Conspiracies and cock-ups; partnerships and progress: The development of youth worker education and training in Wales

1. Beginnings

The 1960s and 1970s is seen as a golden age for youth work in England and Wales. The landmark Albemarle report (Ministry of Education 1960), which addressed concerns about “the youth problem”, helped build strong political support for youth work. Investment in youth centres and youth services followed, and the report’s recommendations of training for paid and voluntary youth workers led to the establishment of the National College for the Training of Youth Leaders and the Youth Service Information Centre. The latter subsequently became the National Youth Bureau and then the National Youth Agency.  By the mid-1970s, the number of full time youth work workers had more than doubled; around half of whom were trained at the new National College for the Training of Youth Leaders (Smith and Doyle, 2002). In the 1970s, youth worker training moved to two year programmes with an emphasis upon youth and community work, in response to the Fairbairn Milson Report (Department of Education and Science 1969), while professional supervision, encouraging more learning from practice and experience, became increasingly important (Smith, 2007, 2020).

Youth worker training at various levels was steadily established in England and Wales and the balance shifted from the untrained ‘amateur’ to trained professional (Smith and Doyle, 2002). From basic level training (known as “Bessey” courses, after their founder Gordon Bessey) through to university or college level study on youth and community work (to diploma rather than degree level), youth worker training was also supported by infrastructure for research and curriculum development through the National Youth Bureau. However, despite the early momentum, both the status of youth workers as a distinct profession and youth worker training remained weak for many years; for example, even by the 1970s a qualified teacher could apply for an official registration number from the government to enable them to practise as a youth worker.  A qualified teacher was automatically considered to be a qualified youth worker.

Within Wales, youth worker training sprang up in the 1970s, first in North Wales at Cartrefle College Wrexham and later through the North-East Wales Institute of Higher Education (NEWI), with the first “initial youth worker training course”, providing qualification as Joint National Committee (JNC) (or nationally qualified) youth workers through a Diploma in Higher Education (Dip HE) (usually in community education or youth and community work). This was followed by the establishment of courses in:

• South Wales in the 1970s and 1980s: Basic (“Bessey”) youth work training courses in Cardiff;
• South Wales and South East Wales in the 1980s and 1990s: a range of part-time routes to qualification at certificate level provided through Cardiff University and through training providers franchised through NEWI;
• South Wales, in the 1980s, through the Rank Foundation’s Youth and Adult initiative in conjunction with the YMCA/George Williams National College. Although this only involved three students, it was quite critical, because it led to a JNC national qualification. This was a ‘course’ that lasted five years, with the youth work degree sandwiched between a foundation year, and a post-qualifying probationary practice year;
• The South Wales valleys, in the 1980s, through the Youth Workers in the Valleys apprenticeship programme developed by the National Youth Bureau in England and delivered by NEWI, to strengthen grass-roots youth work by training local people who were likely to remain in their localities;
• South Wales, in the 1990s and 2000s, through the Wales Youth Agency and its ‘Staff College’, in collaboration with the YMCA; and
• West Wales, in the 2000s, through the development of Trinity St David’s Welsh-medium youth work courses.

2. Moving toward a national training framework and standards and degree level profession

In the 1980s, as colleges came to be absorbed within an expanding higher education sector, opportunities for degree and postgraduate level study in youth work were developed, even required. Providers like NEWI began offering degree level courses and by the 1990s, ‘professional’ youth work was achieving the standing of a graduate profession in England and Wales. This shift was only possible because of the recognition of the value and importance of youth work, the investment in training that followed this, and the increasing demand for trained youth workers, in the period after the Albemarle report.

