The National Youth Agency - What is Youth Work?

What is Youth Work?

The main purpose of youth work is the personal and social development of young people and their social inclusion.

Youth work helps young people learn about themselves, others and society through non-formal educational activities that combine enjoyment, challenge, learning and achievement. Youth work provides for young people’s wellbeing and development in all its various forms – intellectual, physical, emotional and spiritual.

Youth workers work primarily with young people aged between 13 and 19. Their work seeks to promote young people’s personal and social development and enable them to have a voice, influence and place in their communities and society as a whole. Its origins lie in clubs and projects set up by voluntary organisations in the 19th century. State recognition dates from the outbreak of war in 1939. Around 60 per cent of young people (and there are 8,600,000 of them in England) come into contact with youth work at some point between the ages of 11 and 25. There are over 3,000 full-time youth workers, 21,000 part-time and an estimated half million volunteers.

Also of interest...

The environment for young people, and those who work with them, is exciting and demanding. There is a growing consensus that young people have the potential and the right to create the solutions to their individual and collective futures, and increasingly central and local government have been active in promoting this and creating the conditions for it to happen. For example, the Government’s Ten Year Strategy, Aiming High for Young People identiifies three key areas for consideration when working with young people:

1. Empowerment
2. Access
3. Quality

This builds on Every Child Matters, which set out five outcomes that matter most to children and young people:

Being healthy: enjoying good physical and mental health and living a healthy lifestyle;
Staying safe: being protected from harm and neglect;
Enjoying and achieving: getting the most out of life and developing the skills for adulthood;
Making a positive contribution: being involved with the community and society and not engaging in antisocial or offending behaviour; and
Economic wellbeing: not being prevented by economic disadvantage from achieving their full potential in life.

This sets an important new agenda for work with young people.

For more information see: The NYA Guide to Youth Work and Youth Services

The History or Youth Work

The two volumes by Bernard Davies comprising the history of England's youth service during the last 60 years of the 20th century are now out of print. However, The Agency recognises the value of the material contained in these definitive works and is pleased to make them available, free of charge, as PDF files. History Book downloads >>