Youth work provides essential skills and education to help young people participate actively in society. However, youth work faces challenges including unprecedented funding cuts, increased demand for expensive services, and difficulties evidencing its impact. While youth work aims to equip young people and improve their life chances, it struggles for recognition amidst these challenges and lack of a clear definition. Current evidence of youth work's impact relies heavily on self-reporting and case studies, which makes comprehensive assessment challenging.

1. Youth work has no place in local government
children’s services
Clarifying the hypothesis
Youth work’s funding,
commissioning and delivery has no
place in local government children’s
and young people’s services.

2. What is youth work?
Source: EU-CoE youth partnership

3. What is youth work? – Key themes
Equips young people with the knowledge,
understanding, skills and abilities to help
them play an active part in democratic
society: young people develop valuable skills which
they can apply to other areas of their lives, including
to help them participate in education, training,
employment, decision making and to make a
positive contribution to their community.
04
01
Non - formal
personal, social
and political
education
Youth work relationship based on a
voluntary, participative process:
coproduced with young people, starts with the
issues and areas that are of interest and
concern to them, enabling them to take
increasing responsibility and leadership in their
learning process.
Non - formal personal, social and
political education: increasingly
targeted to improve outcomes for
disadvantaged groups, helps young
people to understand and challenge
oppression.
Professional discipline: increasing emphasis on
specialist vocational, degree and postgraduate level
professional training. Paid staff and volunteers
should all have adequate training and skills in
developing the potential of young people.

4. Harriet Gore, 2015
“The definition of high quality youth work
has changed. Local authorities have
experienced unprecedented reductions in
funding combined with increasing levels of
need; often for expensive specialist and
acute services such as social care and
CAMHS.... The main challenge for youth
work in a context of austerity is to prove its
worth as an essential element in the early
help system.”
“The role of the (Phoenix) youth centre is pivotal in
improving outcomes. It works with vulnerable
young people, in many cases, supporting their
engagement with education, targeted provision
and social care. But more than this, it encourages
these young people to become volunteers and
members of the steering group. This has resulted in
young people developing skills and abilities that
assist them to participate in education, training
and employment and make a positive contribution
to their own local community.”

5. Key
themes
Challenges for youth work?
Cuts
Increased
demand
Evidencing
the impact
01
02
03
01
Unprecedented local authority funding cuts with the worst still to come:
retaining / re-gaining a commitment to youth work in the age of austerity.
02
Increasing demand for school places and expensive specialist and acute
services: youth work is often seen as optional, the main challenge is for youth work
to prove its worth as an essential and cost effective part of the early help system by
providing a soft landing between schools and social care.
03
Evidencing the impact of youth work: systematically capturing credible
evidence of young people’s learning, progress, achievements and personal
development and how these improve their overall life chances.

6. “Youth services have
suffered massive cuts,
and the vast
contribution youth
workers make to
young people and
society in general is
being lost.”
Unison, 2014
The central challenge is to
“defend and extend youth
work as a distinctive
educational practice
founded on a voluntary
relationship with young
people and shaped by their
agendas.”
In Defence of Youth Work, 2011

7. Source: A Fixers campaign led by Piers Telemacque
The importance of youth work

8. Challenges facing young people - Key points
This often means adjusting to change during this time
does not always go to plan and there are hindrances to
a young person’s development.
Resistance to change
The last couple of decades
have seen enormous
developments in technology
to societal norms.
Technological change
are a crucial stage in an
individuals development and
in this day and age, young
people come to face
pressure from various
channels.
Adolescent years

9. Challenges facing young people -
Education
In some cases young people perceive
not going down the route of
university as a failure.
02
Young people are concerned about the lack of information
about alternative pathways such as apprenticeships and
why this information is not provided from an earlier stage
in their education (prior to GCSEs).
03
Challenges facing
young people
There is enormous pressure from within
schools to succeed in GCSEs and A levels
and to follow a path to university.
01

10. Challenges facing young people - Online pressure
Young people face these challenges on a daily basis due to the nature of social media.
Social Media: Young peoples lives are exposed 24/7 on social
media meaning there is pressure from their peers to fit in,
look good and follow the latest crazes.
o Not only does social media increase pressure amongst
peers, the presence of celebrities and global trends also
create a greater desire to fit in, especially with issues
concerning weight and image.

11. Online pressure - Cyber bullying
However, there are cases where young people may be using the internet which may
have negative consequences for themselves and others.
For example: cyber-bullying, grooming and child sexual exploitation.
The internet is no doubt a great phenomenon. The world is
fully immersed in a technological age which has opened
many doors for those who engage with it.
o Therefore, young people have an expanse of
information at their fingertips but knowing how and
what to do with it poses a great challenge. Often, the
case is young people are using the internet in the
right way.

12. Challenges facing young people - Society
Young people are faced by the challenges of social norms and the desire to fit in.
01
When a young person does not fit societal norms, issues surrounding
identity and being comfortable with that identity is an enormous
challenge
02
This certainly is the case when young people face challenges of
sexuality and gender roles
03
Youth work has a role in addressing these issues by providing
support and guidance to young people who are vulnerable to the
negative consequences of the challenges; especially when
consequences cause additional challenges such as mental health.
Society often
expects young
people to conform
to expectations of
an adult which is
to be well
educated, get a
job, fulfil gender
roles.

13. Youth work outcomes and impact - Key points
Embracing
impact
Embracing impact as a way of learning:
Projects provide the most successful evidence of
impact. Centre for Youth Impact is conducting a host
of investigations into the impact of youth work and
working with organisations to embrace impact.
Outcomes
frameworks
Outcomes frameworks:
Provide a common language for providers.
A step in the right direction.
Confidence in youth work as a
professional discipline is lacking:
If there was trust in the process of youth
work, questions wouldn’t be being asked
about evidence and impact.
Issues with current evidence:
Reliance on young people to self
report. Evidence is often in the
form of case studies, thus pulling
together data is an immense
challenge.
Assessing impact is a challenge
No agreed definition of youth work, data is hard
to collect, outcomes aren’t know until 20 to 30
years.
Current
evidence
Confidence
Assessing
impact

14. Youth work outcomes and impact- Key points
Qualitative research has shown that young people value the
relationship they have with youth worker, the importance of trust
and how these open up opportunities and alternatives. Research
conducted by academics has the potential to challenge and examine
youth work to help fuel the debate and construct youth work for the
future.
Suzanna Rauprich, National Council for Voluntary Youth Services (NCVYS), Partner for Centre for Youth Impact:
‘Overall, the confidence in youth work as a
professional discipline is poor. If we were to trust the
process of youth work we wouldn’t be asking questions
around impact and evidence.... We would not expect to be
questioning the value of teaching if it is done well which is
also an educational discipline but youth work is
constantly expected to justify itself which is a real
issue’
‘It is more challenging to identify the impact of open access youth work, but
this does not mean we shouldn’t try. It is important to reflect on what we are
doing and what we are achieving as a result... In a society which is so driven
by meeting deadlines and meeting targets, it is important that youth
work is not left behind’

15. ‘Youth work has been
built up from the 1960s.
My major worry is that
we are losing a
generation of expertise,
experience and
knowledge.’
Garath Palmer, UNITE