Re: Youth Work in Office Hours?

hlh111 — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 11:50:20 -0000

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Re: Youth Work in Office Hours?

masyomo — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 11:49:04 -0000

thanks Helen - good to get an idea of what young people you're working with think. What I would say about whether or not opening at weekends cuts down on drinking etc. is that I don't think this is necessarily the correct motivation for doing so - because besides those young people doing those things (and the ones that will go out anyway), how many young people are there that aren't drinking/smoking etc. but just have nowhere to go? And how many in the younger age groups are less able to attend evening events during midweek but find theres no provision on Friday/Saturday evening when they could be permitted to stay out longer? I would think this is probably even more important if you work on the basis that you want to engage young people as early as possible to try and discourage the former behaviours in the longer term.

For the points about school based work I've no doubt theres lots of valuable work being done - however if you have limited resources ie. Youth Workers - is your priority to provide provision at times when there is none (evenings and weekends), or to provide it when there is already some (school)?

Re: Youth Work in Office Hours?

hlh111 — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 11:31:23 -0000

I read the initial post and thought that i had my answer in my head, but then on reading the following comments, i did get a bit muddled......but anyway....

Firstly one of the reasons put forward against there being youth clubs or projects on a fri/sat was the fact that young people are out drinking. I dont know about in other areas, but the area im in and the young people that i am working with at the moment, do go out drinking with there friends on the friday night, and from discussions ive had, i can say that even if there was a youth club open that the majority still would be out there drinking,

but on the other hand, there are the few that ive spoke to who say that having provision on a weekend would take away the boredom aspect that results in them drinking as there is nothing else they feel that they can be doing in that time.

During our summer programme, we did work on a Friday and feedback from young people was that having that in place gave them somewere to go to, something to do, and the comments that came up were that certain young people, smoked less, drank less, there was less anti-social behaviour. (still waiting on local police statistics to confirm this)

Also there is a group of the older local boys who have been involved in various incidents with the police, and some young people within that group have identified that they dont wish to be a part of that group and if there were more things happening as in youth clubs ect at these times, then that could offer an alternative.

So I am extremely for working on Friday nights and Saturdays if the need is there, but as Mas said, the barrier to putting this in place is that it is one, hard to find many workers who will be willing to work these hours, and secondly the money to pay staff, costs of using the building, and also building staff. So as much as I feel we need to do this, there is a battle between the need and the organisation.

And as an answer to mas's question - 'What I’d really like to know is what are Youth Workers doing between the hours of 9am & 5pm, Monday to Friday? Is there really more valuable stuff to do during the day than there is from 7pm - midnight + Saturday & Sunday?'

Yes, there is a need to be working evenings and weekends but at the same time, all of the youth workers in our locality team are designated to schools around the county. There is so much work that needs to be done along side the school curriculum, youth work offers informal education in the evenings at clubs, projects, detached etc - that only reaches a certain amount of young people within the area, What about the need for informal/social education within a school setting? Were the majority of all young people living in your area will be?

I know that this is were i spend alot of my time, working with young people who are presenting various issues within school, and also working around sexual health, bullying, culture and diversity, to name a few.....

I think ive lost my trail of thought, but feel free to comment =]

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