< The following is a short article I wrote that was published in Youth Work Now Magazine (A supplement of Children & Young People Now) this week. In addition to the print copy, it can be found on the CYPNow website here.

There is a balance to effective youth work
During the last school holidays, I was challenged about my face-to-face work with young people.
On a particularly sunny day, I decided to walk to an appointment rather than take the car. My route took me past a local park and a couple of young lads called my name. They were regulars at the youth club and after a short conversation with them and their plans for the holidays, I moved on.

A minute later, I saw another young person walking the other way. I used to work with this individual and hadn’t seen him around for some months. We got chatting and I learned about his attempts to find work and some job opportunities he had coming up. This led me to offer some help by writing a reference for him, and we arranged to meet up later in the week. As a consequence, I was late for my meeting.

Small incidents like these continued to occur throughout the holidays, and enabled me to have more meaningful face-to-face contact with young people than I would do normally. Reflecting on these encounters, I have been reminded of how much I enjoy youth work when there is no agenda that I have to achieve and no other pressures competing for my attention. It is a joy to be fully “present” with young people, able to listen to their views and trusting in the art of conversation.

But perhaps this is too idealistic. On a usual week, I run or oversee a number of youth projects. With a strong team, these sessions are generally run well but are very busy. It is rare that I get the opportunity to have more than short, interrupted banter with those that attend. The rest of my time is spent preparing for, and recording, what I do when I am with the young people from session plans, meetings and staff supervision to training and logsheets. These are important.

So perhaps it is a question of balance. For most workers there is a tension between having to do the essential managerial tasks and simply spending time with young people. Some ignore the paperwork in order to be with young people, while others like myself lean too far the other way and lose the essential interaction. We need to work hard to keep a healthy balance.

My recent spontaneous encounters have forced me to address my imbalance and make an effort to pull myself away from the office more frequently to meet with young people. I also try to leave enough time so I’m not late for meetings.