As the authors of this article, we consider that there is an urgent political and ethical imperative to rethink national youth work strategy. Indeed, at the recent Westminster  ‘Priorities for the creation of a National Youth Strategy’ event, the NYA speaker presenting the proposals for the new qualifications framework insisted that there was no intention in the framework to remove or downgrade professional training opportunities for youth workers, and that parity of esteem with other professions such as social work or teaching remains an essential goal for the sector. Other participants were quick to point out how the proposals, if implemented at the levels and detail given, actually erode professional conditions. We (the authors of this paper) implore our sector body, the NYA, to rethink its proposals to ensure it continues to provide strong advocacy, rather than undermine the fight for the protection and parity of youth work as a graduate profession alongside other professions that support young people and communities.

The NYA’s proposals to make youth and community work a level three qualifying profession risk justifying that it is not a form of practice that is equal in value to allied professions such as social work and formal education – and cementing it as a minimum wage profession. The NYA’s proposals for youth work are alarmingly similar to the under-valuing of childcare and nursery workers which has a similar staged framework of ‘level two plus’ qualifications – with most of the workforce being women from working class (and often minoritised) backgrounds on low pay and with low levels of investment in their further training. Very few are supported to obtain graduate level qualifications. As such, however well-intentioned, staged qualification routes tend to cement a low pay, low status culture for the young adults who choose to develop careers in supporting children and young people.

Limitations of the NYA’s consultation process

Overall, we question the effectiveness of the NYA’s consultation. The survey asked leading questions like ‘do you want more youth workers?’ that can be easily manipulated to support the suggested rationale for downgrading the profession. The tokenistic approach has been to present the proposals and invite limited feedback; it is unclear how consultation has or will provide any substantial change to the framework. There were only two HEI representatives included in the initial focus groups until the NYA were pushed (thanks to a members’ letter from PALYCW) to have a further discussion with us. Even then, our experience is that higher education stakeholders have been treated, at best, with a level of contempt and, at worse, as a threat to be managed – with high security around the online focus group that was set up for us eventually and some of our colleagues left in waiting rooms unable to gain access to the meeting. We have not yet heard how feedback from this consultation with us will lead to changes to the NYA’s final proposals.  

We question if the consultation has effectively engaged with our diverse range of students. Though the NYA asked us to help circulate their survey to them, there has not been any specific focus groups or outreach aimed at our students. Students on degree programmes are understandably unsettled by the move to review the qualifications framework. In a recent visit from an NYA representative to one of our HEIs in a diverse area of London, our students strongly questioned the NYA about what they are doing to move towards youth work being a protected profession like their colleagues in social work who they share modules with and will work closely with in their future careers supporting young people. They were not explicitly told it is, in fact, proposing the opposite. While the NYA may argue that their proposals make routes into youth work easier, our students do not want youth work to be downgraded to a minimum qualification, minimum wage profession or for the NYA to undo the work of their predecessors. The experience of our students and graduates is already one where they often struggle to gain the full professional respect of their colleagues in allied professions and the downgrading of the youth work qualification will exacerbate such inequality.

Pushing youth work out of the academy?

Moore (2005) wrote an article on the findings of research into the recruitment and retention of qualified youth workers, conducted with principal youth officers, youth workers and students in the Southeast of England. Many of the findings from the research remain as relevant two decades on, including the recognition that level 4 and 5 qualifications are not sufficient to cover content required to become a professionally qualified youth worker. The research is a reminder of why the campaign to secure youth work as a graduate profession was a significant milestone. Moore (2005) cautioned that whilst a graduate profession was a significant step forward, this had to be matched with ‘an even greater emphasis on raising the status of youth work’ if the shortage of qualified workers was to be addressed.  Herein lies the rub. The policy aspiration to grow the youth work workforce to work alongside young people to create the world they want to see will not be realised without strengthening the sector’s architecture. This has to be a long-term commitment that includes diverse community-based routes into youth work as a graduate profession and it also means reinvigorating JNC terms and conditions of employment. It means recognising the need for not just parity of esteem with allied professions – but also for the ability of graduate-level youth workers to articulate the value and distinctiveness of the work they do with young people to social workers, teachers and others working towards improved outcomes for young people. It does not mean a race to the bottom, to tinker with the qualification’s framework and de-professionalise the field.

