Monthly Archives: July 2013

Get more sleep!!!

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Over the past month my sleeping patterns have gone completely out the window. Sleep is one of the most important things for our health and mine has suffered for it.

Here is a little reminder of how important sleep is:

 
 


Aaron Garth

Aaron Garth is the Executive Director of Ultimate Youth Worker. Aaron has worked as a youth worker in a number of settings including local church, street drug and alcohol outreach, family services, residential care, local government and youth homelessness since 2003. Aaron is a regular speaker at camps, retreats, & youth work training events and is a dedicated to seeing a more professional youth sector in Australia. Aaron is a graduate of RMIT University and an alumnus of their youth work program. He lives in Melbourne with his wife Jennifer & their daughters Hope, Zoe, Esther, Niamh and son Ezra.

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Why so difficult: Understanding theory doesn’t need to be fear inspiring jargon.

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I was speaking to some of my students recently about their time in the courses I teach in. Many of the student said the felt ill prepared and that they found that many of the teachers were hard to understand. When I delved into this it was that the teachers took pleasure in showing off their academic prowess and made everything seem really hard to understand. Many of the students still did not have a good understanding of basic theories and youth work practices as their teachers were speaking a whole other language…academic pomp.
 
In class this morning one of my students stated that I taught very different than her previous teacher. When I asked what the difference was she said that the teacher she previously had liked to talk on and on and delve deeply into a topic without making the basics understandable. After the first few classes she felt lost and every class after that compounded her feeling of being lost.
 
I asked what she liked about my style and she said she could understand what I was saying because I spoke in a way they could understand. I don’t use a lot of jargon when I teach. I can, but I was once told that the mark of understanding was the ability to distil knowledge to the lowest common denominator. If you can’t understand it is often because the teacher is making it too difficult.
 
 
When I was in high school I sucked at mathematics. I could not understand algebra or algorithims and every year I fell further behind. In year ten one of my teachers realised that I had missed the basics and this was what led to my lack of understanding here. She spent a number of weeks teaching me the basics and had me caught up and surpassing my peers in less than a term. The main thing was I needed the basics and I needed to understand.
 
No one fails my subjects through a lack of understanding. I teach as if I am explaining to a ten year old until my students get it and then I move on. If you struggle with youth work theory and practices it might just be that you were poorly taught. get back to basics and rid yourself of jargon and you will get passed the fear of theory.
 

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Aaron Garth

Aaron Garth is the Executive Director of Ultimate Youth Worker. Aaron has worked as a youth worker in a number of settings including local church, street drug and alcohol outreach, family services, residential care, local government and youth homelessness since 2003. Aaron is a regular speaker at camps, retreats, & youth work training events and is a dedicated to seeing a more professional youth sector in Australia. Aaron is a graduate of RMIT University and an alumnus of their youth work program. He lives in Melbourne with his wife Jennifer & their daughters Hope, Zoe, Esther, Niamh and son Ezra.

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Local government youth work: Placation or proliferation?

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In my illustrious career I had the privilege of being a coordinator of a small local government youth service for the lengthy duration of seven months. As I was transitioning to this role I was warned by a number of colleagues that this would be a difficult role for me to hold due to my own philosophical and professional beliefs in youth work. I wish I had have listened to my advisers then. Whilst I made some amazing friends and worked wit some extremely dedicated staff the constriction on youth service provision made the role untenable.
 
I have spoken to a number of my youth work colleagues who have worked for councils and have had a mixed response to my feelings. Many of my colleagues stated that council youth work provided them with the best possible framework for strengthening young people and providing opportunities for growth and development. That advocacy and participation are held as core duties and that programs work fills a gap in service provision.
 
I have also spoken to a number of youth workers who see council youth work as no more than placating residents and disenfranchised young people. They see the idea of program work and generalist work as proliferating disenfranchisement in young people. That at best council youth services provide a way of keeping young people off the streets and at worst provide an oppressive program keeping young people out of public life.

