Students talked about diverse scenarios with differing levels of complexity to illustrate how they were drawing on values in their practice. The more straightforward scenarios focused on one-to-one interventions with young people, from Jamie, Cate and Laura, the younger first year students.
Jamie regularly sought to include a young man who absented himself from a youth group meeting held in his own house, by staying in his room. Jamie deliberately made ‘a point of
going up there and like letting him know that people care where he is and always inviting him downstairs,’ drawing on his value of including those on the fringes.
Cate discussed a situation with a young woman from the local community who was going through a hard time, acknowledging:
I’ve realised that with her I’ve really needed to be someone that shows them that I’m there for her no matter what, that if she’s going through a good time I’m still there for her and if she’s going through a bad time I’m still there for her, and that I’m interested in everything that she’s going through. Cate, Interview 1
She mentioned maintaining boundaries with the girl, but stumbled over how to explain coherently what she meant by boundaries, finally framing this as being a consistent and dependable worker, without creating a dependency in the girl on her support. She was also keen not to show favouritism and to ensure she did not overlook young people in a group – an awareness she traced back to her own teenage experience of being overlooked by adults, she believed due to her shyness. Cate described this experience as ‘hurtful’, feeling that others were noticed more than she was, as they were louder. This is an example of how a youth worker’s prior personal experience can impact the approach they take in their own youth work.
Cate acknowledged some of the struggles she had in her work with young people from the local community: she sometimes felt they were suspicious of, or misinterpreted the workers’ professional interest in young people, illustrating this with a story of how young women talked about their crushes on the male workers when they were not around. This led to her being very aware of how she and others ‘came across’ to young people ‘because in today’s
society there’s the whole child protection thing’.
Laura discussed a situation with a young woman concerned about being over-weight. Laura sought to balance the young woman’s legitimate health concerns with her self-esteem, wanting to communicate to the girl her inherent worth and value whatever her weight – and wanting her to be critically aware of media (mis-) representations of women’s bodies, which she felt fostered an unhelpful body image for girls.
Samuel discussed his compulsion to intervene in a situation that arose whilst he was working in school with a group of boys in a drama class, who were ‘running rings’ around a teacher: ‘I
said, no, this can’t happen, you know, and I had to speak with them’. His approach was a mix of
‘straight’ talking to the group about their lack of respect for each other and the teacher and also ‘going the extra mile’ with them:
Now I actually from my own time did some extra sessions with those guys because I knew there was a conflict within the whole team […] I know sometimes you have to go a little bit the extra mile with these young people because they want to see sometimes that you’re genuine. Samuel Interview 1
Samuel talked about ‘challenging’ the young men about their behaviour, a word he had used previously when thinking about his youth work and one he went on to use in relation to the case study. Three further examples of work he gave also involved him working with what could be termed ‘confrontational’ situations: one where young men were going to fight another gang (in which he challenged them to think about the longer-term consequences of their actions for them and their families), another where young people had kicked in a door at the club (where the young people were approached, confessed and it was dealt with appropriately), and one where he had asked the young people to stay behind and help pick up litter, in order to encourage them to own and contribute to the club, which they did and he praised them. I found this interesting, as Samuel consistently displayed a controlled and gentle manner: his approach seemed less one of angry confrontation and more one of a caring but straight-talking older brother / father figure. This is perhaps endorsed by this
postscript to his last two examples: ‘I was very touched last week. I actually heard that the kids
actually attended. I think they were kind of gathering – the kids attending – there for the interpersonal relationships with the staff rather than just the Wii and the table tennis,’ showing
for him the importance of relationships within this work of challenging young people’s attitudes and behaviour.
As second-year students, Dani and Tom had been working in their main placement for a year and had a number of practice examples to draw on. Dani talked about a discipleship group, where ‘it kicked off’ when young people from ‘a gang around the corner’ came asking to join in, much to the annoyance of the regular members. Dani sought to work with this through including the new group in discussion, challenging the regulars’ values, (‘we’re Christians and
we should accept them’), and seeking to find areas of commonality between them, to
facilitate discussion. The end result ‘was kind of a bit conflicty though, because there was a
few things that kicked off.’ She talked about seeking to be an advocate for each group,
looking to help them understand each other, valuing the young people as individuals and seeking to support and encourage them; and referenced safeguarding as an issue to consider in relation to some of the things disclosed in that discussion. She also talked about a situation where a young woman, well known to the workers, disclosed late in the evening after a youth group meeting, that, after ‘a rubbish day’, she wanted to go home and commit suicide. Workers were aware of the difficulties this young woman faced and sought to remind her of her personal worth and value to them and her family and friends; to assure her she could get professional help to overcome her difficulties; and to re-frame her negative thinking into positive thinking: ‘just to make them see that they were special, that they did
have high hopes, they have could achieve something’. Interestingly, Dani did not frame this
explicitly as a significant ‘safeguarding’ concern, with all the practice implications that might bring, although she did think of it as a ‘life and death’ situation.
