Explain What Makes Youth Work A Distinct Practice From Other Work With Young People

Introduction to Youth Work CW788

What makes youth work a distinct practice from other work with young people?

Christopher White: C00196999

27th November 2014

Introduction

In this paper we will investigate just what it is that makes youth work a distinctive practice from any other form of work with young people. In order to do this, an understanding of what youth work actually is must be reached. According to the Youth Work Act (2001) youth work can be defined as:

“A planned programme of education designed for the purpose of aiding and enhancing the personal and social development of young persons through their voluntary participation, and which is-

(a) Complementary to their formal, academic or vocational education and training;

It is easy to recognise formal education, anything in schools and colleges is considered to be formal education. Therefore it stands to reason that anything outside of this must be informal education, however because of the looseness of the definition for formal education as stated by Coombes and Ahmed (1974:8);

“Formal education….is, of course, the highly institutionalized, chronologically graded and hierarchically structured ‘education system’, spanning lower primary school and the upper reaches of the university.”

We can surmise that it might be equally as difficult, or perhaps even more so, to obtain a concrete definition for informal education. The use of the word “of course” within the definition is interesting, it gives the idea that the definition is just there for definitions sake, as everyone should know what formal education is and consists of. This is most likely due to the fact that the overwhelming majority of people, particularly in the Global North, have attended formal education of some sort.

As such, a true definition of informal education can be hard to reach. It can be defined

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