From my own experience I would say that the later is probably a bit far fetched, however many councillors and senior managers in local government have little understanding of the importance of young people in their municipalities. Local government youth workers need to be less constrained than they are at the moment so that they can provide locally focused responses to local issues. Youth workers in local government are often reminded that their client isn’t their community it is their councillors. This does place a clear line in the sand that youth workers must grapple with… especially when our profession believes that young people are our primary client.

Aaron Garth

Aaron Garth is the Executive Director of Ultimate Youth Worker. Aaron has worked as a youth worker in a number of settings including local church, street drug and alcohol outreach, family services, residential care, local government and youth homelessness since 2003. Aaron is a regular speaker at camps, retreats, & youth work training events and is a dedicated to seeing a more professional youth sector in Australia. Aaron is a graduate of RMIT University and an alumnus of their youth work program. He lives in Melbourne with his wife Jennifer & their daughters Hope, Zoe, Esther, Niamh and son Ezra.

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A sense of entitlement: youth work education in the 21st century.

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Over the past few months I have spoken with over a dozen youth work educators from throughout the world about the calibre of youth work students coming through there courses. These course range from one year to three years and have people from all walks of life coming in droves to study. But one thing seems to have united the student body more than anything… A sense that they are entitled to become youth workers!
 
A little over a decade ago I decided to become a youth worker. It was an audacious plan for a young bloke who had never finished high school or anything else he had put his hand to. I had a reverence for the profession and an academic fear of my lecturers. I would have heated discussions and difficult conversations but when the lecturers called an end to those conversations that was the end. When they told me something needed to be done I did it or I failed (and I did fail once). Above all I knew that youth work was a profession that expected the best and if we didn’t like it we could bugger off.
 
As you can see I stayed and made it out with a degree.
 
All the youth work educators I have spoken with have told me that there are some students who still hold the reverence for the profession and the educators however more than ever before there is a sense of entitlement in new students. They seem to believe that getting their qualification is a foregone conclusion and the teachers are just in the way of them entering the sector. This feeling has been reiterated by the numerous organisations I place students in to gain experience. The organisations are seeing lazy, unprofessional and generally unworthy people coming through. What has gone wrong?
 
Could it be that youth work is seen as an easy ride? That people see youth workers as those who cruise through with no need for excellence? Has the free market made youth work for the lowest bidder attractive to those with no hope and no reason to work? Or perhaps it is that youth work education which aims at the lowest common denominator has finally found it.
 
We are in trouble! We need to bring back a level of respect for our profession. We need to see excellence. We need quality over quantity. We need to be graduating youth workers who want to be in the field because they are passionate and qualified. We need youth workers with a reverence for the work.
 

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Aaron Garth

Aaron Garth is the Executive Director of Ultimate Youth Worker. Aaron has worked as a youth worker in a number of settings including local church, street drug and alcohol outreach, family services, residential care, local government and youth homelessness since 2003. Aaron is a regular speaker at camps, retreats, & youth work training events and is a dedicated to seeing a more professional youth sector in Australia. Aaron is a graduate of RMIT University and an alumnus of their youth work program. He lives in Melbourne with his wife Jennifer & their daughters Hope, Zoe, Esther, Niamh and son Ezra.

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Firm, Fair, Friendly but never Familiar: Boundaries in youth work.

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Over the years I have been asked hundreds of times about how to set boundaries in youth work. I have spoken to this issue in youth work classes from certificate to degree level. I have spoken on this in supervision session and in seminars. I have also written about it in this blog. Recently I was asked if there was one thing about boundaries that I would pass on to new youth workers what would it be.

 

One line

I had a mate who had done Sgt. training in the army and one of the roles of a Sgt. is to supervise other troops. In the training my friend was told that when commanding troops he needed to be “firm, fair , friendly but never familiar”. My friend once told me this and it had always stuck.
 
 
In youth work we are often trying to lead our young people through the difficult trials of adolescence. Sometimes we need to be firm on the boundaries of our role and their responsibilities. Youth work is all about social justice and as such we want to be as fair as possible when working with young people. Youth work is also a profession developed on friendship building skills. However, sometimes our clients see this friendliness as becoming friends with their youth worker. Which is why we can never become familiar with our young people.
 

