Some of the most energetic, effective, and passionate activists involved in grassroots politics are young people--but their voices are rarely heard in policy, research, or public debate. This book remedies that, giving young activists their due and showing the effects of passionate social service practitioners who build relationships with marginalized young people in the face of spending cuts and shifting governmental priorities. Written by an experienced youth worker, Grassroots Youth Work uses interviews, dialogue, and excerpts from research diaries to bring youth work to life in both theory and practice.

Some of the most energetic, effective, and passionate activists involved in grassroots politics are young people - but their voices are rarely heard in policy, research or public debate. This book remedies that giving young activists their due and showing the effects of passionate social service practitioners who build relationships with marginalised young people in the face of spending cuts and shifting governmental priorities.--Résumé de l'éditeur.

In today′s society, many young people feel marginalised and unable to find their own voice. It is vital therefore that youth workers are able to work with them to tackle this in a meaningful way. Drawing on the real experiences and difficulties faced by youth workers, this book will help those who want to work with young people in an empowering way. The concepts of empowerment and participation are explained, explored and critically analysed, along with the key notion of resilience. This is backed up by activities and case studies which help to bring together the theory and the practice.

The thesis concludes that open access youth work is under threat and yet is surviving as a passionate, principled and reflective practice that values equality, freedom and collective life.

A volume in Adolescence and Education The purpose of this book is to compile and publicize the best current thinking about training and professional development for youth workers. School age youth spend far more of their time outside of school than inside of school. The United States boasts a rich and vibrant ecosystem of Out‐of‐School Time programs and funders, ranging from grassroots neighborhood centers to national Boys and Girls Clubs. The research community, too, has produced some scientific consensus about defining features of high quality youth development settings and the importance of after‐school and informal programs for youth. But we know far less about the people who provide support, guidance, and mentoring to youth in these settings. What do youth workers do? What kinds of training, certification, and job security do they have? Unlike K‐12 classroom teaching, a profession with longstanding - if contested - legitimacy and recognition, "youth work" does not call forth familiar imagery or cultural narratives. Ask someone what a youth worker does and they are just as likely to think you are talking about a young person working at her first job as they are to think you mean a young adult who works with youth. This absence of shared archetypes or mental models is matched by a shortage of policies or professional associations that clearly define youth work and assume responsibility for training and preparation. This is a problem because the functions performed by youth workers outside of school are critical for positive youth development, especially in our current context governed by widening income inequality. The US has seen a decline in social mobility and an increase in income inequality and racial segregation. This places a greater premium on the role of OST programs in supporting access and equity to learning opportunities for children, particularly for those growing up in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty. Fortunately, in the past decade there has been an emergence of research and policy arguments about the importance of naming, defining, and attending to the profession of youth work. A report released in 2013 by the DC Children and Youth Investment Corporation suggests employment opportunities for youth workers are growing faster than the national average; and as the workforce increases, so will efforts to professionalize it through specialized training and credentials. Our purpose in this volume is to build on that momentum by bringing together the best scholarship and policy ideas - coming from in and outside of higher education - about conceptions of youth work and optimal types of preparation and professional development.

The "History of youth work in Europe" series aims to achieve better understanding of current challenges in youth work and youth policy. Volume 5 addresses questions like: How have government policies and administrative practices over the past few decades affected youth work? What kind of strategies has youth work developed to react to them and to create a positive space for work with young people? Can educational approaches of youth work, like social pedagogy, help mediate between young people in their ever-changing lives and society? Co-operation between youth policy, youth research and youth work has been called "the Magic Triangle" - but is the magic still there? This publication discusses these and other topics from a variety of perspectives. The authors come not only from Europe, but also from the USA, Australia and South Africa, providing a refreshing, comparative reflection on youth work issues and opportunities, which is revealed to be global in nature. They also have diverse and varied backgrounds in youth research, youth work, youth policy making and youth worker training. This comparative historical perspective puts some of the pieces of the "youth work puzzle" together, while many are left unconnected. It also becomes apparent that there is an element of randomness in the historical development of youth work. Many structures, policies, approaches and methods are not "historically necessary". Rather, many things could have come out differently. This volume on the history of youth work provides many readings: it provides a rich collection of national youth histories to complement and build upon the four earlier volumes, and histories and analyses of youth work for readers to compare with their own experience, sharpen their critical view and inspire their thinking.

This study constitutes the second European-wide comparison on youth work published by the European Commission. The first European Commission study on youth work, published in 2014, was an exploratory investigation of youth work at European level, seeking to identify commonalities and to map the state of youth work policies across the EU. This second report goes further and focuses on the needs of youth workers at the grassroots level to critically analyse whether existing public policies fulfil these needs. This is a timely report: the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the youth work sector. It has forced youth workers to rethink how they provide their services, and placed many in a precarious position, particularly at the local level and for youth workers who support the most vulnerable young people.

If we consider the 50 states having ratified the European Cultural Convention of the Council of Europe or the member states of the European Union, the multiple and divergent nature of the realities, theories, concepts and strategies underlying the expression 'youth work' becomes evident. Across Europe, youth work takes place in circumstances presenting enormous differences with regard to opportunities, support, structures, recognition and realities, and how it performs reflects the social, cultural, political and economic context, and the value systems in which it is undertaken. By analysing theories and concepts of youth work and by providing insight from various perspectives and geographical and professional backgrounds, the authors hope to further contribute to finding common ground for - and thus assure the quality of - youth work in general. Presenting its purified and essential concept is not the objective here. The focus rather is on describing how to 'provide opportunities for all young people to shape their own futures', as Peter Lauritzen described the fundamental mission of youth work.The best way to do this remains an open question. This Youth Knowledge book tries to find some answers and strives to communicate the strengths, capacities and impact of youth work to those within the youth sector and those beyond, to those familiar with its concepts and those new to this field, all the while sharing practices and insights and encouraging further reflection.