A Practice Framework for Ultimate Youth Workers

Posted on January 2, 2024March 8, 2024 by Aaron Garth

A Practice Framework for Ultimate Youth Workers

In the field of youth work, where the challenges are as diverse as the young people themselves, the difference between good youth workers and Ultimate Youth Workers is abundantly clear. What makes an Ultimate Youth Worker? To navigate this intricate landscape successfully, youth work practitioners need more than just skills and experience – they require a practice framework for Ultimate Youth Workers. A framework that embodies much more than is taught in a Certificate IV or covered in a code of ethics. In this article, we explore the three pillars that form the bedrock of an Ultimate Youth Worker’s practice: Passionate, Principled, and Professional.

Passionate

In every amazing youth worker we know there is one thing that makes them stand out from the rest, passion. Youth work is so much more to them than just a job. To these people passion is the heartbeat of effective youth work. Any practice framework for Ultimate Youth Workers must include passion.

Ultimate Youth Workers are driven by an unwavering zeal for the support, well-being and development of young people. This passion fuels their commitment to making a positive impact, no matter the obstacles they face. Passion is what changes youth work from just a job to a calling. If you are just doing youth work for a pay check, you’re in the wrong business.

Passionate Youth Workers are not only empathetic listeners but also enthusiastic advocates for the potential within every young person. Their energy is infectious, creating an environment where trust and rapport can flourish. They have a core set of values that they live out in their every interactions. They show up again and again for the young people they serve building a continuity of care.

This pillar underscores the importance of fostering genuine connections, based on a set of shared values and proactive care. It is through passion that positive change becomes not just a goal but a reality.

Principled

Principled youth work is built on a foundation of integrity, ethical conduct, and a commitment to social justice. Ultimate Youth Workers adhere to a set of principles that guide their actions and decisions, ensuring that their work is not only effective but also morally sound. This pillar in our Any practice framework for Ultimate Youth Workers emphasizes the importance of a values-driven approach, which forms the bedrock of a great youth worker’s identity.

Principled Ultimate Youth Workers advocate for the rights and dignity of young people, challenging systemic injustices and promoting inclusivity. They operate with transparency and accountability, fostering a culture of trust and reliability. This commitment to principles ensures that youth work goes beyond mere intervention—it becomes a catalyst for positive social change.

Professional

The third pillar, professionalism, underscores the importance of a disciplined and competent approach to youth work. Professional youth work means having authority within the scope of our practice, based on an underly theoretical knowledge constructed from systematic research. Professional youth work means moving on from our vocational training mindset to an academic and intellectual pursuit. In short it means getting a degree and pursuing graduate qualifications.

Ultimate Youth Workers are committed to continuous learning and development, staying abreast of the latest research, methodologies, and best practices. Ongoing professional development based on a shared understanding of professional needs of the sector, our young people and the profession. Our Any practice framework for Ultimate Youth Workers highlights the need for a high level of competence and proficiency in working with young people, recognizing that professionalism enhances the credibility and impact of youth work as a profession.

Professional Youth Workers maintain clear boundaries and ethical standards, understanding the importance of creating a safe and secure environment for the young people they support. They engage in reflective practices, learning from both successes and challenges to refine their approach continually. This commitment to professionalism ensures that youth work is not just a job but a vocation—a calling that demands excellence and dedication.

The Interplay of the Pillars

The strength of an Ultimate Youth Worker lies in their seamless integration of these three pillars – Passionate, Principled, and Professional. Each pillar supports and reinforces the others, creating a robust and holistic framework for effective youth work. No one can stand alone, and even two won’t make you great. It is in bringing them all together that we see excellence.

Passion without principles can lead to well-intentioned but misguided actions. It is the principles that provide the ethical compass, ensuring that the passion is channelled into positive and responsible interventions. Conversely, professionalism without passion can result in a detached and clinical approach, missing the emotional connection that is often the catalyst for transformative change in young lives.

