THIS IS YOUTH WORK: Stories from Practice

The book "THIS IS YOUTH WORK: Stories from Practice" has been uploaded into the Member's area of the CHYPS' website

Message from Tony Taylor [on behalf of the In Defence of Youth Work Steering Group]:

"The book and associated videos have been produced by the In Defence of Youth Work [IDYW] campaign with very generous support from UNISON and UNITE/the Community and Youth Workers Union. We hope they will help support your campaigns to protect youth services across the country and in particular the democratic and emancipatory forms of youth work which IDYW has been defending for the last three years.

At the heart of the book are twelve stories of youth work practice which start from young people's voluntary participation and from their interests and concerns. Each gives a vivid picture of youth workers painstakingly building and sustaining trusting relationships with young people, striving to open up new and sometimes unexpected opportunities for them to develop personally and collectively, and supporting them in facing testing challenges in their lives.

The book outlines also some of the features of this practice, particularly the importance of what seems to be no more than chatting and conversation as a way of stimulating argument and reflection. All of these combine to make youth work such a distinctive way of working with teenagers. Furthermore the book outlines how it might be used to resist the attacks on this style of work and on the services which provide it.

Though youth work is a practice run through with uncertainties and contradictions which can offer no advanced guarantees of 'success', on the video a group of young people explain why they have so valued their involvement with it and the positive ways it has affected their lives.
The DVD also contains narrations of each of the twelve stories.

At a time when nearly one million 16 - 24 year olds - 20% of the age group - are unemployed and as the current onslaught on public services continues with youth services facing hugely disproportionate cuts, the need to defend provision like youth work has never been greater or more urgent. We hope This is Youth Work will help you explain to politicians, policy-makers and senior managers as well as to the wider public why the work it describes is so needed, why young people so value it and therefore why it should be safeguarded, indeed nurtured in these critical times."