One line sums up my ethic on youth work boundaries, “Be firm, fair, friendly but never familiar”.

Aaron Garth

Aaron Garth is the Executive Director of Ultimate Youth Worker. Aaron has worked as a youth worker in a number of settings including local church, street drug and alcohol outreach, family services, residential care, local government and youth homelessness since 2003. Aaron is a regular speaker at camps, retreats, & youth work training events and is a dedicated to seeing a more professional youth sector in Australia. Aaron is a graduate of RMIT University and an alumnus of their youth work program. He lives in Melbourne with his wife Jennifer & their daughters Hope, Zoe, Esther, Niamh and son Ezra.

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What makes a great youth worker?

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In one of our seminars we start by asking people to draw a picture of the ultimate youth worker. We ask them to write around the picture what make this youth worker ultimate. It is always interesting to see what is written and what the picture looks like. The picture is often of a hip, hoodie wearing young person (even if the picture was drawn by someone in their forties) with all the coolness anyone can muser. The words that are used to describe this youth worker are cool, rapport builder, knows the new music and did we mention they had to be cool.
 
For the most part the things that people place down are superfluous. They are not needed to be a great youth worker. In fact most great youth workers have little idea about the new music or could ever see themselves in the category of “cool”. What this shows is that many youth workers have brought into the popular rhetoric as to what a youth worker looks like and is. The biggest issue for me and my staff is that so many youth workers do not speak about their values!
 
When we speak to truly great youth workers and ask them this question they spruik values such as social justice, participation, human dignity, self determination and human rights. We ask them what an ultimate youth worker looks like and they paint a picture of any person walking down the street. Old, young, black, white, qualified, unqualified it doesn’t matter.
 
A strong understanding of the values base which you bring to the profession of youth work is key to the ongoing effectiveness of your work.
 
What values do you bring?
 

Aaron Garth

Aaron Garth is the Executive Director of Ultimate Youth Worker. Aaron has worked as a youth worker in a number of settings including local church, street drug and alcohol outreach, family services, residential care, local government and youth homelessness since 2003. Aaron is a regular speaker at camps, retreats, & youth work training events and is a dedicated to seeing a more professional youth sector in Australia. Aaron is a graduate of RMIT University and an alumnus of their youth work program. He lives in Melbourne with his wife Jennifer & their daughters Hope, Zoe, Esther, Niamh and son Ezra.

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Youth work change makers: rebellion or resurrection

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Youth work is changing rapidly. Many of the changes are coming to the fore because of issues which have haunted an under qualified, under supported and minimally accountable workforce. Unfortunately the way the issues are being dealt with is with a firm hand with an iron grasp. We are setting the barrier to entry in our fledgling professional associations as high as possible. We are requiring more in every youth work position description to show how good we are and we are using highly regulated professions as a template for our own.
 
Youth work has also seen a number of people who have said that this is not good enough. However, these voices are being shouted down in a torrent of violent opposition as rebellious to the cause of professionalism. Youth work is a profession which thrives under scrutiny and leads in innovation. Why would we want to lose our innovation to fall in line with groups like nurses and social workers???

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. Albert Einstein

Youth work needs more great spirits and canny outlaws to keep it from becoming just another form of toothless neoliberal social service experiment. We need to resurrect the passion and talent that youth work has historically been known for and harness it for the future. There will be some who see it as holding the profession back… but these are just mediocre minds.
 

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Aaron Garth

Aaron Garth is the Executive Director of Ultimate Youth Worker. Aaron has worked as a youth worker in a number of settings including local church, street drug and alcohol outreach, family services, residential care, local government and youth homelessness since 2003. Aaron is a regular speaker at camps, retreats, & youth work training events and is a dedicated to seeing a more professional youth sector in Australia. Aaron is a graduate of RMIT University and an alumnus of their youth work program. He lives in Melbourne with his wife Jennifer & their daughters Hope, Zoe, Esther, Niamh and son Ezra.

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