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

Posted on July 11, 2013May 26, 2020 by Aaron Garth

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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A small group of thoughtful, concerned youth workers changing the world.

Posted on June 24, 2013May 26, 2020 by Aaron Garth

A little over twelve months ago I was part of a small group of youth workers at their wits end with how the youth sector was progressing. We were concerned about the current curriculum for youth workers. We were concerned about the lack of good ongoing professional development for the sector. We were really concerned that there was a lack of mentors and solid professional supervision in youth work organisations. In short we were worried that youth work was becoming a lazy profession.

We discussed these issues many times and eventually we challenged each other to do something about it. most of us on that fateful night decided to stop whinging and to do something about the issues we saw. Some of us became youth work teachers in university, TAFE and private registered training organisations. Some of us began internal change in our own organisations. Some of us embarked on the development of the Ultimate Youth Worker organisation.

As I have embarked on the journey that has been the Ultimate Youth Worker I have found that there are a number of thoughtful, concerned youth workers changing the world. We are all coming at the issues in the youth sector from slightly different perspectives and using different ways of communicating but we all want to see youth work become more professional, more caring of our young people and more supportive of staff.

There are a number of canny outlaws in the youth work sector at the moment who we have been supported by and who we have great respect for. We have been phenomenally supported by Shae and Stephen Pepper of www.youthworkinit.com in the USA, they have promoted our blog and allowed us the honour of posting on theirs. But in their own right they promote best practice through knowledge sharing and support the sector through resource development. We have also been supported by an awesome youth minister from South Africa in Neels Redelinghuys. Neels runs a youth ministry in Bloemfontein, South Africa and a great blog and twitter account and has promoted pretty much everything we have said for the last six months (we wonder if he isn’t angling for a job).

These are just a small group of thoughtful, concerned youth workers changing the world, and as once was said:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has. —Margaret Mead

Aaron Garth

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Guest post on youthsectorblog.

Posted on June 22, 2013August 4, 2014 by Aaron Garth

Our guest post is being published on the collaborative blog youthsectorblog.wordpress.com today – it’s a frank discussion on the lack of mental health training given to youth workers in the current youth work curriculum. Feel free to post in the comments about how witty, insightful and amazing it is!!!

If you’ve come to Ultimate Youth Worker after already reading the post on youthsectorblog.wordpress.com – WELCOME!!! We hope you found it witty, insightful and amazing too!

We’re really glad you’ve come to check us out. Here’s a quick guide to us as a company:

Our Blog

You should already be on our blog page, so you can scroll down and read some of our recent posts. To see older posts, there are a few ways of doing this:

Click on “older posts” at the bottom of this page
Click on one of the categories on the right hand side of the page to read specific types of posts (e.g. professional identity, youth work, self care etc)
Use the “blog archive” on the right

Our Website

We are currently developing a website to showcase what we believe and what we do! Check us out

Connect with us!

We’d love to connect with you in the following ways:

Subscribe to receive our posts via email (you can do it on the right hand side of this post) – you’ll receive one email a week with that week’s post(s). Don’t worry, we’ll never spam you or sell your details.
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If you haven’t yet, sign up for our newsletter to find out all the goings on at Ultimate Youth Worker. (Sign up here)

Once again, thanks for visiting Ultimate Youth Worker! We hope you find some useful stuff on our blog. If you know any youth workers or youth pastors, we’d love for you to tell them about us – each week we provide a new post so keep on coming for more thoughts on youth work.

Aaron Garth

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Calendar management for the youth work professional.

Posted on June 20, 2013May 26, 2020 by Aaron Garth

Here is a little something that doesn’t get taught in school but will change your way of working forever. I was listening to a podcast a while ago and this changed my life. There were a number of casts which speak about calendar management which we will summarise here.

Family first

The most important things should be on our calendar first. As such we agree with the guys at manager-tools.com that this should be family. There is no such thing as work life balance, family just comes first. If your kids have a doctors appointment or its your wedding anniversary these things should be first in your calendar.

Schedule time for email

Most of us are bombarded by email (Just today I had over one hundred emails). Many of us have the pop up toast enabled to tell us when a new mail arrives…get rid of it. Schedule two times a day to check email. I have 10:30-11:00 and 15:30-16:00 set on my calendar every workday to check email. If we don’t schedule our email it will take us over and take our focus off the things that really matter.

Strategic objectives (first thing in the morning)

Whether you are a case manager or a program worker you have a number of strategic objectives which need to be addressed each week. If you spend the most productive part of your day focusing on your strategic objectives then you know you will be getting the best out of your time.

