Tag Archives: Youth work

Education and youth work: collaborating to close the attainment gap

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by Scott Faulds

At this year’s Scottish Learning Festival, there was a large selection of seminars offered which allowed delegates to gain knowledge of good practice from across the Scottish education sector. One seminar of particular interest was run by YouthLink Scotland, the national agency for youth work, who discussed their youth work and skills partnership programme, which is designed to help close the attainment gap. This programme is funded by the Scottish Government via the Scottish Attainment Challenge and Pupil Equity Funding.

Collaboration

YouthLink Scotland believe that the key to tackling the attainment gap is through strengthening the collaboration between the youth work sector and formal education, via a focus on reducing the impact of poverty on attainment. A key element of fostering this collaboration is through a development of mutual trust and respect. Understanding and respecting different pedagogy, roles and approaches enables youth workers and educators to work together to help young people overcome barriers to learning.

Establishing relationships

It is important to recognise that teachers and youth workers establish different types of relationships with young people. For example, youth workers have a dedicated focus on young people, specialise in personal, social and educational development and are inclusive without being based on a singular interest, skill or capacity. The different relationship developed by youth workers can be useful when interacting with young people who are almost at the point of refusing school and may not feel comfortable speaking to their teachers. The effects of youth work interventions can be profound, with YouthLink Scotland finding that successful interventions have led to improvements in attendance, engagement, attainment, health and wellbeing and school leaver destinations.

Youth workers are able to complement and enhance the formal curriculum by delivering tailored interventions, planned in partnership with teachers, that will help to provide a variety of alternative learning options to vulnerable young people. These interventions can help reintegrate students to the classroom setting and provide them with opportunities to gain youth work awards that recognise wider achievements. Additionally, youth workers are able to contribute to school improvement planning, self-evaluation and help measure the impact of youth work interventions. The involvement of youth workers in these processes allows for the development of evidence of what works and can be used to increase understanding of youth work and how it can support the formal education sector.

Good practice: The Hub, St Stephen’s High, Port Glasgow

An example of a successful collaboration between youth work and the formal education sector is the development of The Hub at St Stephen’s High, Port Glasgow, where 80% of pupils are within the first to third deciles of the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation.

The Hub is a nurturing environment that pupils can be referred to by principal teachers of Guidance and other members of the senior management team. It is important to note that The Hub should not be considered an internal exclusion base, rather, it is a space that facilitates short term interventions with a focus on the pupil returning to the classroom environment. The main focus of The Hub is to improve the attainment of disengaged groups of pupils, with intervention from teachers, classroom assistants, youth workers and other third sector organisations such as Barnardo’s.

The Hub offers a streamlined approach to providing support to disengaged pupils, with the level and type of support tailored to the needs of each pupil. This can include operating activities outside of the formal school setting, and the collaboration with youth workers ensures that activities can also be operated outside normal school hours. A representative from St Stephen’s High, spoke highly of The Hub arguing that the ability for disengaged pupils to develop support systems with youth workers was key to their successful reintegration into classroom-based education.

Additionally, the Hub provides services to both the wider school and local community, such as a breakfast club and food bank. The Hub also encourages and develops parental engagement through events such as “parent and carers wellbeing day” and “twilight teas”. These events are becoming increasingly more important to youth workers, as research has shown a link between parental engagement and the attainment gap, especially around periods of transition.

Final thoughts

Tackling Scotland’s poverty-related attainment gap is a long-term challenge that will involve collaboration from groups across the country. The collaboration between youth work and the formal education sector allows for the exchange of pedagogy and approaches that will ultimately allow for the development of better interventions to help vulnerable young people.

It is important to recognise that some young people may not feel comfortable talking to a teacher and therefore the availability of youth workers may allow them to develop alternative relationships which can help them re-join classroom education. Re-engaging young people who are close to refusing school is vital in eradicating the poverty-related attainment gap. All actions to prevent this must be explored.

If you enjoyed this article, take a look at our previous blog on the Scottish Learning Festival, which reflects on Deputy First Minister John Swinney’s keynote.

We have also blogged on a range of topics around education, including on Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services in schools. You can read more here.

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Youth Work in the Digital Age – What Next?

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by Scott Faulds

On Tuesday 3rd September, youth work organisations from across the European Union came together in Glasgow to launch the European Guidelines for Digital Youth Work, training materials and a collection of short films showcasing Good Practice. This was the culmination of a two-year transnational Erasmus+ project, designed to foster shared understandings and inform, inspire and empower the wider youth work sector to get to grips with youth work in the digital age.

The project was conducted in partnership with YouthLink Scotland, Centre for Digital Youth Care (Denmark), Verke – The National Digital Youth Work Centre (Finland), wienXtra MedienZentrum (Austria), JFF – Institut für Medienpädagogik (Germany), National Youth Council of Ireland and Camara Education Limited (Ireland).

Keynote Speaker: Dr Jane Melvin

To kick off the conference, keynote speaker Dr Jane Melvin of the University of Brighton, spoke of her journey from technophobe to technophile and of her belief that there is no longer an option for youth workers not to embrace digital technology.

Dr Melvin argued that youth workers should utilise any tool which could allow for the better engagement of young people. She described this as the “digital hybrid approach”. This approach encourages youth workers to adopt a critical standpoint when considering the use of digital tools and actively encourages the questioning of why and when digital tools are utilised. Dr Melvin contends that it is as much about using digital tools thoughtfully as it is about deciding when not to use them.

