Monthly Archives: June 2012

Religion, Youth and Sexuality Event, Nottingham University : September 3

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  Religion, Youth and Sexuality:

Stories from the United Kingdom & Canada

Monday 3rd September 2012 – 3.30pm to 5.30pm

Followed by Buffet Reception

Venue: School of Sociology & Social Policy, Law & Social Sciences Building, University Park – Room B63

The School of Sociology and Social Policy cordially invites you to this event organised for young people, academics, and non-academic professionals (e.g. religious leaders, youth workers, sexual health workers, counsellors).

The event will present findings from two related research projects:

The completed Religion, Youth and Sexuality: A Multi-Faith Exploration in the UK (www.nottingham.ac.uk/sociology/rys).

The ongoing Religion, Gender, Sexuality among Youth in Canada (www.queensu.ca/religion/Faculty/research/dickeyyoung.html).

Guest Speakers

Prof. Pamela Dickey Young, Queen’s University, Canada

Dr. Heather Shipley, University of Ottawa, Canada

Dr. Sarah-Jane Page, Aston University, England

Prof. Andrew Kam-Tuck Yip, University of Nottingham, England

Registration

The event is free of charge, but registration is required.  Please return all completed registration forms to michelle.fusco@nottingham.ac.uk.  These can be found on the School website, via the following link; http://tiny.cc/RYSSept2012

 

USING NEW MEDIA FOR PEER-BASED PARTICIPATORY POLITICS, BYPASSING POLITICAL ELITES AND INSTITUTIONS

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To be treated cautiously, but an interesting piece of research from the USA about young people and participatory politics. At the very least it poses some questions about the UK emphasis on drawing young people into ways of representing and organising – youth councils, youth parliaments – that mimic the deeply problematic institutions favoured by the political elite and the status quo.

IN ADVANCE OF 2012 ELECTION, NATIONAL SURVEY FINDS YOUNG PEOPLE ARE USING NEW MEDIA FOR PEER-BASED PARTICIPATORY POLITICS, BYPASSING POLITICAL ELITES AND INSTITUTIONS

The study report, Participatory Politics: New Media and Youth Political Action shows that contrary to the traditional notion of a technological digital divide, substantial numbers of young people across racial and ethnic groups are engaging in “participatory politics” — acts such as starting a political group online, circulating a blog about a political issue, or forwarding political videos to friends.  Like traditional political acts, these acts address issues of public concern.  The difference is that participatory acts are interactive, peer-based, and do not defer to elites or formal institutions. They are also tied to digital or new media platforms that facilitate and amplify young people’s actions.

The Arrogance of the Entitled

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Cameron’s welfare proposals have churned up immediate opposition from across the political spectrum, yet the Official Opposition can hardly stir itself. A little authentic anger accompanied by serious analysis from Labour’s front benches would not come amiss. However Emily Hewson, Labour Party activist and IDYW supporter, refuses to stay quiet.

Why Cameron is wrong about Housing Benefit for under 25s

Emily begins:

Young people aged 16-24 are yet again being targeted by David Cameron. Making everything like an uphill battle for those young people who need more of a helping hand due to circumstances usually out of their control doesn’t seem like a particularly fair and just society to me.

In all my years as a youth worker, I’ve worked mainly with young people between the ages of 10 and 20 and often those whom live in more deprived and disadvantaged localities, where being an active member of the youth club gave them something to do. Many of these young people if not at the youth club, would roam the streets looking for something to do. There are young people who don’t like spending much time in the house and for whom their homes are fairly crowded, and not somewhere they can spend a lot of time in and certainly not with their mates as well. Hence the usefulness of the youth club as a meeting place.

But often these young people want to leave home at their earliest opportunity. They want to get a job. They want to move on in society, and this government has made it almost physically impossible to do any of this. It’s also becoming apparent that some young people in this age group are struggling harder with the transition to adulthood.

Cameron’s welfare proposals will ‘remove safety net’ for families in need

Fiona Weir, chief executive of single-parent family charity Gingerbread, said that Cameron’s rhetoric could be damaging.

