Scotland's public service union

Youth Work -Opportunities For All

UNISON Scotland response to The Scottish Executive consultation on Youth Work

OCTOBER 2006

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

UNISON Scotland welcomes the opportunity to comment on the Scottish Executive Consultation.

 

INTRODUCTION

UNISON Scotland welcomes the opportunity to comment on the Scottish Executive Consultation Youth Work - Opportunities for All. UNISON is Scotland's largest trade union representing over 150,000 members across the public and voluntary sector. UNISON represents qualified and unqualified paid workers, including both local authorities and the voluntary sector, working with young people across Scotland. We expect UNISON to be fully involved at all levels in developing Scotland youth work strategy given the depth of experience and knowledge of our members in providing frontline youth work.

 

RESPONSE

Our response will focus on general themes affecting our members and not all the detailed questions in the consultation document. It should also be noted that changes to terms and conditions of employment following from changes to youth work will require negotiation with staff representatives at all levels.

 

Outcomes

UNISON would welcome a clear, focused and consistent approach to national outcomes in youth work within local authorities and the community & voluntary sector. The strategy requires a common understanding of national outcomes and each organisation's role in achieving these. Outcomes should be realistic and achievable.

It is recognised that local implementation of the strategy will reflect local community needs. It should be noted that local authorities take differing approaches to youth work: some provides extensive services others very little. There are also differences in structures and job roles: some community education workers operate in functional teams whereas other councils take a geographic generic approach in providing Community Learning & Development Services.

A national youth work strategy should acknowledge the range of youth work provided by the various types of organisations throughout Scotland - as each will have their own stated aims and objectives and varying styles and approaches to working with young people.

 

Improving Standards

A national youth work strategy that sets national standards must ensure that standards are suitable and relevant to all layers of youth work provision. Broad standards should be set with space for local innovation particularly in specialist provision. Users of youth services are not a homogenous group and the needs and wants of different groups need to be taken into account when designing services.

Any national strategy should take a balanced approach to evaluation methods. Traditional methods of measuring the performance of organisations have concentrated on cost accounting methods that may not be entirely suitable to public services in general. This is particularly so in youth work where time spent building relationships is so crucial to success and the benefits of preparing young people to participate fully in society throughout their lives is so difficult to quantify. Measures used are often crude and do not take into account all of the factors involved in providing the service. This can lead to a focus on indicators to the detriment of the overall service. There is also a concern that scrutiny becomes more bureaucratic and so takes up an increasing proportion of the youth work budget.

"How Good is our Community Learning and Development" provides a useful tool to assess the quality of youth work.

There is merit in further discussion on the subject of a registered workforce and UNISON expects to be fully involved in these discussions at all levels.

Partnership

UNISON acknowledges the benefits of developing partnerships with agencies and young people to improve and increase the effectiveness of service provision within communities.

Local authority youth workers do provide lead roles in developing and facilitating local networks. There are many examples of good collaborative working in particular in regeneration and social inclusion areas.

Funding & resources

There is general concern over funding levels for youth work in local authorities and the community & voluntary sector. Within councils youth work budgets continue to be stretched to the limits. Resources are scarce; therefore services have to be targeted to those young people who are most vulnerable and disadvantaged. While understandable this can lead to more social exclusion for these young people as they have even less opportunities to mix with young people from different backgrounds and areas.

Secure long-term funding is crucial to enable future planning. As youth workers seek to involve more young people it is vital that information about future levels of resources is available. Short-term funding can also have a detrimental impact on core services. There is funding for initiatives but not for ongoing services which cannot be sustained when the funding dries up.

Many councils receive ring fenced funding for initiatives or specific projects. This can lead to an aspect of competition between local authority youth work and community & voluntary youth work vying for resources.

Workers often have to focus more on fundraising skills than youth work in order to fund their own jobs. Career development is precarious. Many face a future of moving from one short-term project to another or leaving the sector for more secure employment.

Training / Recruitment & Retention

UNISON advocates the recruitment and retention of high quality staff through: fair pay and conditions, genuine partnership working with trade unions, equal opportunities and life-long learning. We believe that real investment in training and development of staff is the key to improved youth work services and enhanced performance. As work opportunities expand in Scotland is vital that youth work continues to attract high quality staff. Education and training should be available to youth work staff at all levels, to attract them initially and to equip them to move into higher skilled jobs within youth services. The opportunity for in-work training would be particularly welcome. The numbers of hours worked should not be a deciding factor for access to training and development.

Local authorities require to provide adequate long-term funding to resource quality youth work provision. A well motivated workforce, properly resourced and valued by their employers, is the key to retaining skilled and experienced workers. The strategy should set out routes for career progression, identifying accreditation for prior learning and experience.

Local uniform and other volunteer organisations will require to meet specific training levels different from those of paid workers. Paid youth workers will be delivering the training in many cases and need input into its design.

Volunteers play an essential role in the delivery of youth work, many organisations are struggling to recruit and retain the numbers they need in order to continue to operate. The Scottish Executive should investigate ways of reducing the administrative and insurance burden on individuals who volunteer. This should of course not undermine the safety of those entrusted to their care.

 

Conclusion

UNISON welcomes the development of a national youth work strategy and its commitment to social justice. UNISON expects to be actively involved in influencing the future direction of youth work in Scotland given the depth of experience and knowledge of our members in providing frontline youth work.

 

For Further Information Please Contact:

Matt Smith, Scottish Secretary

UNISON Scotland

UNISON House

14, West Campbell Street,

Glasgow G2 6RX

Tel 0845 355 0845 Fax 0141 342 2835

e-mail: matt.smith@unison.co.uk