Additionally, Dr Melvin stressed that the concept of young people being digitally literate is no longer relevant in a time where technology is advancing at an ever-faster pace. In the digital age, it is vital that young people can navigate a variety of different digital tools and be confident in adopting new technologies as they emerge. This ability to transfer existing knowledge to critically assess the best way to interact with new and emerging technology has been described as digital fluency, and Dr Melvin advocates the need for every young person to develop this fluency to enable them to thrive in the digital age.

In closing, Dr Melvin stated that for youth work in the digital age, it is essential to find a balance between conservative stability and runaway adoption, to ensure that youth workers can truly reap the benefits of the digital age.

Digital Youth Work in Scotland

As the conference was held in Glasgow, it seemed only fitting to hear about some of the work that youth work organisations in Scotland were doing to help adapt to the digital age.

We heard from Claire McGinley and Inigo Sands from Paisley YMCA, which has received awards for their digital youth work and has fostered partnerships with Microsoft, Google and the University of the West of Scotland.

Claire and Inigo began by stressing that there is no specific type of young person who will take part in digital youth work, as digital skills are vital to allow young people to access the world of work. We all access the digital world as part of our day-to-day lives and for young people there is less of a distinction between the real and online world. Therefore, is it crucial that youth workers are able to help young people develop their digital skills. This is something Paisley YMCA has had a great deal of success at with, through fostering a good environment for ‘stealth learning’.

Paisley YMCA has a maker space, a STEM for girls’ club, coding dojo and are able to adapt to the needs of young people as new digital tools emerge. However, it is not simply about young people becoming experts at using a 3D printer; the activities offered by Paisley YMCA are about giving young people an opportunity to try new things.

Claire and Inigo concluded that there is no secret formula to digital youth work; you just have to do it, and be open to the opportunity for vertical learning.

We also heard from representatives from the Young Scot 5Rights Young Leaders, who spoke of their work to promote the five digital rights for young people, which were based on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The five rights are:

  1. The right to remove
  2. The right to know
  3. The right to safety and support
  4. The right to informed and conscious use
  5. The right to digital literacy

The Young Scot 5Rights Young Leaders presented the Scottish Government with their report, Our Digital Rights, which featured 20 recommendations of how the Government can best support the protection of these rights. Recommendations included the integration of digital literacy across all school subject areas, the ability to limit the unnecessary collection and use of young people’s data and the provision of greater internet access in rural areas of Scotland.

The Scottish Government accepted the recommendations of the report and the Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Tourism and External Affairs, Fiona Hyslop, has agreed to keep the 5Rights Young Leaders involved during its implementation. The 5Rights Young Leaders concluded by voicing their desire for Scotland to become a leading example of how young people and children can benefit from the digital age without having their safety and privacy compromised.  

Good Practice

One of the key aims of this Erasmus+ project was the facilitation of the exchange of good practice and knowledge across the European Union. At the conference, we had an opportunity to hear from each of the partner organisations and learn about the work they were doing in their respective countries. The Digital Youth Work website features a collection of videos featuring Good Practice, as well as an extensive library of training materials.

One particularly interesting example was the online counselling services offered by Denmark’s Centre for Digital Youth Care, who operate three tailored online services.

  1. Cyberhus – a general forum for young people aged between 9 and 23 years old
  2. Mitassist – focused on young men and utilises gamification to keep them engaged
  3. Netstof – focused on discussing drug and alcohol problems for young people aged between 15 and 24 years old

These services offer a space for young people to seek advice and discuss problems anonymously, either with their peers on the moderated forum or with qualified social workers. Cyberhus has 40,000 unique visitors each month and the top three issues regularly discussed are self-harm, eating disorders and relationships. The number of regular users and the type of issues discussed can be challenging for staff, who all have to complete a twelve-week course before working on the platform.

 

Digital Youth Work Good Practice video featuring Denmark’s online counselling platforms


The Centre for Digital Youth Care view this service as vital in helping support young people in Denmark. The anonymity these platforms provide is often attractive to young people, with the vast majority not wishing to provide social workers with their location or confirming if they are already in touch with a professional treatment provider. Anni Marquard, the creator of Cyberhus, believes that youth workers must be willing to adapt to allow them to engage with young people. After all, 88% of all visits to Cyberhus are from smartphones. The use of digital tools to enable anonymous online counselling has enabled young people across Denmark to access support when they need it most and the platforms regularly provide more counselling sessions than their real-life counterparts. Thus, it is clear that youth workers must be ready to adapt to the digital age in order to best engage young people.

Final Thoughts

The conference demonstrated that a great deal of work has been done by organisations and countries across the European Union.

The ability to exchange good practice and knowledge from youth workers across the EU enabled everyone to gain a new perspective on how to approach the implementation of new digital tools and was aided by the format of the conference which encouraged networking and dialogue.

The basis of this transnational Erasmus+ project was the exchange of good practice to enable youth workers across Europe to harness the tools of the digital age to better support young people.

Through the production of the European Guidelines for Digital Youth Work, Good Practice videos and training materials, it is clear that not only has this project been a success, but it has resulted in the creation of a powerful and effective resource that can empower youth workers across the world to meet the challenges of the digital age.

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