“The Prime Minister is trying to sound tough on welfare reform at a time when his promises to make work a route out of poverty are stalling,” she said.

“Most single parents work, and most who don’t work want to, but can’t get a job. One in five of those working full-time still lives in poverty. The Prime Minister needs to focus on delivering the welfare reform changes already enacted, not thinking up a new round of punitive measures that will stoke up financial hardship, relationship strain and stigma for hundreds of thousands of families.

“Most single parents have small families, and over half only have one child. The Prime Minister risks perpetuating damaging myths and stereotypes.”

Cameron’s welfare speech: he cannot be serious

Then there was the centrepiece of the weekend spinning – the abolition of housing benefit for the under-25s. With the cosy middle-class assumption that mum and dad can always welcome back jobless twentysomethings, this sounded like a suggestion from a gin-soaked colonel in his clubhouse. Does Mr Cameron even know that he recently legislated for cuts to force council tenants to downsize once adult children flee the nest? What about youngsters whose parents are mad, bad or dead? The PM talked about the special circumstances of foster care leavers, but what about those leaving prison? Would it be a good idea to have them roaming the streets? And what about the thousand who get the coach out of dead-end towns and find a job but don’t earn enough to put a roof over their heads without some help from the state?

Cameron’s big cut ‘idea’ will only backfire on the Tories

Attacking the under-25s might help poll ratings for now, but the real causes of high housing benefit costs lie elsewhere.

Cameron’s plan for the under-25s to stay at home springs from his own social milieu, where empty nesters rattle around in echoing home counties mansions, easy for returning children to commute to first jobs. But take housing benefit from 380,000 young people, and what does the student from Middlesbrough College do at the end of their course if they can’t move to where the jobs are, get a room, get started? Stay at home and be unemployed for ever. Even in work, the 205,000 under-25s with a child will have to separate, each to move back to their parents. With benefits as well as wages cut in depressed areas, the north-south divide will gape yet wider, with no chance of moving.

Where In Defence Strays, Rowan Williams Follows?

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Dubious we know, but has the Archbishop been following our analysis of the present situation or indeed our friends at the National Coalition for Independent Action ?

Rowan Williams pours scorn on David Cameron’s ‘big society’

Commenting on the “big society”, Williams, who steps down in December after 10 years in his post, writes: “Introduced in the run-up to the last election as a major political idea for the coming generation, [it] has suffered from a lack of definition about the means by which such ideals can be realised. Big society rhetoric is all too often heard by many therefore as aspirational waffle designed to conceal a deeply damaging withdrawal of the state from its responsibilities to the most vulnerable.”

He suggests that ministers have fuelled cynicism over the Cameron vision by failing to define what the role of citizens should be. “And if the big society is anything better than a slogan looking increasingly threadbare as we look at our society reeling under the impact of public spending cuts, then discussion on this subject has got to take on board some of those issues about what it is to be a citizen and where it is that we most deeply and helpfully acquire the resources of civic identity and dignity.”

Take note, quite a few within the so-called youth sector.

And, as we are called upon to embrace ‘new ideas, new thinking’ by leading lights within the Youth Work establishment,  the Coalition proposes to infantilise further a generation of young people by forcing them to stay at home.

Housing benefit for under-25s could be scrapped, PM to announce

In an interview with the Mail on Sunday, Cameron argued: “We are spending nearly £2bn on housing benefit for under-25s – a fortune. We need a bigger debate about welfare and what we expect of people. The system currently sends the signal you are better off not working, or working less”.

A fortune? Let’s chat re re the bonuses of the City of London’s parasites!

My grandson, an unemployed qualified electrician at 22 years of age, desperate to work, to stand on his own two feet, lives at home. Evidently he doesn’t understand the signals.

Monetising Youth : An Excess of Righteous Wrath?

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A much appreciated shot across the bows from Tom Wylie re our recent post

NCS : A Calculated Tale of Monetised Benefits?

