You cant try out youth work.
Youth work Let me be blunt about youth work. You can not try out youth work. Its not like playing a game of basketball and then giving up. Its not like trying to paint and deciding you are not able to do better than stick figures. Its not like cooking where if you stuff up […]
Youth Homelessness Matters: Because we don’t realise its happening
A thought on youth homelessness A former Victorian Premier when asked why he was closing down youth refuges for homeless young people replied with some stupidity that there is no need for young people to be homeless, they can always go home. Unfortunately, young people can’t always go home. There is family violence, mental health and […]
Seven things a manager needs to know about internal supervision?
You should be doing internal supervision As a youth worker who managed staff one of the areas I spent a lot of my time doing was internal supervision sessions. I saw that my staff needed the opportunity to discuss cases in depth, gain professional skills and a framework for organisational administrative procedural work. These staff […]
Leadership: Guest post drownthenoise.com
Leadership. For an extremely long time now people have understood the importance of having good leaders. This is emphasized by the amount leadership summits and courses that are regularly held around the globe. Furthermore, there are probably thousands (perhaps even more?) of books on some aspect of leadership published each year. Not even to mention […]
Youth workers: write, do or do both.
The most well known youth workers world wide are often one of two types of people. They are either the academics who write something worth reading or they are the youth worker who does something spectacular that others write about. The academics are trying to write something that the youth worker on the ground can […]
Why are you a youth worker?
This week sees the launch of National Youth Week here in Australia. It is about this time every year that I spend some time reflecting on why I am a youth worker. Seeing young people reach their full potential, many against great odds always makes me excited to see youth work at its best. When I […]
When your policy says nothing: Youth work practice wisdom
I have read more policy documents in the last month than I have read in the last two years. It has really hurt my head! Not because of the ammount of reading, but because of the lack of genuine content in the pages. A lot of the policy documents were very circular and led the […]
Developing a professional youth sector is harder than we first thought.
Today I was at the Annual General Meeting of the Youth Workers Association here in Victoria. It was a modest affair with about a dozen die hard youth workers attending of the over 400 members. The Association launched its objectives for the next three years and reading through it I pondered how the objectives would […]
Vicarious trauma and youth workers: a recipe for disaster.
Today I was reflecting on my career and the major traumatic events that I have seen. I was speaking to a class of school chaplains looking at trauma and abuse. As I was reflecting it dawned on me how many truly traumatised people I have come across. On average two suicides a year, more sexually abused young […]
Why we need youth mentoring programs.
Recently in my state many of the youth mentoring programs have had to come to terms with losing their funding. This has led to a number of programs closing up shop and leaving many young people in the lurch. The big issue is that these programs provide much more benefit than they cost. […]