More broadly, in the 1980s, efforts to professionalise the whole sector led to the establishment of regional youth work units, and the accreditation and moderation of local youth worker training (to ensure consistency of quality and thereby the transfer of certification across areas).  Youth worker training and staff development programmes – routes to qualification and programmes for continuous professional development – were professionally ‘endorsed’ by an Education and Training Standards (ETS) Committee¹ (see boxed text). University level programmes of study also had to be academically ‘validated’, thus securing two forms of recognition.  Even the more academic courses, however, required a significant volume of supervised fieldwork experience, without which formal professional qualification and status could not be conferred.

The Joint National Committee (JNC) and Education and Training Standards (ETS) committees  The Joint National Committee (JNC) for youth and community work, was established in the 1950s, initially to negotiate youth workers’ pay and conditions. It brings together representatives from youth work employers, such as the local government in England and Wales, with representatives of youth and community staff, such as trade unions. It recognises youth and community workers’ qualifications which have been professionally approved by the Education Training Standards (ETS) Committees within the UK and the Republic of Ireland.  In this way, it provides for equivalence and the transferability of training in Great Britain and the island of Ireland. ETS committees work to ensure and promote quality standards in the education and training of youth workers by rigorously assessing programme content and delivery.  They professionally endorse those courses that meet the required standard and are “fit for purpose”. This helps ensure that training is relevant to the needs of employers, youth workers and the young people they work with.

However, despite the expansion of training, the status of and funding for youth work ebbed and flowed throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as other areas such as education, social work and criminal justice, vied with youth work, for funding for work with young people. In the late 1990s, the New Labour Government, frustrated with what one minister described as the ‘can’t do, won’t do’ service,  shifted the focus from the youth services to “services for youth” (Smith, 2013). Advocacy from the sector help save it from abolition, but state sponsored youth work in England withered between 1997 and 2001, replaced and undermined by both old and newly-established more ‘entrepreneurial’ youth NGOs that were more attuned to delivering new Labour’s aspirations for young people, before rising from the ashes in the early 2000s, with policy initiatives like Resourcing Excellent Youth Services (REYS) and Transforming Youth, on account of renewed advocacy from with the youth work sector.  Re-established political support came, however, at a price: youth work was narrowed down to a ‘positive activities’ and ‘social inclusion’ agenda.

Moreover, despite moves to establish youth work as a degree level profession not all youth workers held degree level qualifications, and lower level courses (sometimes, but not always providing a stepping stone to degree level courses), continued to expand.  As partially noted above, various consortia were established to deliver youth worker training throughout Wales².  In addition, some challenged the unintended impacts of increasing “professionalization”  such as concerns that the emphasis upon academic study and learning about youth work came at the expense of learning for youth work – developing practical skills and experience for working with young people (Smith and Doyle, 2002).

3. Wales forges its own identity 

In Wales in the 1980s, interest and also concern about the management, direction and accountability of youth work slowly grew. A government commissioned report in the early 1980s, the Thompson Report on the youth service, focused only on England (Department of Education and Science,1982); two years later, Wales produced its own review of youth services (HMI Survey 13, 1984), which was critical of much of it.  However, the report did pave the way for Wales steadily establishing a position on youth work that was increasingly more autonomous and independent from England.

In 1985, the Wales Youth Work Partnership was established, with responsibilities for staff development and training and the dissemination of information and good practice. Its Training and Development Adviser was charged with developing a national programme of training and a co-operative learning network. By the end of the 1980s, A Wales specific Curriculum Statement for Youth Work in Wales (outlining the purpose of youth work in Wales) was drawn up (in 1989); the Wales Youth Agency was established in 1992; and an Education and Training Standards (ETS) Committee for Wales established (see boxed text) to provide endorsement and professional recognition of training programmes in Wales (and also initially Northern Ireland, before the North/South Education Training Standards (NSETS) was established in 2006, to cover both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland). 

