CREATE. LEARN. BUILD. EARN.
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CREATE. LEARN. BUILD. EARN.
✴︎
CREATE. LEARN. BUILD. EARN.
✴︎
CREATE. LEARN. BUILD. EARN. ✴︎ CREATE. LEARN. BUILD. EARN. ✴︎ CREATE. LEARN. BUILD. EARN. ✴︎
Youth Workers
FLAARE‘s youth programmes have connected us with a wide network of Youth Workers and teams, all who support young people. Through this, it became clear that youth workers are those with the potential to inspire and support young people in community spaces. Youth workers are role models.
Time spent in youth spaces planted a suspicion – that Youth Workers are highly talented but that despite the vast value they bring to society, they are not invested in personally or professionally.
We ran focus groups which confirmed our theory. Generally, youth workers experience a lack of training, and skills building opportunities. We discovered that whilst youth workers provide so much for young people, there is very limited support to help them thrive in their own roles.
The problem with this?
Without investing in the heart of youth spaces and youth role models - young people themselves cannot thrive. Moreover, a recent study by the National Youth Agency (NYA) shows that the youth sector is finding it challenging to recruit young youth workers into the sector, which is increasingly needed by participants. This can be partly explained by YMCA (2022) estimates that there has been a 77% cut in real-terms local authority expenditure since 2010/11. Funding for youth services has been cut substantially in recent years. There is evidence that these funding cuts have led to increased inequalities in terms of access to youth services.
At the same time, the need for access to youth services has increased. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the same time the number of vulnerable young people (aged 8-19 years old) in England rose from an estimated 1 million up to 3 million. The number of young people experiencing difficulties with their mental health increased by 10% between 2017 and 2020 to a total of 1.1 million (over 1 in 4 of the population aged 11-16). Of these, 722,000 young people were experiencing more severe problems with their mental health in 2020 (an increase of 40% since 2017), The NYA study also reiterates what we found in our focus groups, that youth workers felt that other professionals working with young people didn’t understand the value of youth work. If youth workers feel that their job is not valued, how can they be ambitious and confident in their (essential!) role in supporting and empowering the next generation.
From these stark facts you can see how vital youth workers are, but how underserved they are due to cuts and high demand. We want to change this and enable youth workers on scale in the UK!
The solution?
For young people to be safe and successful, their role models must be inspired, ambitious, skilled and confident on their behalf.
What are we doing?
We have created a Youth Worker Training series that focuses on two tracks- Skills on the job and Career Aspiration. Our series offers 90-minute hybrid sessions and networking opportunities to youth teams across the country.
Why?
Because it is the Youth Worker community who are key to unlocking youth futures and setting young people up for success across communities, at scale.
Testimonials
“The session was very impactful and provided a safe space for our team to share their experiences and ideas for improving themselves and the service for our young people. “
Youth Practitioner
“I wish every member of my team could have been at today’s event…it wasn’t a training, it was more, it was networking, and opening us up to new perspectives.”
Haringey Council, Senior Youth Worker
MISSION
We run sessions online and in person. We love to host in inspiring spaces and are lucky to have some amazing corporate partners on the Flaare journey providing us with office space hosting, networking and workshop design expertise.
We are also happy to bring our workshops to where Youth Teams are- we like to see new Youth spaces and meet large Youth teams too!
We make our offerings bespoke for our audience. For example, we have partnered with the Peter Jones Foundation to develop an online series that gives every youth worker who is new to delivering one of their Peter Jones Youth programmes, access to personal and professional development. (check it out here)
Our in-person sessions are hosted in different office venues. Our most recent workshop was a Youth Project Management and Networking session with consultants from Avanade a digital transformation consultancy in central London. Youth teams gathered from different London Boroughs to share experiences, challenges and what was working well from them. They collaborated during a design workshop focused on delivery of a youth programmes, expertly guided by the Avanade team. The workshop concluded with extended networking and pizza, fuelling amazing conversations about collaboration and new projects between Youth teams and professionals.
This takes us neatly back the mission of Flaare’s youth worker training series – for young people to be safe and successful, their role models must be inspired, ambitious, skilled and confident on their behalf.
So, what is youth work?
The National Youth Work Curriculum defines youth work as a “distinct education process adapted across a variety of settings to support a young person’s personal, social and educational development” (National Youth Agency, 2020).
This support for a young person’s personal development complements formal education. Youth work is used to allow young people to:
Explore their values, beliefs, ideas and issues;
Enable them to develop their voice, influence and place in society; and/or
Facilitate the learning of a set of practical or technical skills/competencies that enable them to realise their full potential.
Youth work involve a whole range of activities (e.g. open access youth clubs; outdoor learning; creative activities, like theatre and dance; physical activities, like football). Some youth services also include a range of targeted early intervention support services which are particularly important to vulnerable or disadvantaged young people (e.g. knife crime diversion; teenage pregnancy prevention). Crucially, all youth work activities are carried out on young people’s terms.
It is important to note that youth work can sit alongside or as part of other services specifically for young people (such as schools). In addition, public services also serve young people and aim to achieve many of the same outcomes as youth services.
UK Youth estimates that around 4.4m young people regularly access youth work, based on ONS population estimates and engagement rates from Understanding Society. The National Youth Sector Census estimates that the sector employs around 70,000 people across around 8,500 organisations (National Youth Agency, 2021). In addition, there are approximately 180,000 volunteers who contribute to the sector (which is huge!). By supporting youth workers and teams across the UK, this trickles down and supports the 4.4m young people they interact with regularly, and as the demand from young people grows, as will the support that youth workers so vitally need to perform at their best and be aspirational for our next generations.
Join our mission!
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