Compare the Ways in Which Youth Work Has Changed Over Time By Considering Factors That Have Influenced It.

Compare the Ways in Which Youth Work Has Changed Over Time By Considering Factors That Have Influenced It.

Historically the boundaries that now exist between child, youth and adult were not recognised (Smith, 2002a). This reflected the time when the government adopted a laissez-faire approach to governance and policies. Hence youth work must be considered as a social construct whose conception has to be understood in the perspective of the wider more comprehensive political, economic and social environment in which it developed. To highlight this attention has to be given to the history and roots of youth work in England.

One of the first types of youth work provision was the early network of Sunday Schools founded by Robert Raikes and Hannah Moore in 1780. Their idea was to morally educate the children and young people of the working classes because at this time less than a third of children of school age actually attended school; hence the young population, especially females, were uneducated (Smith, 2002b).

However the working class attempted to create bottom-up forms of education themselves with the formation of the Young Man’s Christian Association in 1844 by George Williams. Within the association were the early characteristics of a youth work approach and an emphasis on healthy spiritual well-being especially for city dwelling young males (Smith, 2002a; Smith, 2002b). This reflects the morally upright and patriarchal Victorian views of the time along with the recognition of youth as a discipline in its own right (Stainton Rogers, 2004).

By the mid nineteenth century the struggles of the working class had been all but lost with the influx of top-down institutions which were mainly church led. Toward the end of the century young sections of the population were identified as needing activities to engage in to improve their leisure time and to maintain social control. It was widely accepted that this leadership would be undertaken by a range of philanthropic institutions and state run establishments. One of the most significant youth organisations of this period was the Scouting movement started by Robert Bayden-Powell. To accentuate the importance of state social control and the Liberalistic political agenda school attendance became compulsory up to the age of ten with the introduction of the 1880 and 1902 Education Acts (Smith, 2002a). It was also around this time and Britain’s early globalisation and the changing social and economic conditions that prompted the Politian’s and educated members of society to develop country wide youth practise as observers believed that the youth of English nation were experience new and harsh encounters and a lot of this was to do with the newly constructed phase of adolescence, this new breed of child needed discipline , protection and some nurturing(Davies,1967). As Russell and Rigby commented “some of the challenges were domestic. As the demand for unskilled (especially child) labour reduced more and more young people were neither in school nor work” they felt that the young adolescence leisure time was not being fulfilled and the young “indulge in ‘one main amusement gambling’ (Russell & Rigby, 1908: 10-11).

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The youth of the country were seen as being tested, too, within a new international contextBut who should, who could, take on these emerging responsibilities? Pragmatic and often major compromises with the laisser-faire principles which had so shaped Victorian Britain had already been made - in order for example to guarantee public health and spread elementary education to the whole population. Nonetheless, in this later nineteenth century period and even into the early decades of the twentieth century the state remained, at best, an unwelcome intruder into the personal and social spheres of people’s lives. For responding to the newly identified leisure-time needs of young people, a state role was therefore never apparently considered. Self-evidently, these were ‘… suitable fields for voluntarily supported clubs’ (Berry, 1919: 96) - a task for ‘thinking people who felt something must be done…’
(Russell and Rigby, 1908: 12); for those who were conscious of what their ‘happier fortune has bestowed on us from our circumstances’ (Booton, 1985: 14); who were ‘fortunately placed’ and therefore ‘felt very strongly that in some way (action) was incumbent on us’
(Schill, 1935: 5).
By the early decades of the twentieth century the result was a network of local independent boys and girls clubs across the UK. From the 1880s, under the influence of William Smith, military-style brigades for boys and girls also took hold and by the 1900s were being supplemented and indeed often underpinned by Baden Powell’s Boy Scouts and later the Girl
Guides. In due course these sought mutually supportive links by setting up a range of local, regional and national associations and federations.

The Boer War highlighted the need for a fitter, healthier generation of young men and this was supported by social research (Stainton Rogers, 2004). In response to these findings the Children Act 1908 was introduced to establish a juvenile justice system, specific medical treatment and free school meals specifically for minors. However, despite young people during this period beginning to be recognised in their own right there was an ulterior political and philanthropic agenda to enforce social control and Christian morals for both girls and boys (Stainton Rogers, 2004).

Nevertheless society began to change during World War One as young men were conscripted into the horrors of war and returned transformed. Whereas women were no longer perceived as, “delicate maidens of Victorian sensibilities” but instead began to be recognised as capable individuals with their own identities (Stainton Rogers, 2004: 4). Subsequently it was recognised that state intervention was needed and powers and funding were given to local authorities to invest in Juvenile Organizing Committees (Smith, 2002a).
Up until this point it was still normal to talk about work with or among boys and girls (or young men and women or youth). In the late 1920s we see the growing use of the term 'youth work '. The first booklet in the UK appeared with it in its title: Methods in Youth Work (Walkey et al 1931).

Bibliography

Davies, B. and Gibson, A. (1967). The social education of the adolescent, London: University of London Press. Pp12.
Ludmilla, J. (1989) ‘Children in history: concepts of nature and society’ In: Scarre, G. (ed) Children, Parents and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp19-20.
Russell, C. E. B. and Rigby, L. M., 1908, Working Lads Clubs, London, MacMillan and Co Ltd.
Smith, M. K. (2002a) Youth Work an Introduction. http://www.infed.org/youthwork/b-yw.htm [accessed 08.11.12].
Smith, M. K. (2002b) 'Hannah More: Sunday schools, education and youth work ' The
Encyclopaedia of Informal Education. http://www.infed.org/thinkers/more.htm [accessed 9.11.12].

Poverty was abundant and with the start of the industrial revolution it was inevitable that children were used as cheap labour (Ludmilla,1989. Smith, 2002).

Bibliography: Davies, B. and Gibson, A. (1967). The social education of the adolescent, London: University of London Press. Pp12. Ludmilla, J. (1989) ‘Children in history: concepts of nature and society’ In: Scarre, G. (ed) Children, Parents and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp19-20. Russell, C. E. B. and Rigby, L. M., 1908, Working Lads Clubs, London, MacMillan and Co Ltd. Smith, M. K. (2002a) Youth Work an Introduction. http://www.infed.org/youthwork/b-yw.htm [accessed 08.11.12]. Smith, M. K. (2002b) 'Hannah More: Sunday schools, education and youth work ' The Encyclopaedia of Informal Education. http://www.infed.org/thinkers/more.htm [accessed 9.11.12]. Poverty was abundant and with the start of the industrial revolution it was inevitable that children were used as cheap labour (Ludmilla,1989. Smith, 2002).