Endorsing youth work training programmes in Wales ETS Wales is now funded by the Welsh Government to ensure that programmes of training for youth workers are of high quality, relevant to the needs of employers, youth workers themselves and the young people with whom they work. Independent evaluation of ETS Wales has concluded that it plays “a key role in ensuring that there is coherence, standardisation and quality in the training of youth workers across Wales” (Brierley, 2017).  Four universities (Cardiff Metropolitan University in South East wales); Glyndwr University (Wrexham in North Wales); University of South Wales (Newport, in South East Wales); University of Wales Trinity St David (Carmarthen in West Wales) currently offer Youth & Community Degree courses in Wales. ETS Wales endorses their courses. Endorsements panels are made up of five people, including statutory and voluntary sectors, and last for five years. The process is described as an “developmental process, not an inspection”. It involves the university providing background papers, followed by a two day visit to university to talk to staff within the university, placement supervisors and students.The process is funded by universities (who pay ETS for the endorsement process).Adapted from Brierley, 2017)

Concerns about education and training for part time youth workers³, which was separate and different from that for full time youth workers, led to the development of the Coherent Route to Youth Work Training by the Wales Youth Agency. This provided for training for both full and part time youth workers at different levels, that initially enabled progression from Foundation courses, through a certificate, and a diploma in higher education, to a Joint National Committee (JNC) recognised degree in youth and community work. This coherence was intended to enable, for example, the one evening a week youth club volunteer who might, one day, want to complete a degree in youth work, to do so. As outlined in the table below, it currently covers the level 2 and 3 courses offered by further education colleges for Youth Support Workers and the level 6 and 7 courses for JNC recognised youth workers, offered by universities⁴. Academic recognition of the training was provided by higher education institutions such as the University of Wales and professional recognition and endorsement was provided by the ETS Wales (Rose, 2017). 

Progression: The Coherent Route of Recognised Youth Work Qualifications in Wales

Source ETS, 2015

Within the national framework to which the Coherent Route to Youth Work Training aspired, and the endorsement and professional recognition of training by ETS Wales, four key universities (what was the University of Wales College Newport, University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, the North-East Wales Institute of Higher Education and Trinity University College Carmarthen) each developed their own training programmes. This was not a smooth or easy process, with those pushing to establish and develop youth work education often struggling to maintain enough students and/or placements to make courses viable, as the four institutions competed for experienced staff, students and youth work placements.

In the late 1990s, devolution fuelled a further expansion of youth work in Wales. The establishment of the National Assembly for Wales (in 1999) and election of a Labour government, and in particular, Wales’ First Secretary (de facto Prime Minister), Alun Michael, a former youth and community worker himself, who understood and valued youth work, led to increased investment in youth work; this sustained funding and demand for youth work education and training in Wales at a key moment when, as outlined above, youth work in England was seriously under threat. 

Despite, or perhaps because of expansion, the sector in Wales remained driven by rivalries and tensions. The Wales Youth Agency built coalitions with key institutions such as the universities in Wrexham, Carmarthen and Cardiff.  It established a ‘Staff College’ that drew down substantial funding through Welsh Government adult education streams.  Its own endeavours had the unintended (or, it is sometimes alleged, intended) effects of marginalising other institutions such as the University of Wales College Newport and the training initiatives of CWVYS (the independent Council for Wales of Voluntary Youth Services), in different attempts to shape the development of youth work education and training in Wales.

4. Increasing governmental control of the agenda

By the early 2000s, the status and influence of the youth sector in Wales (and the youth work sector within it) began to wane. Funding for the Wales Youth Agency, seen as too much of a competitor in policy terms and as a fomenter of criticism of the government, was cut and diverted to other institutions. In 2006, the Wales Youth Agency (which had seen its overall budget increased almost ten-fold at the end of the 1990s, through multiple additional functions and projects) ceased to exist when the Welsh Government withdrew its core funding.  While the Welsh Government could not directly control the four universities offering youth and community courses, the responsibilities of the Wales Youth Agency, including the promotion of youth worker education and training, were taken over by the Welsh Government’s Youth Work Strategy Unit.The Care Council for Wales was tasked with taking forward the development of a Children and Young People Workforce Development Network for Wales. This included developing a Children and Young People Workforce Development Strategy; a Common Core of Skills and Knowledge; and a Qualification Framework for the workforce.