The NYA proposals include that Further Education (FE) colleges should have a larger market share in the delivery of youth work education, with the suggestion that the FE sector would take on the delivery of Higher National Certificates and Diplomas at levels 4 and 5 (HNCs and HNDs). This could seal the fate of university courses and mark the end of the critical education that youth workers receive in universities from researchers and experts in the field. Youth and community work education has once before been threatened with being driven out of the academy with the expansion of NVQ and competency-based routes into youth work in the early 2000s which do not offer the same critical education (Jeffs and Spence, 2008). The current precarities facing youth and community work programmes and the higher education sector more broadly mean it remains far too marginal to be protected against expulsion this time, if the NYA’s proposals are implemented. Probation and adult education have in less than a decade been expelled from the academy, so there is no room for complacency.

The NYA needs to see the decline of youth work higher education courses in the context of wider decline in the higher education sector, particularly in the humanities and social sciences where many of our programmes are located in interdisciplinary departments and schools. Given what the students on our courses offer to diversity in our universities – and that many of our students are young adults themselves and often the first generations of their families to attend university – we might expect the NYA support us and our students in our struggle for survival rather than sealing the fate of our courses, the ongoing under-recognition of youth work and these young adults’ futures.

Conclusion

The rationale to review the qualifications framework for youth work and the approach to the consultation appears to have been developed on shifting sand. Partly the impetus appears to be in response to the failure of the level 6 apprenticeship strategy to deliver the promised growth in the youth work workforce. The tension here is that for apprenticeships to work, sector organisations need to invest in youth workers and provide roles that lead to graduate-level employment – reflected in the pay and conditions of qualifying posts. The elephant in the room that we continue to ignore is the need to create a contemporary workforce strategy that includes proper investment in professionally qualified youth work jobs.

Overall, we consider that the NYA’s consultation has been hasty and at the expense of a much-needed closer conversation with Higher Education colleagues and students to create long term sustainable solutions to the supply of professionally qualified youth workers.  Such an approach would have been consistent with the participatory values of the youth work profession and the absence of this marks a break from established collaborative approaches that have been nurtured over decades.

At the time of writing this there are many unanswered questions including whether the need to review the qualifications framework was agreed in advance through the Joint Education and Training Standards Committee (JETS), JNC and trade unions given the significant long-term consequences. Is there or will there be an impact assessment on the longstanding joint recognition agreements? What has been the reaction from JETS and other UK sector bodies for youth work and community development about how the proposals contribute to a downgrading and undermining of youth work as a profession in England that would likely ripple beyond?

Perhaps a broader question is framed around the power exercised by the NYA to push forward with their proposals. In line with professional ethics, values, and principles, such a process must be collaborative with a shared voice amongst all stakeholders. The NYA does not (or should not) have sole power to transform the sector. Feedback from PALYCW members and our students suggests that the process has not been inclusive or representative. The research action plan seemed to lack the forethought and planning required for collecting ethical data, and provides the possibility for ill-founded policy developments. The consultation being led by NYA staff rather than wider ETS representatives leads to a further question about the power (or lack thereof) held by the ETS Committee to influence policy making in pursuit of quality youth work.

More concerningly, the proposals if implemented stand to undo more than half a century of struggle to build the youth work profession and workforce. We hope this article acts as a call to others for more dialogue and response to the NYA proposals and ultimately to a rethink of the new suggested framework and the need for a radical reset of the proposed workforce strategy. There has been thus far a resounding lack of any public outcry to the NYA’s proposals and that is our motivation for this writing this article. We hope it will prompt other stakeholders to write articles, write letters to the NYA (as PALYCW are doing) and ensure their voices are heard. We hope this is the start, not the end, of the conversation.