Hi, my name is Jon! I thought I’d better introduce myself as it’s been a while since I posted anything on this blog. Sorry about that. As planned, I took the summer off from blogging and got stuck into the various holiday activities that we run in the community. We did two playschemes back-to-back with [...]
After a few years of trying and failing to post items on this blog during the summer, I’m giving up in advance and letting you know that this blog is taking a summer break! I’ve got a great deal to keep me occupied, so will resume invading your feed readers and inboxes at the beginning [...]
Just over 2 years ago I completed my degree in Informal & Community Education. The final dissertation for my studies evolved somewhat from its initial idea and ended up with the title ‘Outcomes in Youth Work: the problem of product’. Here’s the synopsis: This project aims to explore the recent rise in outcome-driven youth work [...]
Everyone makes mistakes, and when it comes to my youth work I’ve made some clangers! Hopefully by reproducing them here, it may give you a bit of a laugh and help you to avoid doing the same thing. Mistake #9: Not backing up my team This is something that’s happened quite recently and has been [...]
Recently I’ve been having a hard time deciding how best to deal with people through Facebook. I know there are a myriad of issues regarding engaging young people in a digital space (which I’ve written about before and posted guidance on), but it can be a useful and effective medium for youth work. The problem I have been [...]
Over the years I have been doing youth work, I have had the privilege of connecting with a many other workers doing a wide variety of excellent things! I have asked a few of these individuals to write about their experiences of working with young people in their particular context. This post is written by [...]
The following is an assembly plan that I wrote for schoolswork.co.uk and was published in Youthwork Magazine in the August 2010 Issue. Back To School Assembly The following set of activities are adaptable ideas for use in an assembly at the beginning of the new school year. The overall theme is on having a positive [...]
A number of weeks ago, a conversation started between youth workers on twitter about finding funding to help support the work they do. I was able to share a few links to websites that I have used in the past, and I thought these links might be of use to others too. As a caveat [...]
On Monday I presented at the Youth & Policy Young People and Faith conference. It proved to be a really interesting experience with time and space for debating the nature of faith from a variety of traditions and how it applies to youth work practice. I’ve come away with much food for thought! I had been [...]
Everyone makes mistakes, and when it comes to my youth work I’ve made some clangers! Hopefully by reproducing them here, it may give you a bit of a laugh and help you to avoid doing the same thing. Mistake #8: Not believing in myself This may seem a strange topic to follow on from Mistake [...]