Network building lunch

Once a week you want to be purposefully building your network. We all have to eat so why not combine eating lunch with developing your network. Just invite a potential network to lunch and Bob’s your uncle.

Get rid of free time.

In pretty much every calendar I have ever seen there are huge swathes of unassigned time. Everyone I come across tells me how busy they are but if you look at their calendar you would be very confused. We put our tasks on the calendar eg. meetings and client time but we do not put time for things such as travel, strategic objectives or checking emails. If your calendar has a heap of free time you should fill it with strategic priorities.

If you subscribe to these few ideas about your calendar you will find that your days seem less chaotic and your work time more productive. For more on these ideas we recommend “Getting things done” by David Allen and the “The Effective Executive” by Peter Drucker.

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Aaron Garth

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What is youth work without innovation and risk?

Posted on June 17, 2013May 26, 2020 by Aaron Garth

As a youth worker in the current neo-liberal regime we are told to play it safe, cover your arse and don’t do anything that could get you in trouble. We are living in a world of risk aversion! We see our young people as always at risk. We are at risk of losing our job. Our organisation is at risk of losing funding. There are risks everywhere and it is our job to minimise these risks.

When I began as a youth worker camps and daytrips were a staple of almost every youth service. A bit of a wrestle at a Friday night youth group wasn’t unheard of. Leaving a male youth worker alone with a group of young people was seen as ok. I remember going on a snow camp where the campsite we were staying at unexpectedly ended up with a mud pit after a torrential downpour. That mud pit ended up as our very own wrestling ring and young people and leaders alike wrestled to their hearts content and washed it off with a dip in the local dam.

In our current risk averse way of doing things we are at-risk of doing nothing to support our young people lest we end up getting in trouble. Its a vicious cycle. Youth work was innovative and ahead of the curve. Today it seems sterile and unimpressive. Aside from a few canny outlaws the whole service sector is becoming bland.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

– Mark Twain

Youth workers are innovators! We improvise, adapt and overcome. We have big ideas and some of them require risk. Calculated risks can bring great rewards. I don’t want any youth worker I work with to get twenty years into their career only to look back and believe they haven’t achieved. I want explorers. I want dreamers and I want discoveries. We are in one of the most exciting times known to the human race and if our work is bland we have no one but ourselves to blame. Make your work exciting!

Aaron Garth

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Bring a pen and paper!!!

Posted on June 13, 2013May 26, 2020 by Aaron Garth

A short one today! Over the last couple of weeks I have been working with a number of student youth workers helping them with their field placements. One of the most frustrating things tat I have seen in these new recruits to the sector is something which has become more prevalent over the last decade. They don’t take notes!!!

It is really hard to take notes when you don’t have a pen and something to write on. Some say they can do it on their phone or Ipad, but the reality is that there is no substitute for pen and paper.

When I was a new member of the working class a mentor of mine said to me that I should take pen and paper into every meeting I ever have. Write everything down he told me. Your memory is not as good as you think it is he said. He was right!

The one piece of advice I give my students and many of those that we supervise is take a pen and paper every where. Write everything down. You never know what you will need to remember!

Aaron Garth

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Youth worker education: The time for change is nigh.

Posted on June 11, 2013May 26, 2020 by Aaron Garth

A while ago we wrote on what post-qualifying education might look like for the youth sector. We had a number of people agree and disagree with our thoughts but the one thing that we kept coming back to was the current state of youth worker education. Our sticking point in these discussions was the lack of practical placement in current education.

In a recent survey of its members the Youth Workers Association in Victoria came to the belief that no more than 30% of a youth work course should be undertaken “on the job”. The reality of the average youth work degree is that it is more like 15%. The issue that we see is that youth worker education is becoming an almost purely theoretical endeavour. When the core of our work is developing relationships can this truly be taught through theory alone???

Recently I was chatting with a friend who is completing a degree in tourism and marketing and he was surprised to hear that we did not need to complete an industry year. In his course they complete two years of study, then an industry year, and return to complete their final year. This not only leads students to gain a practical understanding of their field, but also provides links to employment.

As a teacher in the field education of youth workers and a former employer I have noticed a severe lack of industry knowledge and practical skills in students and graduates of youth work courses. In our attempt to make youth work a theoretically sound profession we are losing much of the practice skill development. We are turning out a great number of theoretical practitioners but rare is the great practitioner.

