The
role of street-based youth work in linking socially excluded young
people into education, training and work
A
Joseph Rowntree Foundation report (Reaching
socially excluded young people: A national study of street-based
youth work) published on 22 June 2004 for the Foundation by the National Youth Agency,
represents the first, major, national study of street-based youth
work in England and Wales. Focusing on work with
socially excluded young people - a key target group for the
Connexions service, the study investigated the geographical spread
of street-based youth work, the young people it reached and its
impact upon their lives and found:
- Street-based youth work has grown
significantly in recent years: this study identified 564
projects, which had contact with 65,325 young people.
- Nevertheless, geographical
coverage is very uneven.
- There has been a significant shift
away from longer-term, area-based, projects towards short-term
work with particular high-risk groups or on particular issues.
- As a result, in the majority of
cases funding was short-term and this created problems with
staff retention. Smaller projects were often at risk of folding
because of this.
- While working with a mix of young
people, the projects studied were successfully reaching and
working with large numbers of the most socially excluded young
people.
- These projects served as an
important source of information on educational and career
opportunities for such young people who were often out of
contact with any other agencies. The projects also appeared to
be successful in reintroducing young people to education,
training and employment and supporting their entry to it.
- In order to work successfully with
the most excluded young people, workers believed that they had
to adopt a flexible approach, based on voluntary involvement and
responsiveness to the needs of individual young people. However,
this was sometimes in tension with the expectations of some
funders, who were concerned about single issues, the achievement
of quick, quantifiable, results and the capacity of street-based
intervention to control young people's behaviour.
A summary can be viewed on the Joseph
Rowntree Foundation website