When these three pillars are in harmony, the Ultimate Youth Worker emerges as a dynamic and impactful force for positive change. Their passion fuels their commitment, their principles guide their actions, and their professionalism ensures a high standard of service delivery. This interplay creates a powerful synergy that not only benefits individual young people but contributes to the broader societal goal of nurturing a generation equipped to face the challenges of the future.

In the ever-evolving landscape of youth work, the Ultimate Youth Worker’s practice framework is a beacon of guidance and inspiration to our young people, our colleagues and the community. By embodying the pillars of Passionate, Principled, and Professional youth work practitioners can navigate the complexities of their role with resilience, empathy, and effectiveness. Together, these pillars form a solid foundation for a youth worker’s journey—a journey that is not just a profession but a calling, a commitment to shaping the future by investing in the potential of every young person they encounter.

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.

What will 2019 look like?

Posted on January 2, 2019January 6, 2019 by Aaron Garth

What will 2019 look like?

The most exciting part about looking to the future is you can make it anything you want. You dream a dream in time gone by… and then you look towards the amazing future you have created. The hard part is going out and creating it. You actually have to spend time and resources in the pursuit of your dream. At Ultimate Youth Worker we have a dream to see youth workers be the best they can possibly be, and 2019 is the year that our dreams and yours collide!

You keep telling us that the support you receive in the sector is limited at best, most of you have not had a proper supervision session in the last year. You have told us that the training you attend has little to do with youth work and if it does its stuff you already know. You tell us that when poop hits the fan and you need critical incident debriefing you end up talking to psychologists that don’t understand the youth sector or the work you do. In short you have told us that you don’t feel supported to do the job.

You have told us that you love the work you do. If you were better supported, trained and cared for youth work would be the perfect job.

We have heard you and we are the organisation who is looking to meet all your needs. In 2019 we are focusing in on the support you need to be the best youth worker you can be.

Supervision

Around 90% of youth workers do not get adequate support and debriefing for the work we do. At minimum that is a one hour supervision session once a month. A space where you get to talk about how you are going, the work you are struggling with and the steps you need to take to become a better professional.

In 2019 you will be able to get external supervision from youth workers with over a decade of experience and holding masters degrees. You asked for individual supervisors who are qualified and experienced and you got it. You can gain individual or group supervision to meet the needs you have as a youth worker.

Training

We have been to more than our fair share of “professional development” over the years and quite honestly we want our money back from most of it. Dull, uninteresting, topics based at those with no knowledge of the sector, outdated, and most of all… boring!!! We have spoken to many of the youth workers in our community and the first few years of your career appear to be the most challenging.

To that end we have created our ‘Tier One‘ training for youth workers in their first few years of youth work. Much of this training is aimed at areas youth workers tell us they need more support in, and is built on the idea that you could do it to compliment a degree program.

The current offerings for 2019 include:

Critical Incident Debriefing

There is a disappointing trend in the wider human services sector to leave critical incident debriefing to psychologists who have very little experience in the sector. While well meaning and highly qualified they don’t know youth work or the context youth workers work in. We have provided Critical Incident Debriefing for the last few years as a side to the main work of Ultimate Youth Worker. In 2018, we have been approached by a number of youth work organisations to provide debriefing for their youth workers. In 2019, we will provide this service as part of our core business of supporting youth workers.

Research

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Research is more important now in the youth and community services sector than ever before. Evidence based practice is here to stay and if you want to meet the challenges of this century and all its funding issues you need good research. Ultimate Youth Worker researchers come from a diversity of disciplinary backgrounds including social work, psychology, youth work and education. Our research approaches like our staff are diverse and complementary to the sector. The types of research and practice development we undertake have included:

Action research
Collaborative research
Development of models of best-practice
Evaluation
Face-to-face and online training modules
Implementation science
Population studies
Qualitative and quantitative studies
Youth participation

Our staff can help you with everything from literature reviews to major projects. Whatever your need contact us for a confidential discussion as to your requirements.

