Over the course of my studies I have completed close on 200 days of field placement. As a youth work student this consisted of a 30 day and a 35 day direct service provision placement. I worked with some amazing youth work practitioners and I worked with some really poor ones. I got coffee and photocopied […]
I am writing this while sitting in a session at the National Youth Ministry Convention in Tweed Heads on the usually sunny Gold Coast. It is always a real blessing to get together with some really committed youth ministers who want to see their young people become the best they can be. Last night over […]
We’ve been asked a fair bit over the last month what our stance is on mental health. There seems to be two camps growing up in the youth sector. Those who see us as generalist youth workers who do not need to know about mental health except that we should refer on to more qualified […]
Youth work research has come a long way over the past decade or so. We have gone from a profession that was grappling with how we used others knowledge in our practice to one that was seriously beginning to develop our own knowledge base. We have gone from having a few key researchers to a […]
Family Violence is rampant in Australia There is not a youth worker amongst us that has not had to deal with the scourge of family violence. Whether directly through work with or referrals to child protection or indirectly from the aftermath of the abuse we often deal with young people in the midst of their […]
Today I took a bunch of youth work students on a tour of the Melbourne Children’s Court. The Children’s Court of Victoria is a specialist court with two divisions dealing with cases involving children and young people. The Family Division hears applications relating to the protection and care of children and young persons at risk, and applications for intervention orders. The Criminal Division hears matters relating to criminal offending by […]
We have had hundreds of individual clients since our inception in 2012. They are the lifeblood of our business. The individuals who are after supervision and support. While we can’t name them all here we want to acknowledge that if it wasn’t for them wanting to become better workers, for the sake of their clients […]
I had a discussion with a couple of students the other day which is a regular occurrence in my experience. The students ask some variation of “what is more important for gaining employment, experience or qualifications?” It is always a question on new graduate minds as they lack experience. But it is one of the […]
All to often we are judged by our pasts. Most often by the decisions we have made which went awry. We look behind us at those decisions and we are gripped with regrets. We wonder what we were thinking! We look at our friends, our families, our education, our …. we wonder if they were […]
Greatness in something small. In youth work we are going through our own adolescent storm and stress. We are pushing to have the prestige that comes with the title ‘profession‘. We are storming against other professions, within our own industry and with our colleagues. We are all aware of how great the step towards professionalising is, […]