Detached youth work… a new phenomenon?
Following my decision to go at it alone and create yet another personalised Blog I was faced with the complex task of deciding a name for what I hope will become a great resource for all. As I sat attempting to contemplate a fitting name for a blog, which I anticipate will predominately explore the topic of ‘virtual youth work’, I remembered an analogy I used during my presentation at the LGiU seminar. I related the process of engaging unknown young people through social networking sites to the delivery of ‘detached’ or in this case ‘virtual detached youth work’. As we begin to openly explore the opportunities for engagement using these sites many youth workers and young people themselves have expressed concerns. Common within these concerns is the belief that this method of engagement is ‘new’ when in fact I believe it has been in use within youth work practice for many years.
A great example of this occurred during the seminar when two young people from Lewisham were asked to share their views on the use of social networking sites within youth work. Surprisingly they were not very positive about the idea and in fact discouraged the seminar’s participants from using sites such as Facebook to engage young people citing that it was an invasion of their ‘private space’. In one way I do agree with the young people. Engaging young people through these sites will require a youth worker to ‘invade’ the young people’s ‘private spaces’, however this is no different to the methods used for many years within detached or street based youth work. Out on the streets youth workers will often invite themselves into young people’s ‘private spaces’ such as in the park that the young people hang out in or near the wall that they sit on. They will then proceed to attempt to engage the young people and build relationships. Often they will be told to go away or occasionally they will strike up conversations and begin to build relationships leading to future positive engagement. Key to this method of engagement is that young people have the choice to agree or to decline the invitation of engagement.
As Jeffs explains when discussing ‘voluntary participation’ and engagement it requires ‘young people’ to have the choice ‘to become involved in settings and activities. Furthermore, within youth work settings they have freedom over the depth of their involvement.’ (1996)
Therefore as long as youth workers maintain the ‘voluntary’ aspect when engaging young people through social networking sites, young people can choose to decline friend requests and invitations to express their ‘views and opinions’.
So to promote this analogy and encourage further discussion on the topic I name this blog ‘virtually detached’…
References
Jeffs, T. (1996) ‘The hallmarks of youth work’, YMCA George Williams College Induction Studies Unit 7.
Hi Tom – I think the detached voluntary engagement approach thing is a good way of looking at the use of social networks. I’m not at all surprised that some young people would view youth works use of social networks as an invasion of ‘their space’ – we’ve used facebook for organising events, and previously used google groups and prior to that hosted our own network.
Of all of them it was our own hosted network that had the most success – I think largely because young people made a conscious decision to visit the site and went there with the intent to find out/think about volunteering and stuff related to us etc.
We moved to facebook thinking that it would be more convenient for people ie. they’re already using it so it will be straightforward enough for them to quickly check up on the group, reply to messages & so on. What I think actually happened is that we became just another group in a very long list of groups that people belong to. I did make it clear to members that we were trialling the use of facebook and feedback was welcome – the feedback that I got wasn’t negative but it did suggest that our facebook presence was politely tolerated rather than warmly welcomed. This is contrast to my personal facebook where I get many ‘friend requests’ from young people we’ve worked with – however I reject these unless I know them to be over 18 and I actually do regard them as friends ie. only the young people I’ve known for some years and most often ones I’m no longer directly working with.
What is certain is that the level of engagement from young people in the facebook group was much much lower than it ever was on our own network – I don’t have any feedback about why this was the case but I suspect it was in part because it wasn’t actually our space and so people didn’t feel the same sense of belonging and wanting to contribute that they had previously had.
A final point back to the notion of ‘invading private space’ – it is also worth keeping in mind that most social networks are not the domain of young people alone – they’re shared spaces and just like in real world communities there maybe needs to be consideration to breaking down generation gaps (albeit while respecting the priciple of voluntary engagement)
lol sorry to post such a long comment on your return to blogging! Glad to see somebody focussing on these issues though.
Hi Tom!
Great to see you back blogging and interesting comments too. I’m over in West Sussex and having similar discussions with colleagues. This is a developing area for us.
Good luck with the blogging and great to expand the community again!
Hi Tom
Thanks for your thoughts via the blog post
My interest is in the Promoting Positive Activities agenda – in terms of getting information about Places to Go, Things to Do out to young people.
Now, for a while we have been talking about the notion of “fish where the fish are” in terms of being able to distribute/disseminate/syndicate such content out into the spaces and places where people might actual be – ie: social networks!
I suppose the opposite to this is to build a website and then think that all young people will know about it and/or visit it.
Somewhere between these two is a middle ground though!
I am interested in your comments on social networks (potentially) being seen as a private space for young people, where those with youth work ideas/messages may not be welcome. What about those with info on stuff to do? Or how to get money to do stuff?
Granted , there is a fine line between this and promotional/commercial messages, which we have to tread very carefully
All food for thought – keep up the blogging!