Monetising Youth

A measure of righteous wrath has been expressed about the assertion in the recent evaluation report on National Citizens Service  that the programme’s community service element can be shown to have an economic benefit. Why the surprise ? Similar  claims have been made down the years for such schemes,including Blunkett’s Millennium Volunteers and the work of V. Indeed, youth organisations such as the Scouts or Guides have from time to time deployed the argument that youth work undertaken by their volunteer leaders would otherwise  cost  £XXX when compared to the alternative of employing paid youth work staff. Indeed,some in the voluntary youth sector have made a life’s work out of claiming that its servants,whether paid or voluntary, can always go further and faster than the servants of the state.

A conservative –led government, intent on rolling back the welfare state, will always welcome such arguments. Moreover, the youth work sector as a whole has often compared the modest costs of its provision when compared,say, with incarcerating the young,or their unemployment. This argument may well be true but youth work has not been so good at demonstrating ,as distinct from asserting, how it prevents such negative outcomes.

The political reality is that HM Treasury expects any case for state-funded social programmes,especially new programmes , to show the potential economic return on investment (ERI). It has an elaborate set of requirements though many of these  may be a form of financial smoke and mirrors given the intrinsic difficulties in doing the sums. Some advocates have turned to making a rather wider case about potential additional social benefits (SRI), not just economic ones . Such attempts may prove no  less problematic ,though they may be a bit  more appealing to the youth work sector with its traditional distaste for any metrics,especially economic ones.

Youth work’s wrath would be more usefully focussed on real concerns about NCS ,notably  the increasingly apparent attempts to claim the moon by way of likely success while simultaneously cutting corners and costs. We could also do with an explanation of why some major national bodies in the field have aligned themselves with commercial servicing companies and rather questionable procurement practices (beyond the obvious one that some will make any sort of Faustian pact to get money ).

Tom Wylie

Exploring Social and Critical Pedagogy, July 11 at Brathay

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BERA Youth Studies

July 11th Brathay Hall Ambleside 10.00am for 10.30 start. 4.00pm end.

The celebration, analysis and critique of the specific pedagogies associated with youth and community work in the UK has received far too little attention.

Recent focus on ‘social pedagogy’ in the European context has revived interest in the theory and practice of social education; the work of John Dewey and Paolo Freire is routinely invoked : but how far have we engaged with wider discussions and critiques of reflective learning; experiential learning and even ‘critical pedagogy’ itself. Models of ‘anti-oppressive practice’ and ‘global education’ routinely make claims to link the local and the global but what are the constraints,possibilities and contradictions in this in practice?

Traditions of experiential learning have informed contradictory political tendencies: forming the basis of neo-liberal models of ‘plan,do,review’ as well as offering a source for claims to counter-knowledge in feminist pedagogies. Outdoor education strategies have been mobilised both for management training and for engagement with fundamental issues of life and death, including issues of faith. In detached youth work, ‘low threshold practices’ might be seen as aspects of welfare and access to services, but they have also been seen as enabling ‘street philosophy’ grounded in relationship. Some practices see ‘identities’ as a core basis for association and learning; other practices, such as ‘queer pedagogies’ seek to unsettle identities in order to provoke learning.

You are warmly invited to the BERA Seminar which will conclude the TAG Conference this year at Brathay Hall to explore some of these themes.

The following papers have been confirmed:

Janet Batsleer,Manchester Metropolitan University: ‘What Do we learn from experience: experience and knowing in feminist practice.’

Annette Coburn, Strathclyde University Border-Crossings and Border Pedagogy in Youth Work

Finn Cullen,Brunel University ‘It’s only a joke’: Laughter, humour and teenage girls’ performance of gender and sexual agency

Helen Gatenby, University of Durham Locating Informal Education Teaching without Ties?

Jean Hatton,Frankie Williams and Ann Chapman, Huddersfield and Sunderland Universities Queering Inside Out. Insights from Youth and Community Work teaching.

