Youth Work - History

History

Modern youth work often emphasises the need to involve young people in the running of their own services through a process of youth-led youth work. Historically there are a number of different motives for the development of youth work in the UK. First, early youth workers, often from the middle classes, frequently saw working with deserving young people as an expression of their Christian faith. Secondly there was a concern to instill a middle class set of values in working class youth.

This early approach to youth work has actually been around since the birth of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, which was the first time that young men left their own homes and cottage industries to migrate to the big towns. The result of this migration was an emergent youth culture in urban areas, which locally was responded to by the efforts of local people. Although with the formation of the YMCA (and later Scouting) organisations were founded whose sole aim was to address these issues, the emphasis was always on providing for young people.

A government review of the Youth Service, set up in November 1958 and chaired by Lady Albemarle, was published in 1960. It argued cogently for specific kinds of provision to be provided by local councils and ushered in a significant building boom of new premises for youth work. Often thought of as a golden age, the period following the Albemarle report was a time of thriving centre-based youth work.

Today (as outlined in the Transforming Youth Work document released in 1998 by the DfES) it is the statutory duty of all local government organisations to provide a youth service in their region. Also for the first time the youth service has national targets that have to be met with regard to the reach (initial contact) with young people, the number of relationships developed with young people and the number of accredited learning programmes achieved through the youth service.