Podcast

The Ultimate Youth Worker Podcast is the leading youth work podcast on the internet. Expert interviews, mini trainings, and intimate behind-the-scenes secrets from our team of expert youth workers… all tied together by our mission to make EVERYTHING you listen to as actionable as possible. We guarantee that you will find this podcast the most helpful tool in your youth work toolkit.

In 2019 we will be reaching out around the world we bring together the most experienced practitioners, the most published academics and the most renowned policy makers to help us to gain a depth of wisdom that will make us all Ultimate Youth Workers. Bringing evidence based practices, journal articles, books and the best practical wisdom together to inform our interviews you get the most up to date thinking in the sector… all at the touch of your favourite podcast player.

Aaron Garth

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Surrender2018

Posted on March 29, 2018March 29, 2018 by Aaron Garth

Hey there amazing youth worker,

Thanks for listening to me speak today. I really appreciated finding out a bit about your course and where you hope to go in your careers. At Ultimate Youth Worker we want to see every youth worker become the best they can be. Youth work can be hard, but it can also be extremely rewarding. The journey can be a difficult one without the right support. Here are a few of our most used tools for you to use as you need.

Our Core Values Audit is a simple tool to help you begin to work through your values. As youth workers we need to have a good understanding of what makes us tick. Our young people will learn what ticks us off very quickly. If we know ourselves then we will be less likely to snap when they push our buttons.
This Skills Audit makes you think about your future. Have a look at a couple of job descriptions for the roles you would like to have in five years time. Use the audit to find out what you need to do to get the job you want.
Qualifications_Depth and Breath is a tool to help you map out your career needs. Knowing what qualifications you have and what you need to do the job you want give you a clear path for education.

Great website resources

YACVic YERP: This is one of the best resources for practically doing youth participation work done by a bunch of experts from Victoria.

Detached Youth Work – Learning from the Street: James Ballantyne is a youth worker in the north of England who is very much on the coal face of Christian Youth Work. James helps Christian youth ministers understand the nuance of doing detached youth work.

Get a book

If you haven’t joined our facebook community yet get on board. It is one of the largest and most active youth work groups on the internet.

Check out the Ultimate Youth Worker Podcast for the most up to date research, tools and practice wisdom from the youth sector. Subscribe and get a fortnightly cast straight to your iTunes account, and if you like it give us a good rating.

Take care,

Aaron Garth

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Reflective practice: Why we should journal.

Posted on August 20, 2012January 11, 2016 by Aaron Garth

The team at Ultimate Youth Worker are currently developing our “Model of Effective Youth Work Practice” which will guide how we work as youth workers and how we teach youth work to those in the industry. We believe that excellence mean being effective and innovative and as such we are creating a guide for the development of practice excellence. One of the pillars of successful youth work we hold to is that of reflective practice.

Reflective practice is by no means a new idea in the field but it is one that is not widely implemented. Reasons for this are wide and varied but are mostly end up being because people do not know how to do it or what it would look like. In university courses there is often discussion about being critically reflective and aware of your work however when a student becomes a staff member the critical thinking is left behind an ever growing wall of bureaucracy and paperwork. This often leads to frustration on the part of the staff member and in more extreme cases a complete break down in effective service delivery.

Now I hear some of you saying ‘yeah, but isn’t that what supervision is for?’, and quite a valid point you make. in a perfect world supervision would provide an opportunity for staff to reflect on their practice. However, the world is rarely ever perfect. Many of the youth workers we speak to rarely have a supervision session if any. Those that do have them often speak of them as robotic and machinistic, or as one youth worker told us ‘just a way for the organisation to tick another box to cover their butts‘. For the rare few there are times provided for them to think critically about their practice and its effect on them and their client and learn from their experience. We believe that critical reflection should not be a little bit tacked on to the end of a supervision session for the lucky few, but a whole of practice approach to every aspect of what we do!!!