We don’t need less practical placement in youth work education, we need more! You can’t learn youth work from a book…it must be learnt through doing it. Sixty-five days of placement in a couple of youth services is not nearly enough for students to gain a depth of understanding in youth work practice. We believe that the model of an industry year is a good starting point however to make it a worthwhile learning experience there must be opportunities to critically reflect for both student and organisation. Mentoring of new students is a possible answer to this conundrum. Perhaps universities could provide regular seminars on new research as a link between industry and academia.

The point is students need to have a stronger link to industry before they graduate.

Aaron Garth

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Mental State Exam for youth workers: Insight and Judgement

Posted on June 6, 2013May 26, 2020 by Aaron Garth

We are finally here our series on mental state exams is in its last week. Over the past eight weeks we have built an understanding of the core components of a mental state exam so that we can support our young people as best we can. This week I was speaking with a youth worker in one of Victoria’s largest Christian denominations about a mental health conference he was at. I was reminded about how important it is for all youth workers to have a strong understanding of mental health. So far we have discussed how a young persons appearance, behaviour, speech and language, mood and affect, thought process and content, their perceptions and how their cognition can provide indicators as to their mental state. Today we discuss how a young persons insight and judgement can provide insight into their current mental health status.

Insight

A young persons insight into their own mental health and possible treatment options is key to the extent to which effective support can be provided. The young persons understanding of his or her mental illness is evaluated by exploring their explanation of the problem, and their understanding of the potential treatment options. The three main areas in which we need to be aware when assessing a young persons insight: recognition that they have a mental health issue, compliance with a treatment plan, and the ability to describe unusual mental events (such as delusions and hallucinations) as abnormal.

Insight is assessed on a continuum and therefore youth workers should not describe it as simply present or absent, but should descriptively assess the young persons ability. Impaired insight is characteristic of disorders such as psychosis and dementia, and is an important consideration in the development of treatment plans and in assessing the capacity of a young person to consent to treatment.

Mental health issues have become more frequently reported and diagnosed however the ability for many people including young people to accept that they have a mental health issue is still a concern. Insight is linked closely to cultural, religious and societal norms and these things should be considered while supporting a young person.

Judgment

When we are observing judgment it refers to the young persons ability to make reasonable, sound and responsible decisions. Contemporary use of this in a mental state exam asks us to inquire about how the young person has responded or would respond to real-life challenges and contingencies; for example, ‘What would you do if your mother stated that she thought you were depressed?‘. In this form of questioning we are looking to see if the young person is able to respond in a way that shows insight into their situation and possible next steps.

Assessment of the young persons judgement would include amongst other areas the individual’s executive capacity in terms of impulsiveness, social cognition, self-awareness and planning ability. If the young person appears to be providing abnormal judgement it is not necessarily a link to a mental health issue as it is not part of any diagnosis. However, if there is an impairment in judgement it may be an issue of safety for the person and the community.

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Mental state exams are a skill that needs to be practiced and refined. The basic ideas that we have discussed over the past eight weeks are just that the basics. These tools will not make you a psychiatrist!!! If you believe that a young person is having some mental health struggles then you can use these tools to support your case.

Good luck. Use these tools wisely.

If you have any questions contact us.

Aaron Garth

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Do youth workers really provide justice for young people in youth justice?

Posted on June 5, 2013May 26, 2020 by Aaron Garth

One of the first options put forward to my youth work class for gainful employment was working in the youth justice system. I looked into it with keen enthusiasm as it was one of the areas I was interested in when I first joined the course. I began looking at the policies and practice standards required of the sector and was excited to see the focus on restorative practices. I read some journal articles and blog posts and began to ask some questions. Finally, I asked a few people who worked in the sector what it was really like and my whole worldview was thrown into a spin.

Many of the youth workers I spoke to felt like little more than jailers or parole officers. They felt that their role was to keep the young people from causing trouble to society. They mentioned that they got to use some youth work skills however it was minimal. The focus of their work seemed to me to be clearly in the ballpark of retribution not restoration.

I was downtrodden. The system seemed to be talking the talk but not walking the walk. I was put in contact with a number non government support agencies to see what else was happening and my view became brighter. Group conferencing, crime prevention, family mediation and mentoring became my landscape of hope. Perhaps the youth justice system wasn’t so bad.

A number of the youth workers that I met in the statutory youth justice system were what I now know as canny outlaws. Rallying against the system these youth workers spend time building relationships, helping to keep young people involved in treatment programs and providing much needed guidance. The main thing is that these youth workers practiced youth work.

If you are a youth worker in a youth justice system, you need to remember that your first duty is to the young people. You are not a police officer, parole officer or jailer. You are a youth worker. If you remember that then you will provide justice to these most troubled of young people.

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Aaron Garth

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