The recent
press and media coverage of the Government’s new plans for tackling
anti-social behaviour has raised questions for me about the nature of
youth work and what we are really seeking to do in our practice. Many
of my initial questions seem covered in the extract below, which provides
background to some of the issues relating to why things do not seem
to change and why we find ourselves coping with one government’s
good idea, policy change etc. after another.
Nipper could be a nightmare. We knew his older
brother well, but Nipper had only recently started hanging around with
the group. Whatever was going on, he was into it. He had been in and
out of trouble with the police most of his life, and had also been taken
into care at times.
Now he was around more and he had started to
join in with some of the things we did on the streets in our detached
youth work. Nipper had been excluded from school and often got into
trouble because he was bored or easily led. He wanted to come on trips
with us, but was almost uncontrollable.
One of the aims in our work was not to be a
provider of activities but to facilitate the young people to plan their
own activities and learn through the process. Nipper didn’t lack
confidence; he was bright and intelligent, but all the children in the
family had had a pretty rough time growing up, some going to prison,
and a couple of his older brothers could not read or write.
He was aware that unless he took part in planning
the activities we weren’t going anywhere; however, he really wanted
to try kite flying. At the beginning we were well aware that he wasn’t
going to have the necessary skills to plan much, so we started by asking
him to get together with three other people and to work out when they
wanted to go kite flying. When we saw him next he said that he had arranged
it with his older brother and one other for the next afternoon.
We
arranged to pick him up, but when we arrived only Nipper there; the
others had cried off. In the end we went and had a great time. It was
really windy and as Nipper was quite small, when we used the large kite
it would nearly lift him off the ground! As we drove back from the hills,
we chatted and asked Nipper what he thought of kite flying. He replied,
“Chusdy mush, better than nicking cars!”
That was the beginning of a change for Nipper.
We slowly increased his responsibility in the planning of trips and
activities and he learnt a lot through the process. Whether we like
it or not, we are role models to young people in communities. Youth
work is educational. Young people will pick things up from us, good
and bad, and will learn just as we all do in one way or another. With
this in mind, it is important within the context of our youth work,
to help young people mature into adults and teach them the skills they
will need to function in society. We understand this as informal education.
The underlying principle of informal education,
and often of youth work, is change. Youth workers often make the assumption
that they seek to bring about social change in the lives of young people,
change in lifestyle, change in attitude, spiritual change, and educational
change.
Often this is a false assumption as the change
sought is towards the ideology of the youth worker. Often it is about
the young person becoming socially acceptable, changing behaviour patterns,
taking their place in society and becoming like us, rather than enabling
the young person to challenge the status quo, to resist the temptation
to be one of the many.
The former is, however, social control of young
people rather than social change. Social control isn’t simply
about power to rule or act over young people. Social control involves
the active promotion of ideas, values which aims to reinforce the status
quo. Everything from the media to the police are engaged in this activity.
If we are to be effectively facilitating change
then we need to ask what kinds of change we are promoting. As Christians,
serving young people should be a key principle of our youth work. If
we explore what it truly means to serve others, it causes us to ask
serious questions of our youth work and ourselves. To truly serve means
denying ourselves, not putting our values, notions, ideas or selves
before those we seek to serve. The implications of this kind of service
are huge. It leads us full circle, not to maintaining social control
in any way, but becoming agents of change that seek out new places to
travel with young people.
This is why it is crucial to be reminded of
the quote from Vincent Donovan's book “Christianity Rediscovered,
An epistle from the Masai”, he says, “In working with young
people, do not try to call them back to where they were, and do not
try to call them to where you are, as beautiful as that place may seem
to you. You must have the courage to go with them to a place that neither
you nor they have ever been before”.
Jesus taught that change can come through giving
up ourselves, and the change He brought through doing this was immense.
Linking Donovan’s words with the key principle of youth work,
empowerment, equal opportunities, informal education and participation,
begins to create a curriculum framework for good youth and community
work, relinquishing ourselves, going to the people, building real equal
relationships in communities and continuing that process where ever
it may lead. If we risk accepting the challenge of this kind of example
in our youth work, I believe we will see the radical shift that is needed
in western society today.
The
question of how best to deal with anti-social behaviour will not go
away; however the shift from Anti-Social Behaviour Orders to Contracts
is a significant one. The contracts could create the scope to build
relationships far more with the young people, and for many of us, we
hope this could be the start of the process for change in the individual.
Yet for the issue to truly change, I guess we must move further from
the paper-based, impersonal approaches that see people as problems to
be solved and start addressing the issues of what real social change
is and what needs to happen in society.
The rediscovery of real relationships is vital
if this sort of change is to happen - relationships not forced by a
contract, but based on a sense of community, on reciprocity and mutuality
- where we are in journeying relationships that ask us and our communities
the basic questions of why, what and how do we work this out together.
See you on the road.
Richard Passmore (Frontier Youth Trust). Some of this article has
been extracted from “Meet them where they’re at”,
Passmore and Pimlott, published by SU 2003)