Richard McHugh Manchester Metropolitan University Outdoor education, anarchistic curriculum and street philosophies: From Plato to 50 Cent in a Bothy

Jon Ord,Marjon John Dewey and Experiential Learning. Developing the theory of youth work

Nigel Pimlott,Staffordshire Univeristy The need for a considered pedagogy in faith based youth work

Kaz Stuart and Lucy Maynard ,Brathay Brathay’s Model of Youth Development

Graeme Tiffany,Institute of Education Detached Youth Work and the Practice of Street Philosophy

 

If you are a member of BERA this is a free event. You are also welcome to come if you are not a member of either BERA or TAG .

Please contact Janet Batsleer (Convenor BERA Youth Studies SIG) if you plan to attend and are not already going to be at the TAG Conference at Brathay. J.Batsleer@mmu.ac.uk. Cost for the day will be £45 for non-BERA folk.

 

 

 

 

Gaining Power – Challenges Facing Activists – NATCAN/NCIA Conference, July 19

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News from NatCan and NCIA about their forthcoming joint conference.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

London Calling!!!!!  The NatCAN and NCIA Conference comes to London!

Gaining Power- Challenges Facing Activists

19th July 2012 – 10.00am – 4.00pm

The venue for this event is Resource For London, 356 Holloway Road, London N7 6PA

We are delighted to confirm that the next NatCAN conference will be held in London for the first time and we hope that you will be there to join us.

The day will look at the issues close to our hearts and give real accounts of work across the country that has made a real difference to communities. We will be providing lots of time to take part in discussions with others, as requested by members of NatCAN.

What will the day offer?

The keynote speech will be given by A World To Win 

They will be giving a fascinating insight into global capitalism, growing inequality and poverty. The debate will then be handed over to the delegates to discuss further. The afternoon will target  grass-roots problems and issues that affect us all in our communities. It will be a day with something for every activist to give opinions on and look at ways forward.

Activists needed. 

In the meantime please read this request from Penny at NCIA as you could take part in an essential piece of research NCIA are looking to do over the coming months and of course tell us your experiences at the conference:-

Is this you? Trying to get the council and landlords to improve local housing? Resisting, yet another, TESCO in your area or other damaging planning applications? Tackling the crap Housing Benefit Service and Job Centre? Despair about poor care and facilities for older people (or others who depend on good local services) and wonder just what to do about it? Fed up with the rum deal that kids get at local schools and looking for others who might do something about it? Active in the local anti-cuts group?

If you’re involved in taking action on issues affecting local people in your area, want to share tactics with others or find out how to get help to keep you going, then this event is for you! Enrol HERE….

Penny at NCIA penny@independentaction.net wants to hear from you about where you get support in your campaigns – from fellow activists? From a local network? From on-line contacts? Tell us what makes the difference, so we can spread the word to others looking for support.

So what do you do the attend this event?

Well its a free event, but you do need to enrol on the NatCAN website.Click on this link to attend. We will keep you updated as we confirm speakers and have further information.

Please keep telling us your thoughts on the day and keep checking the updates as we add more information about the day. We look forward to seeing in London and help us to make this a worthwhile day to remember.

Your NatCAN Team

DIGITAL YOUTH WORK : TOWARDS A DEFINITION AND PRACTICE

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Given our critical caution about the concepts of the social market and social enterprise you might well be surprised to be sent to the Nominet Trust web site, which announces that,

“The internet has the potential to make social entrepreneurs of us all”

For now I’ll sit on my profound hostility to the idea of a society of social entrepreneurs – a discussion for another time. For, as you know, we are an open and pluralist crew and thus we are recommending you read Tim Davies’s blog, The Digital Edge, which begins,

The Nominet Trust have just announced a new £2m funding challenge focussed on support for young people. Here is how they describe it:

Nominet Trust is launching a programme of social investment to address the challenges faced by young people in participating socially and economically with their communities. This call for applications aims to seek out new approaches to using digital technology that re-design ways of supporting young people. We’re looking to invest in partners and ideas that address the challenges we have identified, and look forward to working with you to do so.

