Supporting young people, supporting youth work

Being a youth worker was core to Tina’s identity and she worked in youth inclusion settings as a practicing youth worker, before moving into academia in the early 2000s. She remained committed to youth work and young people throughout her career. Her upbringing in a church with a thriving youth work culture inspired her own entry into the field, first as a volunteer from a young age before moving into paid roles and gaining her youth work qualification.

Tina’s work in youth inclusion and mentoring inspired her to explore what was missing from mentoring interventions. She began to view mentoring as something that centred too heavily on the adult having some form of knowledge or wisdom to pass onto the young person, assuming that the young person was lacking in some way. Her scholarship explored how coaching had been under-explored as a more asset-focused approach to work with young people, building on the strengths and ambitions they hold. She developed her academic expertise in mentoring and coaching through her Masters and Doctorate, both at Oxford Brookes, and through further research and publications, including in Youth & Policy. Following the conferral of her doctorate, she jokingly referred to herself as the ‘Doctor of Moaching’, in her typical self-deprecating and humorous style.

Tina and other members of the Y&P editorial team outside Kings College London in June 2023.

 

Tina was a long-standing member of academic staff at the YMCA George Williams College, a leading provider of youth work training with a significant reputation in the sector for over five decades. Over the two decades she was there, Tina was involved in the training and education of youth and community workers from pre-degree through to Masters level. She was part of the development of the college’s Masters level provision, where she led particularly on the research elements of the programmes. Tina met her husband Jeff during her time at the college, where he was also part of the academic staff. She moved from YMCA George Williams College to the University of Bedfordshire in 2020 where she developed and led their current youth work qualifying Masters programme.

Tina balanced her writing and scholarship in mentoring and coaching with a love of teaching and deep care for students. She never put her own career development ahead of supporting students or developing and delivering high-quality programmes for and with them. Her genuine care for others and warm sense of humour meant she developed strong relationships with colleagues and students alike. She recently secured a substantial local authority partnership at the University of Bedfordshire, that will support the future of the youth work Masters programme (one of a small number of accredited Masters level youth work training programmes) and ensure a new generation of youth workers are trained to a high standard. Her colleagues and students there must be feeling both her loss and her legacy.

Working with Tina

Naomi and Tania had some of our early academic teaching experiences at YMCA George Williams College alongside Tina, Naomi when she joined as a Lecturer and Tania as an hourly paid tutor. Tina immediately treated us as equals, and combined wisdom, humility and encouragement. Tina was kind and encouraging when Tania blurted out how nervous she was feeling, and shared that she still felt nervous teaching sometimes; she pointed out that nerves can sometimes bring a positive energy, too. Tina and Naomi became firm friends while organising conferences and taster days at the college, with Tina supporting Naomi through personal struggles and cheering her on at times of career success. With her characteristic humour, on the day Naomi resigned from the college to take up a new opportunity, Tina developed the hashtag #thompsongate and attempted (unsuccessfully) to make it trend on social media.

Tina loved a conference – where she presented her own research, engaged with that of others, and enjoyed spending time with colleagues old and new from the across the UK’s academic youth work community. We had fun together at various Youth Work and Youth Studies conferences over the years. Paula remembers how her warmth and good nature meant Tina was always central to the sense of community at such events – and how she was always the first to laugh out loud at a good joke.

Tina and others at a Youth Work conference at Plymouth Marjon University in September 2018.

 

Tina lived with chronic Crohn’s disease. She went through times of being very unwell and hospitalised but she always maintained joy, laughter and positivity. She also had diligent organisation skills that put the rest of us to shame. If you were covering her teaching while she was unwell, you would find in her very tidy office at the YMCA George Williams College, a pile of folders with handouts for every session of each module and a USB stick with all the teaching materials loaded.

Dealing with illness

In spring 2025, at the end of a long hospital stay with what was assumed to be a serious Crohn’s flare-up, Tina was told that her blood markers indicated the development of leukaemia and that chemotherapy would be started imminently. Miraculously, a few days before starting the treatment, she was told by her doctors that her blood markers had recovered, and the cancer had completely disappeared. Seemingly reprieved in an unprecedented turn of events which baffled her doctors, Tina embraced feeling well again and through the summer, enjoyed travelling and time spent with family and friends. However, the leukaemia returned suddenly and aggressively in December 2025.

In hospital in the new year, she was having phone calls with work colleagues and dealing with emails about her new book on ‘Coaching and Mentoring Young People’, a practical text co-written with youth sector leader Luke Jones and published by Emerald this year.

Even in her long stretches in hospital over the last few months, Tina retained her deep humour and her heart for justice. She laughed about wig-shopping and the awful protein powders that the earnest nutritionist would bring in a range of different brands and flavours each week, in the hope she would drink them. When a junior member of the hospital staff was blamed for something that was not their fault, Tina stood up for them to their senior colleagues. Tina’s consultant told her husband Jeff that she had learned from Tina to be more patient with student nurses after witnessing Tina’s kindness with them.

Despite the challenges she faced, Tina was one of life’s happy people. In March, she was planning holidays and her return to work beyond her illness. She was looking forward to summer weddings and time with family and friends. She loved her husband Jeff, her family, her friends, colleagues and students.

She leaves behind her husband Jeff, her stepchildren Emma and Daniel and their families, her parents Loretta and Ian, and her siblings Sue and Rob.