourage sustained and open critical discussion and developmental conversation amongst participants.

The 2010 conference will approach the question of work with girls and young women from the broad perspective of gender inequality and difference and will seek to develop a critical understanding of current policy agendas and the particular professional specialisms associated with work with girls and young women.

In keeping with the intention to create an atmosphere and setting favourable to debate and conversation, we shall restrict attendance to a maximum of 60 and ask all participants to make a commitment to attend for the whole two day event so book early to guarantee a place!

Youth and Policy Girls Work Conference 2010

Girls Work Conference Booking Form 2010

The event is women-only, which has sparked an interesting debate on the Google group, In Defence of Youth Work, to which you might want to subscribe –

http://groups.google.com/group/in-defence-of-youth-work

Chatting Critically to Young People about …..Drugs

For many a year Drugs Education has been a lucrative source of finance within Youth Work. And, of course, it has seemed  utterly the right thing to be doing. None of us want to see young lives wrecked by drugs. And yet, of course, many of us take drugs – between 2 and 5 million cannabis users in the UK – and stay on the rails. I’m not saying anything special here, except to ponder whether the overall thrust of the drugs awareness approach reveals it to be the educational wing of  a failed global ‘War Against Drugs’ strategy?

Brazil’s former president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, co-authored the recent Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy. He declares the emperor naked. “The tide is turning,” he says. “The war-on-drugs strategy has failed.” A Brazilian judge, Maria Lucia Karam, of the lobby group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, tells the Guardian: “The only way to reduce violence in Mexico, Brazil or anywhere else is to legalise the production, supply and consumption of all drugs.”

This passage is taken from a challenging counterweight to prevailing orthodoxy, The War on Drugs is Immoral Idiocy, written by Simon Jenkins. I don’t agree with him at every turn – not least with his opening sentence – but there is much here for youth workers to ponder. Does this wider political context carry any implications for practice?

TT