However Tim’s blog is much more than a plug for new funding. In addressing some of the issues arising from the rise of digital technology and young people’s engagement he draws our attention to the four challenges posed by the Trust and makes his initial personal comments, including a very interesting reference to a draft definition of Digital Youth Work.

  • Digging deeper into the problems and addressing the root causes- going beyond surface solutions to find new spaces for effective innovation. Our exploration highlighted the plural ‘causes’ is important: there is often not one root cause to be addressed, but a diversity of issues needing a diversity of approaches. Roots spread out underground, so as we dig we need to explore multiple pathways and many spaces for innovation.

  • Exploring the changing landscape and the nature of engagement – Many of the models for youth engagement, or offering support to young adults, were developed in a pre-Internet era and haven’t really been updated, save from digitizing a few processes here and there. Looking at how digital technology has changed the context of young people’s lives (whilst many of the concerns of youth and young adulthood remain pretty consistent) can highlight opportunities for new forms of support and social and economic engagement for young people – not driven primarily by a desire to save money or streamline, but by an interest in making engagement more effective in an Internet age.

  • Renegotiating professional practice – I’m really happy to see this element in the challenge, as it provides a great opportunity for practitioners in Youth Work, Community Development and other youth-supporting professions to put forward projects that start from their professional values, but consider how these can be applied in new contexts. In a recent digital youth work workshop in Helsinki with Verke, CFDP and YouthPart, we started to sketch out a shared understanding of Digital Youth Work that started to consider what a renegotiation of youth work practice could involve, drafting the description below:

 

The Internet is playing a powerful role in shaping the lives of young people today: as a source of information, as a social space, and as a key part of everyday life. Youth work is a process of engagement with young people, supporting young people to make positive choices and shape their own futures, and to actively participate in communities and societies. Digital youth work is values-led practice working with young people that takes account of the digital dimensions of young people’s lives. It might be delivered through digital tools, using online environments or mobile communication; it might blend together physical and digital communication and collaboration; or it might take place face-to-face, but aware of and addressing issues raised by the digital world. 

The ethical values of digital youth work are rooted in voluntary engagement, empowering young people, and working from the interests, needs and concerns of young people. Digital youth work is necessarily a multi-professional field, involving a range of existing practitioners, and requiring us to develop new forms of practice and new roles. Digital youth work include specific online services (for example youth counselling delivered by professional adults), as well as facilitated peer-to-peer learning and engagement.

Digital youth work is a key part of supporting young people’s digital citizenship and securing the rights of everyone to participate fully in contemporary everyday life and its environments. 

The renegotiating professional practice element of the Nominet Trust challenge invites proposals that “support different professions… [to] test out and learn new approaches for engaging with young people?”, and there is real potential here for some action learning in different professional fields to feed back into scaleable change in the way support and engagement opportunities for young people work.

  • New forms of employment and reward – I like to think of this last element of the challenge as creating the space for some more radical rethinking of solutions to the current economic crisis. Although the challenge is a little narrower than the ‘Consider the livelihoods of the future’ message in the Provocation Paper (PDF), in getting beyond the idea that ‘economic engagement’ means getting into a full time job, and thinking about “ how we [prepare] young people to secure a decent living, and to be able to make positive choices about how they use their time, talents and resources”, there is hopefully space here for innovations that challenge a work-consumption treadmill, and explore with young people the social, as well as economic value, of work.

 

There is much to think about here and I hope we might get some reaction and comment to the possibilities and contradictions in this initiative. Meanwhile I’ll dig out some pieces from a new Trustee of Nominet, a certain Charlie Leadbetter, now a management guru, who wrote powerfully about the social market and social individualism in the pages of Marxism Today back in the 1990′s.

 

 

 

SO WE STAND SUMMER SCHOOL JULY 7 – 14 : COMMUNITY JUSTICE, COMMUNITY ORGANISING.

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We’ve received the following notice of a challenging Summer School for young people and community organisers – something of an alternative to the National Citizen’s Service!