Boud (2001) states, “Reflection involves taking the unprocessed, raw material of experience and engaging with it to make sense of what has occurred. It involves exploring often messy and confused events and focusing on the thoughts and emotions that accompany them. It can be undertaken as an informal personal activity for its own sake, or as part of a structured course“. Reflective practice comes in many shapes and formats and depending on your organisation, the resources available to you and your level of expertise this can look very different in one setting over another. Over the coming months we will discuss some of the ways individuals, organisations and the youth work sector as a whole can implement reflective practices into their daily structures. However, for today we will begin by looking at something every individual youth worker can do to develop their own reflective practice… Journaling.

When I was a young youth worker I completed an internship with a small organisation that trained youth workers to work in schools. One of the most interesting aspects of the internship (and the one I most struggled with) was a forced weekly journalling session. Some of my best reflections on where I was at as a youth worker, what I needed to work on and how I practiced came during this time. However, I struggled with the exercise because I was not given a reason to do it. I struggled because I was not given a format or template to do it. But most of all I struggled because critical reflection was not something that had been instilled in me as a youth worker either in practice or study.

Moon, in her 1999 article, states the following reasons why journaling helps in the process of learning from experience:

To deepen the quality of learning, in the form of critical thinking or developing a questioning attitude
To enable learners to understand their own learning process
To increase active involvement in learning and personal ownership of learning
To enhance professional practice or the professional self in practice
To enhance the personal valuing of the self towards self-empowerment
To enhance creativity by making better use of intuitive understanding
To free-up writing and the representation of learning
To provide an alternative ‘voice’ for those not good at expressing themselves
To foster reflective and creative interaction in a group

Journaling provides a great base for the individual worker to begin to develop their reflective practice. Here is one template i have come accross that has worked over the years to help me reflect on my practice.

Identify and describe the experience/issue/ decision/incident
Identify your strengths as a practitioner
Identify your feelings thoughts; values, feelings and thoughts of others involved
Identify external and internal factors; including structural/oppressive factors etc
Identify factors you have influence or control over and those you don’t ( do others?)
Identify knowledge used:
1. factual
2. theoretical
3. practice
Develop an action plan: what do I need to do first, second and third and so on

Impliment your action plan, then do it all over again.

Let us know how you go on facebook and twitter.

References

Boud, D. (2001). Using journal writing to enhance reflective practice. In English, L. M. and Gillen, M. A. (Eds.)Promoting Journal Writing in Adult Education. New Directions in Adult and Continuing Education No. 90. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 9-18.

Moon, J. (1999). Reflection in Learning and Professional Development. London: Kogan Page

Let us know how you go on facebook and twitter.

Aaron Garth

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What post-qualifying education might look like!!!

Posted on July 18, 2012August 4, 2014 by Aaron Garth

I have been thinking a lot lately about the need for ongoing professional development and post-qualifying education for youth workers. for us to be the best, the Ultimate Youth Worker’s, we must continue to learn and develop as we progress through our career. However, in Australia there is no requirement for a person who works with young people to hold a qualification, let alone attend professional development!!!

In Australia there is currently no national professional association and very few states have fledgling professional associations for youth workers. Currently, these associations have limited memberships and do not require their membership to have ongoing professional development to maintain their membership. My wife is a psychologist and as such is required to meet a level of ongoing professional development to maintain her registration with her professional association. Some of my mates are social workers and they too have to meet a level of ongoing professional development for registration. Why not youth workers???

One of the main difficulties is pitching the professional development to a sector that has such a wide range of qualifications. In Victoria over %50 of “Youth Workers” hold a Certificate IV (a one year TAFE qualification) or less. There is a smaller percentage who hold a Diploma (2 years) and an even smaller percentage who hold a degree (3 years) and an almost unmentionable number who hold post-graduate qualifications. What often happens is that training groups pitch their training at the lowest common denominator or bastardise their training to meet the needs of a select few… meeting the needs of only a small proportion of workers. In effect most professional development courses rehash knowledge from TAFE level courses which does not bode well for CONTINUING professional development.

