Been sent through a couple of requests/press releases in the last few days. One is from Barnardos re. them rerunning their ‘Hunting’ film:

Although the content of our Break the Cycle advert is hard hitting, we want people to recognise that for some children this is a harsh reality and that without suitable and earlier intervention this cycle will keep repeating itself.

We thought you might be interested to know we are now rerunning the ad and would like to gauge your reaction to some of the information we are releasing with it.

The real costs of child custody:
If the Government invested in these troubled children much earlier it could cut youth crime and save the taxpayer millions.

I won’t repeat my thoughts as they haven’t changed since they originally ran the ad, here’s some comments via facebook though expressing thoughts from others.

The other request is for a promotion of a book by John Muncie ‘Youth and Crime”. I haven’t read it so can’t really comment but apparently in it “Muncie suggests that to understand youth crime, we must understand the adult obsession with youth behaviour. The book looks at a number of visual case-studies, looking at the media’s portrayal of young people. It notes the impact articles have made, such as red top headlines like “scourge of feral youngsters.””

There’s a slideshow to go with the book launch with some interesting stats on slide 15

Its difficult to make the link between the ‘obsession with youth behaviour’ from those few slides so I guess you need to read the book to discover how that argument works.

Tweet This Post 

A few films from recent work with groups discussing local community issues in their area:

Tweet This Post 

A quick pointer to the Digital Open competition for young people aged 17 and under anywhere in the world to show off how they’ve used technology to benefit others.

Full details on their website

and below is their promo film explaining what its all about. Entries can be submitted until the 15th August so plenty of time to get something together with young people you’re working with if they don’t already have something (could make a nice summer project).

Tweet This Post 

Gordon Brown writing in the News of the World today says:

“It is my ambition to create a Britain in which there is a clear expectation that all young people will undertake some service to their community, and where community service will become a normal part of growing up.

That would mean young people being expected to contribute at least 50 hours of community service by the the age of 19. This will build on the platform provided by citizenship classes in schools.”

There was talk of something like this months before Gordon Brown became Prime Minister and I expressed my thoughts some months back that volunteering is not volunteering when done for reward or compulsion.

Presumably whoever it is thats advising the Government on these things feels the current volunteering schemes are failing if they now feel the need to have to force young people to “volunteer”. He doesn’t actually call it volunteering now, instead its ‘community service’ (that thing we normally associate with criminals).

I’m not sure what to make of the idea – obviously I’m in favour of encouraging young people to volunteer in their local communities and have been doing so for over 10 years now, but why its felt there’s a need to enforce this upon young people rather than support and encourage them to do so freely ie. genuine volunteering I don’t understand – other than that its for political motive rather than a genuine interest in supporting young poeple to thrive in society, which rightly or wrongly is how it comes across.

Tweet This Post 

Kondwani has reported on various things going on with the YoMo in Malawi project and also sent over some photos on the memory card from the camera we gave him last year. I’ve now bought him another as at the moment he’s been unable to take pictures while the  card travels between Malawi and the UK!

We sent over some funding towards children’s school fees last month. In addition to paying school fees:

• Shoes, schoolbags, exercise books, rulers and pens have been purchased for children attending school
• Volunteers have been running workshops in schools to raise awareness about HIV under the name of YOAAM (YoMo Against Aids in Malawi)
• A new volunteer has joined the project
• Some plastic sheeting was purchased to repair the leaking roof of an orphan girl
• Food has been purchased for orphan children

In the photos you can see Read the rest of this entry »

Tweet This Post 

There’s a lengthy discussion on the CYPNow site provoked by the topic “Participation is too bland to be meaningful“. A recent comment by Khadeem Rashid is interesting:

“if I’m quite frank I don’t think Hear By Rights is an appropriate measure, Young people in school cant mark their own tests, so why should adults, Myself and my team of young advisors actually carried out a evaluation report on our local high school around community cohesion and what we found was where OFSTED the independent body found them to be outstanding for their work with Building Schools For The Future, we found them to be poor”

Which got me thinking wouldn’t it be interesting if OFSTED inspections had to include an inspection by a young person? I gather current inspections should include the inspector seeking to gather the viewpoints of children/young people but it looks very much that the emphasis is on professionals inspecting professionals.

What if instead inspections included a ‘young inspector’ (possibly from a nearby school/youth centre) ‘inspecting’ the young people too? (and adults of course) The aim being to shift the emphasis towards including that young people are an important aspect in the learning/youth work process too. I would imagine the benefits of this wouldn’t just apply to the inspections as those young people involved could return to their own schools/clubs and report back on the things they’ve seen that worked or not and suggest how they could be adapted in their own establishment.

I can’t think of any argument against doing this other than that perhaps OFSTED feel they already cover the young persons perspective adequately. As an aside on the OFSTED site theres an online survey that under 19’s can use to feedback on the OFSTED process (its crap! – is there any benefit to asking “we do this good thing – do you think its good?!”).

If you’re familiar with OFSTED inspections it would be interesting to hear thoughts.

Tweet This Post 

Tony Taylor has set up a blog to promote a campaign called “In Defence of Youth Work”.  You can see details of what the campaign is about in this post.

Essentially the campaign looks at developments in the youth work sector over the past thirty years and questions the movement away from what Tony describes as the ‘cornerstones of youth work’. If you’re in agreement with the campaign you can ’sign up’ to indicate your support and there’s a growing list of people already signed up that you can view here.

As yet I haven’t signed up, partly because I’m not a practising youth worker, but mostly because I think my own position is somewhere in between. From the work we’ve done with youth groups across different areas of the UK something that has always stood out is the lack of consistency in the services and style available to young people. So while I agree very much with the need for locally driven approaches I also see the need to try to ensure that young people are able to access good quality youth provision wherever they are, and although I think the balance may currently be wrong I think there is a place for an outcomes based approach to working with young people and towards these things the sharing of information can be useful.

Regardless its good to see the web being used to promote the campaign and hopefully it will help towards building online youth work networks.

Tweet This Post 

I drafted this post a few weeks back but never finished it off ironically because I ran out of terms. Ironic because this morning I heard on the radio that the Local Government Association has a list of 200 words that it wants to ban local authorities from using. A link to the full list is at the bottom and for what its worth here is some of my original draft:

The Real World: Usually part of a sentence like “In the real world we do this”, “or [person] has no idea what its like in the real world”. What the real world actually looks like I’m not sure but it doesn’t seem to involve very many people with wealth or interesting theories. Now given the choice of living in the real world with miserable moaning people, or the unreal one where all the people with lots of money and crazy ideas live which do you prefer?

Say it to my face: Usually said by somebody very loud and usually before you really know them. They like it to be known that “if you’ve got something about me to say, say it to my face”. Which of course is really a measure aimed at preventing you from saying anything about them either in front of or behind their face. My experience of telling people who say this what I think about them to their face is they usually cry.

Blue Sky Thinking: I laughed when I first heard somebody say this (they looked bemused). I thought it was a term made up by comedians having a go at marketing and business types. Then in walked a new boss at my old place of work and we had meetings about ‘blue sky thinking’. I still hear it from time to time (I still smirk).

Empowerment: I thought this had gone away for a bit but it still pops up regularly. “We are going to empower the young people” – really? What ‘power’ is it that you’re transferring over to them? If I could choose a ‘power’ it would be invisibility, then I could hide my face when people speak this kind of crap!

and here’s a précis of the full list featuring the more common ones I’ve heard in youth work circles (and if I’m guilty of ever using them in brackets): Read the rest of this entry »

Tweet This Post 

« Older Entries