Youth Work

Our youth work team supports young people using a variety of different methodologies. One key activity is ‘Detached’ work, in which teams of two youth workers walk around the neighbourhood engaging with young people out on the street and in the local parks. We work with them around any issues, thoughts, ideas they may need support with. A part of this work also involves signposting young people onto other services. The benefits of engaging with these young people on their ‘own territory’ are that we are able to make contact and build relationships with individuals who do not always access more ‘mainstream’ youth provision. This kind of regular contact in the long term allows us to empower and support them to have their voices heard within the wider community setting.

Another method in which the Youth Team supports young people is by empowering them to plan and establish their own groups and projects, with the longer term aim of these groups becoming self supporting. The Youth Team also supports young people to plan and deliver Holiday Activities and annual residential trips.

What is Youth Work?

All youth work delivered by the Charity follows the community development ethos. The fundamental aim of our youth work delivery is to provide the following:

• Personal and Social Education: helping young people in making informed and constructive choices about their personal well-being regarding health, education and training, employment, recreation and legal issues as well as making and maintaining positive personal relationships.
• Participation and Empowerment: good youth work practice puts young people at the centre of its programmes - young people voluntarily participate in the planning and direction of the programmes as decision makers as well as participants. It encourages young people's development of critical faculties and promotes the confidence with which to take control of their own lives - at local, community, City, national and international levels.
• Equality of Opportunity: youth workers are expected to challenge oppression and inequality as well as encouraging young people to do the same
• Voluntary Engagement: the Charity provides a range of programmes which young people can engage with voluntarily. These programmes offer a range of opportunities and challenging experiences in the company of their peers and the local community. The work supports a successful transition into adulthood.

What we do

We deliver and support a wide range of projects and activities for, and with, young people and work in partnership with many different organisations. At the heart of all our work is the needs of the young people in our community, and we strongly believe that it is the young people themselves who are best placed to identify the kinds of activities which will best meet their needs. Some of the successful projects which have been delivered over the last few years include:

• Peer music project: We’ve supported the ‘Ustudios’ Music project to work with a number of young people across Hangleton & Knoll to produce music, write lyrics, produce CDs and work towards live performance. You can listen to some of their work on their MySpace page
• Health and Mind Group: This is a group of 5 young people whose aim is to learn about different health issues that affect young people living in Hangleton & Knoll and to do something about it! One major achievement of this group was identifying that bullying was a major concern for many young people in the community. To help address this problem they attended some mental health awareness training and put together some peer education session around bullying. These sessions were delivered to 90 other young people in a local school.
• Knoll Clear-up Day: This is an example of how we support young people to get involved with wider community activity, and demonstrates the benefits of partnership working. The idea of cleaning up and improving the local area was received enthusiastically by all the young people involved and as a result the event was extremely successful and well attended with over 50 participants litter picking, removing stones and weeding.

For more information about our achievements over the last year, you can downl oad our Project Achievements document.

For further examples, or for more information about what we do contact our youth work team.