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Hi there. I’m Aaron Garth, Executive Director of Ultimate Youth Worker. If you’re new to the world of youth work, you have been doing it for years or you just want to become better at working with young people, this page is for you! It contains all the information you need to get up to speed with our philosophy quickly and confidently start your own adventure to become an Ultimate Youth Worker! By the way, sign up to our newsletter to get even more information and exclusive opportunities for the Ultimate Youth Worker Community by putting your details in the newsletter sign up.  

What is youth work?

We believe that if your primary client is a young person and they are you first priority, you are doing youth work. Whether your title says youth minister, teacher, nurse or youth worker doesn’t matter to us as much as supporting you to become the best you can be. We believe that as a service industry youth work needs to provide more training and support to youth workers and that qualifications and professional associations can provide an element of this.

Primarily, We believe that youth work is a vocation which provides the freedom for young people to enter into and withdraw from it as they so wish, without compulsion or sanction in the hope to encourage them to become the best they can be.

What makes an Ultimate Youth Worker?

An Ultimate Youth Worker is what we all strive to be when we start our career as a youth worker but due to a lack of support and professional development as well as the numerous external forces which grind us down; we often fail to become the Ultimate Youth Worker’s we planned to be.

We have created a set of pillars that we believe underpin great youth work practice. These pillars focus on micro and macro skills to provide quality practice and longevity in the field. While there have been hundreds of other ideas on what makes a a competent youth worker we stand by our focus on the development of the reflexive skill sets not the concrete skills of engagement and participation that others use. The pillars focus on the skills a youth worker needs to become agile leaders of the future.

They are:

  • Accountability
  • Reflective Practice
  • Deep Engagement
  • Behavioural Analysis
  • Youth Work Values
  • A Diverse Knowledge Base
  • Ongoing Professional Development

We believe that these Pillars provide a framework for youth workers to gain a depth and breadth of practice skills whilst maintaining a personal life which promotes longevity in the field. It is constrictive enough while also providing youth workers the freedom to develop the breadth of their practice skills. leading us all to be more principled, passionate and professional youth workers.

Our favourite posts!

Over the years we have been asked to provide a guide to what we believer a couple of posts which sum up our philosophy of youth work. With that in mind we created our Pillars of Practice. However we have also expanded on our ideas and our thoughts on youth work as a whole through our ongoing blog posts. Here are a few of our recommended posts.

How do I become a Youth Worker: Start Here 

What do we mean by profession (Podcast)

Youth Work 2.0: A manifesto for the future.

Is the professionalisation of our sector destroying the very foundation of youth work?

Mental health should be a major part of a youth workers training.

Self care is an Occupational Health and Safety issue for youth workers!

Become more than you are right now: A youth work specialist

Ultimate Youth Worker PodcastSubscribe to our podcast

If you are looking for the best training and professional development for youth workers the subscribe to our weekly podcast.

We Appreciate You!

We just wanted to finish by saying that we are here for you. Not only as a guide while you begin or continue your youth work career but hopefully, also as a friend.

We do our best to respond to all emails (it’s getting tougher as this blog gains in popularity, but we will always do our best to respond!). If you have questions, thoughts, comments or queries we would love to hear from you, our amazing community.

Thank you so much for your support. If you’ve made it this far, I’d love for you to come say hi to us on our Facebook Page. We will definitely respond, and we look forward to meeting you!

Aaron Garth
Executive Director
Ultimate Youth Worker

P.S. If you have found this page helpful, please click on the ‘LIKE’ button on Facebook. Thanks

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