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Everyone suggests that giving young people more facilities and more to do is the answer to boredom, anti-social behaviour and the alarming number of youth murders, but actually it is only half of it.

You wouldn't find people working in a GP's surgery as a doctor unless they were one would you?�� Similarly, you have to be seriously brave to allow someone who isn't a hairdresser to cut your hair.�� So why are we so comfortable labelling anyone who works with children and young people as youth workers? It may well be the lack of definition of “youth worker” and “youth work” that is to blame.

Working with young people can be very rewarding

Despite years of being undervalued, undermined and stripped of resources the youth service is based on a robust set of principles. Youth work is relational, meaning that young people engage with it as a result of a voluntary commitment to the relationship (very rarely are young people expected to attend a youth club as part of a binding contract or youth offending order).

Over time, meaningful, working relationships are developed based on mutual trust and respect. The youth worker aims to encourage the young person to make both personal and positional shifts in their attitudes and behaviour and to develop a values system.

It’s not trendy to note that the fundamental values of personal and social education still underpin the structure of good youth work. Working with empathy, unconditional positive regard, respect and reflection so that education and empowerment follow. Youth workers continue to focus on the basic components of�� human sociology and in particular how it relates to the young and the psychology of adolescence.

We hear many advocates and champions of young people talk about the lack of love and respect that they receive and that we are a nation who do not like the young. The truth is that most young people don't like themselves!

In order to construct a positive values system there must first be some self evaluation. Both youth workers and young people focus on the very things that make them unique. Self-respect and self-love are hard to maintain in a world which gives you little development support. What good youth work does is to encourage young people to value themselves.

A youth worker encourages a young person to challenge the negative beliefs and concepts they have of themselves and to reflect on them. A set of boundaries, both physical and emotional, help to construct these challenges.�� A commitment to support and guidance within a non-judgemental, structured framework are the tools which can�� help young people look at themselves critically and make assessments of their own worth and capacity.

Young people are some of the most stereotyped

Like parenting, we all think we can do it. Unlike parenting you can gain professional qualifications in youth and community work. The call to action for the provision of world class facilities for young people, to help address youth crime and anti-social behaviour, is well placed.�� But the desired outcome, of a safer society peopled by more socially acceptable young people, cannot just be manufactured.�� Young people need to be engaged and satisfied by good quality youth work delivered by professionals and supported by volunteers and advocates.

Colleges and universities all over the county are currently expanding and reviewing their youth and community study offer, with new posts for lecturers and degree options emerging all the time. The government’s recommendation that youth workers be qualified by 2010 is having an effect.

So the other half of the facilities coin is to develop and make professional the youth worker workforce.�� That means funding, supporting and educating qualified providers of “old fashioned” personal and social education.