Changes to the Learning and Skills Act 2002, which supported much of the expansion of youth work through the landmark policy Extending Entitlement, also diluted the identity of youth work in Wales.  Reference was not made in the legislation to ‘youth workers’ but to ‘youth support workers’, a change which muddied the waters between youth work and other forms of work with young people.  New roles such as ‘learning coaches’ as part of reform of education and training for 14-19 year olds, created new opportunities for those who were not necessarily qualified youth workers to work with young people. This allowed local authorities much greater freedom to employ people without JNC recognised qualifications in roles working with young people.   

Governmental control was extended further in 2017, when professional registration with The Education Workforce Council (EWC), the independent regulator for the education workforce in Wales⁵, was introduced.  It meant that all qualified youth workers or qualified youth support workers in Wales must be registered with the EWC if they provide services for, or on behalf of, a “relevant body”, such as a local authority, school, college or voluntary sector provider. Registration is intended to ensure the ‘fitness to practice’ of youth workers and youth support workers, by establishing that they are suitably qualified (i.e. they have completed a professionally endorsed programme), that they have maintained their knowledge and skills and that their conduct and competence is of an “appropriate standard” (EWC, 2020). This has helped bolster the status of youth work as a profession that is comparable with other professions such as teaching (Jeffs, et al, 2020). 

Beyond government, in 2005, the Standing Conference for Youth Work brought together representatives from the voluntary sector⁶, local authority youth services⁷, Education Training Standards (ETS Wales) and training agencies, to provide an independent voice for the sector and to challenge the shift in government toward a focus upon children (those aged 0-18) rather than children (0-10) and young people (11-25), as Extending Entitlement had.  Although the Standing Conference had limited influence and was relatively soon abandoned, its existence undermined the voice of the Wales Youth Agency on behalf of the youth work sector, fuelling internecine conflict within the sector and it later disbanded. In the early 2010s, the Youth Work Alliance, including voluntary sector, LA youth services⁸ and ETS Wales, but not training providers, was established to represent the sector (Rose, 2013). However, it had poor relations with government, and in a challenging context, given the financial crisis (from 2008) and subsequent period of austerity, which led to cuts in youth work funding and a focus upon more targeted youth work (e.g. supporting and re-engaging young people depicted as not in education, employment or training – ‘NEET’), it had limited influence.

5. A new dawn or false dawn? Renewing or rescuing youth work education and training in Wales

In the period 2017-2020, a series of critical reports on the state of the youth work sector and youth work practice in Wales, coupled with changes in the civil service team responsible for youth work delivery (who played critical roles in rebuilding fractured relationships) and politicians involved in shaping policy, led to a new, more positive, relationship between the youth work sector and government in Wales. This was given concrete expression through the new Interim Youth Work Board, with representation from the voluntary and statutory youth work sectors and ETS Wales, and increased funding for youth work and youth services. A Workforce Development Strategy Participation Group, including representatives from the government, youth work sector and training providers, was established to take forward the new Youth Work Strategy’s commitment to supporting voluntary and paid professional youth work staff to improve their practice. This includes work to:

• map and better understand the youth work workforce in Wales;
• develop the professional learning offer for youth workers; 
• improve the recruitment and retention of youth workers; and
• explore the extension of professional regulation of youth workers by the Education Workforce Council.

While founded upon broad based stakeholder involvement, with much less internecine conflict than has often prevailed in earlier periods, it is too early to judge if these reforms can ensure that youth work education and training can meet the escalating challenges facing young people and youth workers in the 21^st Century.

