Young People and the Educational Role of Youth Work in the New Millennium: From Voluntarism to Compulsion?

Abstract

ABSTRACT The theme of this paper is that provision for young people has changed direction in the last fifteen years, a process likely to continue under the present government. The aims of the Albermarle report,—to underpin a state funded, professional Youth Service providing for the voluntary association, leisure and personal developmental needs of all young people—are being relegated, as government resources increasingly target ‘excluded’ young people and those ‘at risk’. There is a shift to multi agency teams to combat social exclusion and make the disaffected more ‘employable’. The series of compulsory measures—including ‘youth advisors’, ‘connexions team’, careers awareness training, ‘learning gateways’ extended work experiences, ‘tracking’, youth offending teams and similar—are an undisguised form of social control reminiscent of totalitarian regimes. Since our effective education recreates social inequalities, it is those at the bottom of the social class spectrum who will be targeted by ‘youth brokers’. Against this background, of attempting to combat almost every common adolescent deviation, the role of youth workers is to remain vigilant and protect impoverished young people's interests being subsumed by illiberal measures; affluent young people will continue to be immune from such coercion.