Another reason is that it is easier to rehash old course material than to think outside the box and develop good ongoing training. There is a train of thought which states that if you have done your course and passed then you are competent and therefore do not need to learn other techniques and ideologies. The problem with this is that the profession stagnates. Imagine if doctors did that??? We would still be curing infection by chopping limbs off and alienating people with skin conditions like leprosy. We need fresh ideas thrown into the mix for the profession to grow and flourish. We need them for workers to gain a clear foundation for their practice.

But what would this continuing professional development look like???

First of all it means a minimum level of education for all Youth Workers. This is a contentious subject in Victoria as what would the minimum level be??? Many want a degree level qualification to be the minimum. However, those with TAFE qualifications are livid about the prospect of being excluded. However the idea of being professionals means stating that there is a group of people who can do a certain job and a group that can not. (see Jethro Sercombe Part 1 & Part 2).

Second, it means that Post-Qualifying education and continuing professional development must be more than rehashing old course material. We need researchers devoting themselves to the future of youth work. We need academics looking for the newest best practice theories to guide our practitioners. We need practitioners brave enough to challenge the status quo and say that we need to be better for the sake of our young people.

Finally, we need to develop a culture of excellence in the face of mounting Neo-Liberalism. When governments say it is better to have more people who are less qualified than having the best qualified workforce we need to say ‘Not good enough’. When employers skimp on professional development because their budgets are shrinking we need to say ‘Not good enough’. When our colleagues say to us that they won’t go to training because they don’t need it we need to say ‘Not good enough’. When professional development groups put forward substandard training at top dollar we need to say ‘Not good enough’. Expect more of our profession, our colleagues and ourselves! Do not settle for mediocre, it is not why you got into this work. Be the best you can be and expect it from others.

Youth work is an honourable profession. It requires passion and skills to be balanced for the best outcomes of our young people. I know you have passion, it is why you began the journey. Lets gain skills that will take youth work into the next century as a leading force in social services and community welfare.

Aaron Garth

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The importance of good professional supervision

Posted on July 3, 2012January 15, 2019 by Aaron Garth

Over the course of my career I have had over a dozen supervisors throughout half a dozen or so specialities. Some of these supervisors were Youth Workers, some Social Workers, some Pastors and some drug and alcohol workers. Their qualifications had ranged from Diploma level to Masters degrees and one had no formal welfare qualifications at all. Not an unknown factor to those of us in the youth sector.

In Australia there is no requirement for a supervisor to have a professional qualifications. As a Degree qualified Youth Worker and soon to be Masters qualified Social Worker I have never attended a class on supervision, i have never heard a lecture on what constitutes good supervision practice and i have never had a supervisor who had either. At best my supervisors had attended a 2 day course in supervision and at worse my supervisors had less than a year more experience in the field than i had. So if there are only a few courses for supervisors and most of these less than a week long, how do you become a good supervisor???

The best supervisors I have had came from both ends of the spectrum. One was a qualified Social Worker with over a decade of experience who regularly attended courses on supervision. The other was a Youth Worker who had no qualifications but was an avid reader of supervision texts and attended every professional development opportunity focussed on supervision. The skill set that both of these supervisors had in common was and eager appetite to better their own practice as supervisors and a great ability to listen. The styles they used were different, the theoretical focus wide and varied and the outcomes specific to the needs of myself and my clients.

Maidment & Beddoe (2012) believe that supervision must be placed at the core of professional development for staff, “We want to place supervision at the heart of professional development, which is career-long and where, via diverse learning activities, practitioners refine and augment their knowledge, develop skills, and undertake supervision to enhance critically reflective practice“.

Do your supervisors support your development? If not you might be in the market for an external supervisor! What ever your situation if you want longevity in the sector studies show that you need a good supervisor.

Apply for supervision today

Aaron Garth

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The need for audacious Ultimate Youth Workers

Posted on June 26, 2012January 10, 2018 by Aaron Garth

Over the past two days I have attended the Youth Affairs Council of Victoria (YACVIC) ConnectFor conference in Melbourne. During this time I was surrounded by many amazing youth workers who passed on knowledge and many researchers who called us to action. Most of all the young people, many of who had been in the child protection system, called us to CHANGE the sector for them.

