What Makes a Good Youth Worker

Jason Wood, Sue Westwood, and Gil Thompson list seven characteristics of youth work. The first listed is youth work is an educational practice. This means that as youth workers we are educators in the field. We meet young people where they are to create opportunities and start conversations to empower them. Youth work wouldn’t be looked at as formal education, but more informal. We are not usually licensed teachers, but work in many different environments including schools where the need for our work is most. The second characteristic is youth work is a social practice meaning working in groups a lot of the time. This is to allow youth to work with other youth in contexts they may have not worked in before. The third is youth workers work towards social justice. Similar to a social worker, a part of a youth worker’s job is to promote social justice. Often times this type of work is taking place in an environment where there is a lot of social injustice. This is working with youth on power issues, and discrimination issues. The next characteristic is about young people choosing to be involved. In an ideal world youth work would take place in environments where youth are voluntarily there. However, this is not completely realistic seeing that youth workers often times work in schools. The fifth characteristic is youth work strengthens the voice of young people. I very much agree with this characteristic. Most of the youth work I do as a wrestling coach, and a mentor aims to strengthen the voice and influence of young people. I look at my job as a coach not only to teach them wrestling, but to also teach them they have a voice and how they can use that voice in the environment they are put in. The second to last characteristic is youth work is a welfare practice. This means that youth workers not only educate, but make the welfare and safety of the young people a priority. The last characteristic, and in my opinion most important is working with young people in a holistic way. To me this means as a youth worker you don’t just focus on the problem, but instead the young person as a whole. It can be easy to fall into that trap of feeling like you’re there just to “fix things”. This isn’t our primary goal as a youth worker. We are there to lead with the youth and figure out problems as they arise, but there is so much more to being a youth worker than just that. I work for a nonprofit that works with “at risk” youth. When I first started I would sometimes get overwhelmed with the stories my students would tell me about their lives at home, or the environment I was entering when working with them. There are so many  problems I see as a coach in this inner-city school. A student is more than just the problems they may come with or encounter on a daily basis. The focus should be helping the student holistically, and making sure they are a part of the conversation.