Youth work doesn't have to be in a youth club, nor on the streets.
I've been working in a hack space (maker space) for a while now and while its essentially a club house for adults, we also host electronics groups for young people where they learn how to use a raspberry pi, and build stuff like robots & media servers, we also host a minecraft group who meet at weekends and do mine crafty things.
So I was surprised when one youthworker (council) told me there is nothing happening for young people and there were no dedicated centres. While the latter is true I told him about our projects and how we work. Sadly he was dismissive of this and told me youthwork is detached or in a centre, and is called youthwork, your not doing youthwork! Its just education.
This is rather a common viewpoint, anything not set up as youthwork is disregarded, as is anything education that is not school. Obliviously while common its mostly in my experience daily mail readers who spout such things, and not qualified and experienced youth workers.
The conversation I had raised alsorts of secondary questions for me, mostly ones I wanted to ask my youthwork friend, but felt it was enough to discuss the nature of youthwork and informal education. Essays due by Sept 15th please!
We as youth workers can and probably should recognise youthwork in many forms, and not just stick with what we know or what we are comfortable with. Being challenged on our thought processes and attitudes is essential, if we want to practise and prosper or we can hold up with odd ideas and deliver bare bones curriculum with no feeling or passion. That last phrase didn't go down well, maybe I should not get so heated during conversations.
Youthwork can be almost anything, and getting caught up in thinking it needs to be this or that will only result in poor quality provision. While some of the stuff happening locally to me isn't funded, or staffed by qualified workers, it is delivering good quality and they are getting support from this youthworker. I embrace such efforts its the community responding with skills and interests that they have and can share, allowing young people to interact with new and exciting stuff with interesting people. Thankfully no one has objected to DBS and realise the need for some structures to be in place. Something that should be funded by the local authority but we don't talk about that! Much.
