Youth Workers, the MSC and the Youth Training Scheme

Abstract

The Youth Service in England and Wales has traditionally been primarily concerned with working with young people during their leisure time. Youth workers have defined their central role as contributing to the personal development of young people through the provision of informal social education. Consequently the Youth Service has barely been considered to be an appropriate forum within which to address the issue of youth unemployment, clearly one of the major problems facing young people today. This problem has generated new and significant dilemmas for youth workers. The Youth Service has in fact long been involved in youth unemployment initiatives, contributing both to the policy debate about relevant employment and training measures and to the development of practical interventions such as drop-in centres and the sponsorship of schemes for unemployed young people. Today it is not simply a question of whether there is a role for youth workers in the initiatives that are currently being developed or even whether the role should be direct or indirect, marginal or central. The more fundamental question is how should youth workers relate to interventions designed, funded and controlled by the MSC whose concerns, despite the rhetoric, may be somewhat different from their own.