Tom gave many accounts of his actual practice and his approach to youth work throughout the interview – when describing his route into youth work, his placement setting, what motivated him, his personal values and youth work values: in fact, he had already provided and explored so many practice examples, that in the interview I chose not to ask this question due to time constraints and because I felt I already had plenty of examples. Early on in the interview, Tom talked about a situation where he felt young people in his placement were being racist – making fun of an Asian young man attending the club, whom Tom felt was uncomfortable with their joking. The placement’s response was to run ‘a couple of
sessions where we’ve had to say to them, “Look guys, this is not fair to him,”’ seeking to
educate and challenge young people and manage their behaviour. Discussing how he felt his personal values and youth work values fitted together, Tom started talking about three complicated scenarios, one running into another, which for him highlighted some of his concerns about how his values and youth work values worked together. The first was a young woman who had spoken with Tom, confiding in him that she was self-harming, wanted to leave home and have a baby – during which she also mentioned suicide; the second, a girl not wanting to go home; and the third, a situation he was working through at that stage, where the placement was dealing with rumours that a 17 year-old boy (who did not attend their provision) was seeking to have sex with 13 year-old girls who did attend, with some mention of the girls being forced against their will or being coerced. In the first situation, Tom was very aware of safeguarding procedures, leading him to explore some of the issues he raised in the above section, about his discomfort of simply ‘reporting up the chain’ to exonerate oneself and the project from any future liability. He then went on to think through issues of confidentiality as the young woman who had confided in him did not want him to tell her mum. On learning the girl had apparently not told anyone else how she was feeling, he said ‘Okay, that’s going to be a problem for me to keep this secret’. However, this situation was further complicated by the fact the mum was also well-known to the leaders at the club, as they were all active members of the same church. Tom informed his line- manager of his conversation with the young woman, following organisational safeguarding procedures. As well as seeking to support the young woman, Tom was acutely aware of the struggle her mum was going through, not fully understanding what was going on for her daughter and he experienced this dual knowledge as competing interests: ‘it was a bit more
personal than it would have otherwise been ….. our priority is wanting to keep her [the girl’s] trust, but at the same time I can see that it’s eating up her mum inside, so do I tell her mum?’ In
this situation, Tom’s line manager phoned the young woman concerned to talk to her himself. Tom said:
He phoned the girl, and was having a conversation, who said “You have no right! Don’t tell my mum.” Erm, .. however, because of the situation she wasn’t giving away any ground so we still had to tell her mum. Tom, Interview 1
Tom explained how his line manager had sought to work with the mum to help her use this information wisely with her daughter – essentially not to reveal prior knowledge, but to ‘discover it for herself’, so the workers did not lose the trust of the young woman. This reminded Tom of the second scenario, where the line manager had acted similarly – going
against the young woman’s wishes, without their knowledge, to speak with their parent. Tom wrestled with this:
what’s the best course of action here? Do I … I mean quite often the case has been we’ve spoken to the parents, tried to do it as anonymously as possible and the young person has spoken to us afterwards because they’ve not been aware of some of this. But is that see… well, something I don’t … lying .. but not technically lying, but is it lying? And is it a white lie if you’re not saying … If you’ve not said “No, I’m not going to say it” but you sort of … they’ve assumed you’re not going to say it. Tom, Interview 1
Both these situations illustrate the complexity of working in settings where workers have ‘dual roles’: for example, being a youth worker in a church, where you are also a church member; or living in the community where you also work, being both youth worker and neighbour. Which role guides their actions at which point? They also demonstrate the impact of placement practice on worker’s learning about youth work.
When trying to articulate the values and principles he might draw on with regards to the underage sex concern, Tom first said: ‘It’s a difficult one because obviously you’re working in
the beliefs of youth work and trying to work within the beliefs of the Christian faith as well’,
which for him appeared to be the balance between upholding his Christian faith-based value of no sex before marriage, and his perceived understanding of the youth work value, which would be enabling the young people to engage in sex safely. Initially, it appeared the only frame of reference Tom could draw on was one provided by his religious worldview. He demonstrated little experience and practice of engaging in a constructive dialogue between this framework and that of professional youth work. Due to the age gap, he suggested the rumoured situation was ‘verging on paedophilia’, and although he wanted to ensure any consenting young people had sex safely, he also thought about the youth work value of protecting young people, which he felt complemented his Christian values. It was not until I asked the question about legal issues that Tom framed the situation in a professional way as one of under-age sex. He identified the issue of coercion as ‘a whole other issue in itself’, but did not articulate this as an issue of female consent and rape, as well as under-age sex.
Throughout this section of Tom’s interview, there was a strong feeling of him being overwhelmed by these challenging ethical issues. At the point the first young woman confided in him, Tom said ‘so I’m thinking “Oh, this is getting a bit much for me”‘. My sense was that Tom believed he was not yet that well-equipped to deal with these issues, and to
engage in ethical debate between his own faith-based worldview and the professional frame of reference of youth work. This meant he struggled to manage his emotions arising from the situations and his own inner turmoil, and consequently he struggled to contain these emotions sufficiently to examine the situation more clearly and calmly. Had he been able to do this, he may have been in a position to better assess the severity of these situations, both in the moment and after, and then to formulate a more useful response in the moment, in relation to his work with the young person and also with himself – to give himself some space to think.
He found the idea of simply having to fulfil policy as ‘annoying’ and ‘distressing’, because he felt the policy might be more aligned to mitigating the risks for the agency, rather than focussing on supporting and protecting young people. When faced with diverse values around sexual activity and young people’s actions (his Christian faith-based values and values around supporting young people to engage in safe sex), he described the process of choosing between which values to act upon as ‘one of those constant battles I find myself
having’. In each of these situations, Tom was beginning to engage in ethics work (Banks,
2016:36), seeking to ‘do the right thing’ for the young person whilst managing his own understanding of his role and moral responsibilities as a Christian, a youth worker and a Christian youth worker, working in a faith-based setting. Ultimately he reconciled them all into an overarching value of his priority to ensure young people’s safety, which included educating them about safe sex and providing contraception if required. It was clear that emotion figured significantly for Tom in his accounts of real-life practice situations and his decision-making.