Since the Summer insurgencies and riots of 2011 we’ve been thinking of creative and inspiring ways to work with young people to positively work around some of the issues the events gave light to. We’re really excited to announce our SWS Summer School 2012 – a one week intensive programme for young people to come together with long-serving community organisers to share and learn about issues around community justice, the insurgencies, and our political and personal histories. It will be taking place at sites across London from 7th – 14th July. It is free. 

We would very much appreciate if you would circulate the below flyer and information with any and all young people that you work with and send it far and wide amongst your networks. Deadline for applications is Fri 15th June. 

Please do not hesitate to contact us with any feedback or queries regarding the summer school.

All the best 

www.sowestand.com

We stand shoulder-to-shoulder with UK communities on the front lines of environmental, social and racial injustice. Through the pillars of popular education, creative action, anti oppression, we are building a culture of community self defence by organising with communities of resistance to connect the dots between all forms of oppression.

NCS : A Calculated Tale of Monetised Benefits?

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The government’s flagship National Citizen Service (NCS) scheme is returning up to £2 for every £1 invested!

Want to be sure of a job or a place at university? Then you need The Challenge to gain the skills that you can’t master at school – the real world skills that employers and universities look for.

National Citizen Service (NCS) supports the Government’s vision for building a Big Society. It will act as a gateway to the Big Society for many young people by supporting them to develop the skills and attitudes they need to become more engaged with their communities and become active and responsible citizens. NCS will make a positive contribution to local communities, requiring close working with schools, local authorities, businesses and other neighbourhood groups to create a more cohesive, responsible and engaged society.

Summer is almost upon us and with it the second coming of Cameron’s pet project, the National Citizen’s Service [NCS]. For a couple of weeks I’ve been meaning to write something, but to no avail. I put this down to the fact that I suspect I’m the only sad soul. who has read the Evaluation of the NCS Pilots in its entirety. As will become clear I found the experience mind-numbing. Those responsible for  my diminished mental state comprise yet another consortium, made up of the NatCen Social Research, The Office for Public Management, New Philanthropy Capital and Frontier Economics.  They claim to be independent. Their research lacks any social or political context – in this light see below Bernard Davies’s resignation from his role as Visiting Professor at the De Montfort University. Their findings just happen to suit the Coalition with the Prime Minister gushing. “Every time I meet young people taking part in NCS they tell me what a difference it has made: they feel more confident about their future and more connected to their community. I am delighted that the independent evaluation reflects this and shows that NCS makes a real difference to the lives of young people and to our country.” Fair enough the spewing of such a spin on what is hailed as a ground-breaking mix of the residential experience, group work and community action is inevitable, but at the very least a few questions need to be posed.

In trying to do so I will take one step at a time. So to begin I’ll pick up on the remarkable claims about the financial impact of NCS, signalled already by Neil Puffett in Children and Young People Now.

Government hails success of National Citizen Service scheme

Based on analysis of last year’s pilots, involving 8,500 young people, the government says that of £200m it will have invested in the scheme by 2014, it could reap as much as £400m in benefits to communities.

The return ratio is estimated based on the value of community work carried out by young people on the scheme and their improved educational outcomes, as well as an approximation of the wages that young people could earn in the future.

“More than £10m in increased earnings, including almost £3m in increased tax revenue, can be expected from increased confidence, improved leadership and communication,” the report said.

This information drew the following comment from Peter White as a comment on CYPN.

At last we have it – a price tag on the value of young people! Finally we know how much they are worth; not only can we get value for money from our investment but we can itemise the bill.

Surely an outcomes-driven approach has gone too far when young people become economic units; when social mixing and increased well-being become outcomes that were ‘also found’ and the youth service is primarily for 30,000 16 year olds!

In truth the speculation is staggering in its erstwhile simplicity – much like those projections about bank holidays costing £2.3 billion – but such is the empty arrogance of what passes as economics.  On the other hand we might ponder why a similar formula has not been drawn up in the past to measure the value of open access youth work? Obviously it’s easier to do with a discrete short-term programme like NCS, but to be honest in recent years we’ve amassed a mountain of statistics  with which to conjure. Do we detect here a lack of political will by successive administrations? Do we suspect that the figures, we might have concocted, would not have suited their shared desire to undermine universal youth work provision?