Charles Leadbeater stated that we don’t need to give young people more education, but better and different education. He went on to say that we need more innovators… people who are bonkers and creative to change the system. He went on to state we need to stop doing things ‘to & for’ and start doing things ‘with & by’ young people in our practice. Finally he urged us to assume ambition & capability in young people.

Professor Mark Rose urged the Youth Workers to be AUDACIOUS if the face of overwhelming trends.he also urged us to not let political correctness get in the way of doing good work. finally he urged educators to provide high quality education as it is through education that people’s minds are opened to the future.

Dr Hilary Tierney discussed the state of the youth sector in Ireland with a focus on how it is working towards professionalisation. She spoke of how the Irish youth sector is legislated as a ‘Voluntary’ sector; meaning that young people volunteer to attend, adults volunteer to staff services and organisations are voluntarily managed and funded. The main gist of the presentation was that Ireland is struggling with all the same questions about professionalising that Australia and many other countries are. Amazing seminar!!!

After many years of work Mr Bill Scales AO presented the finding of the Vulnerable Youth Inquiry. He stated that a child born in Victoria has a 1 in 4 chance of being referred to Child Protection and that the economic cost of child abuse in Victoria is over $1.6 Billiion. He spoke of the need for an independent monitor for the vulnerable children in Victoria and how youth workers need to do their job WELL as it is critically important to the success of the sector.

Prof. Rob White spoke of the need for youth workers to be frontline warriors in times of change. He stated that the key attribute of a Youth Worker is their identity first and foremost as Youth Workers. He went on to say that the need for Youth Workers to be treated as whole people would reduce burnout with the need to continue professional development for longevity in the field.

It was today that the government announced that they were going to consult with the youth sector on the need to professionalise.

Finally, a group of young people asked us to BELIEVE in them. They asked us to be CONSISTENT and they asked us to be more EMOTIONALLY INTELLIGENT.

At Ultimate Youth Worker we believe that the sector is seeking a change. Youth Workers are seeking to be more than they have been and expecting their peers to be more than they had been taught in their courses. The winds of change are blowing, lets make the youth sector the most professional, emotionally intelligent and AUDACIOUS sector in Australia.

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Aaron Garth

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What extra standing will i have if Youth Workers professionalise?

Posted on March 25, 2010March 12, 2019 by Aaron Garth

I was recently chating with a bunch of social workers about their professional association and it became clear to me that even after all the work that has gone into the AASW as a professional association their membership still have the professional standing of a monkey with an organ grinder.

Why do I think this you may ask??? Basically because anyone can call themselves a social worker and there is nothing that they can do about it. For all intents and purposes the AASW is a registration board for all those social workers who want to be members. there is no requirement of them to be members and no legislative power to make it a requirement.

The difference in a professional association such as the APS, the Victorian Institute of Teachers or the Nurses Board of Victoria is that they are legislated and mandated by the Government and as such are able to “register” and “qualify” their membership. You cannot call yourself a Psychologist, Teacher or Registered Nurse if you are not one, and you can be held accountable by the law if you do so without their authority. It also means that you can be removed from practice if you are deemed to have broken the rules of the association.

If Youth Workers are to reach the level of PROFESSIONALS we need to take our campaign to the next level. Social workers are starting to move this way through the provision of Medicare provider numbers to those in their membership who qualify, however even this needs to go a step further. Members must be required to register with the association to practice.

This is the same for Youth Work. At the present anyone can call themselves a Youth Worker. Some of my best mates and closest colleagues are unqualified Youth Workers, however if we are to become a body of professional workers then we need to be required to register.

The only way a person can be required to register before practice is if they are legislated to do so. You don’t often see people practicing as a doctor without registration for long before they are caught and arrested. The same should be said for Youth Workers and Social Workers.

We need to advocate for this intervention if we are ever to be taken seriously as a profession. What extra standing will I have if Youth Workers professionalise? Little if any, because at the moment the current form of association in Victoria will render us little more than a club.

Aaron Garth

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