To give you a greater insight into the mysteries of the formula utilised to calculate the ‘monetised’ benefits of NCS the report argues:

The net present value of the benefits to society as a whole are estimated to be up to £28 million, which is made up of:

  • the equivalent of £618,000 in time donated by volunteers over the course of the programme
  • £10.2 million in increased earnings for NCS participants because of increased confidence in teamwork, communication, and leadership; and
  •  Up to an additional £17.1 million increase in earnings for NCS participants because of greater take up of education opportunities.

It’s a flight of fancy, but, given the information I had in my hands as a Chief Youth Officer in the past and using the above ‘formula’ , I reckon I could have come up with some mind-boggling figures about the financial impact of a local Authority Youth Service. Anybody out there,  care to speculate in the same vein? In the next post relating to the Evaluation I’ll need to stay with the supposed ‘monetised’ benefits as the NCS is compared to other programmes, including some in the USA. I know you’re on tenterhooks! After that it will be forward to the more interesting area of ‘non-monetised’ benefits.

As a postscript because he doesn’t want a great fuss to be made, you will find below Bernard Davies’s resignation letter sent to the Youth and Community Work Division at the De Montfort University. The background to this decision is to be found on the NYA site at Intensive Practice Placement.

The National Youth Agency (NYA) working with De Montfort University (DMU) is pioneering a new intensive kind of practitioner placement for student youth workers linked to the government’s flagship National Citizen Service (NCS) programme for 16 year olds.

Around 25 youth work students from the Leicester-based university will be employed by the NYA to work with 16-year-olds on a residential programme this summer for National Citizen Service, which the NYA in partnership with O2, is helping to deliver in Kent and Warrington. The O2 Think Big programme offers young people a summer of fun, friendship, new skills and adventure as part of NCS. With O2 Think Big, these participants will get the chance to develop and deliver a social action project that will transform their local community.

The NYA and DMU have now put steps in place so that five youth work students in their second year will be able to use this experience to formally count as a placement towards their professional qualification.

As a leading figure in the work Bernard needs no introduction, which makes his eloquent stand all the more significant.

I am aware that my appointment as a Visiting Professor in the
Youth and Community Work Division is due to finish at the end
of 2012. However I have decided I need to resign from that role
immediately as a direct consequence of the YCW Division’s
decision to be involved in the National Citizens Service.

I know that from the start you set out some clear ‘bottom lines’
for this involvement, all of which I would certainly wish to
support. I do however have principled reservations about the
whole scheme which I have made public on a number of
occasions, verbally and in writing, particularly through my
contributions to the In Defence of Youth Work campaign. These
focus on its claims, within a very limited time frame but at a very
high cost, to be providing young people with a significant
developmental experience when facilities which offer this
through sustained and regular local open access youth work
services are being decimated.

These reservations are deepened by the evidence that is now
accumulating on how the scheme is in many areas being
implemented, with in some cases no job descriptions for staff
being provided, very low pay levels being offered and minimum
training and preparation being arranged. These in my view
constitute a wholly inadequate basis for any youth provision.
Moreover, given that residential experience is said to be central
to the NCS projects, they also carry very significant potential
risks, especially for the young people involved but also for the
staff running the scheme.

For all these reasons I would not wish to be associated with the
NCS initiative, even indirectly and even allowing for the
safeguards which I know you have sought to build in. Please
therefore accept this as my letter of resignation, to be passed to
the appropriate office within the University.

As I indicated when we talked on the phone, given the public
stances I have taken within youth work circles on NCS, I will be
seeking a way of making my resignation known to key groups
and colleagues with whom I am working closely.

Finally can I add that I have taken this decision with
considerable regret? Though I have recently felt that my VP role
has become too ‘honorary’ and not sufficiently actively
contributive, I have much valued the link with the YCW Division
and above all the opportunity to be involved in its two Inquiries
into the state of youth work.

With best wishes.

Bernard