6. The effectiveness of youth worker education and training

In their 2020 review of The Value of Youth Work Training, Estyn (the independent inspectorate of education and training in Wales) conclude that: 

Youth work qualifications equip students with a sound background in youth work practice and provide them with the skills they need to carry out their profession….Youth work training programmes align well with the five key aims outlined in the Youth Work Strategy for Wales 2019. Course content at all levels has a suitable balance between academic and practical training and gives students the skills they need to carry out jobs in a wide variety of youth and community work settings.

p.5, Estyn, 2020

They attribute this to a number of factors including:

• “Youth and community work tutors [who] are experienced and qualified youth workers, who use their practical experiences in the field to enhance their teaching and academic input”;
• the courses’ “work placements”, “a vital element of youth work training programmes” which provides “the practical setting in which students can use the theoretical aspects of their course and reflect on their own practice under the supervision of others”; 
• effective leadership and management in education and training providers (including “robust quality management”); and
•  the roles played by ETS and the UK Joint Negotiating Committee (JNC) standards which “ensures that youth workers are qualified and trained to the highest professional levels” (p.6. Estyn, 2020).

However, they also identify that:

• unlike comparable professions like teachers, youth workers do not have the same status or access to professional learning opportunities (after qualifying); and
• there is no national programme for training senior youth work leaders.

In relation to professional learning opportunities, Estyn identify that the “unit-based nature of youth work training from Level 2 and right through the degree levels provides ideal opportunities for youth workers to follow units that they have not completed before” and develop skills and knowledge in areas like young people’s mental health, but that there is a lack of funding to support this. They also note the steps taken by the Interim Youth Board to develop training for senior youth work leaders. (p. 41. Esyn, 2020).

7. Conclusions

The emergence and development of education and training in Wales over the last fifty years was not centrally co-ordinated or planned (e.g. by the Westminster or Welsh Government or, when it existed, by the Wales Youth Agency). There was recognition within government and critically employers, of the value and importance of training, but this was a decentred process, in which the development of education and training in North, South and West Wales was driven by individuals from the youth work sector and beyond, with differing and sometimes competing visions and philosophies and professional networks. 

The credibility (e.g. in terms of experience and qualifications) of those developing the first courses was critical, as was their professional relationships and links to training providers, colleges and universities and policy makers and their ability to find and cultivate allies. The involvement of stakeholders from the youth work sector, local and central government and educational and training providers (including universities) was essential to ensure training survived and adapted to new demands. It was these coalitions of individuals and institutions, sometimes working in parallel, sometimes collaboratively and sometimes in competition with each other, rather than any one individual or institution, which drove the establishment and development of youth work education and training in Wales.

However, this is not simply an account of individual determination and initiative. As the case study illustrates, it is possible to discern a number of key turning points in the evolution of youth work education and training, as the practice architecture (the material-economic, socio-political and cultural-discursive context) changed. Changes in the practice architecture provided the structure determining both when youth worker education and training in Wales could be developed by individuals and institutions and also how it developed, expanded and at times contracted. 

Individuals’ capacity and ability to shape and control the development of youth work education and training in Wales has been both enabled and constrained by wider structures such as:

• The UK’s government’s and since 1999, the Welsh Government’s policy, priorities and funding. For example, the success and growth of the first training courses in the 1960s and 1970s depended upon both funding for training and the growth in demand from employers for trained youth workers (and therefore demands from students for training places).  In contrast, in the 2000s, the Welsh Assembly Government “clipped the wings” of those like the Wales Youth Agency, when they came to be seen as too powerful competitors, and instead created new roles for those working with young people, such as “learning coaches”. This gave local authorities much greater latitude to employ those they chose to work with young people, without the constraints surrounding the profession of ‘youth work’, such as JNC conditions of employment; and
• ultimately, the demands of students and employers and voluntary sector providers for training (demand influenced by bodies like the JNC, ETS Wales and the creation of new roles for those working with young people), as when this demand has fallen, courses have been threatened. 

In addition, national regulatory bodies like ETS Wales, have played a part, by setting the standards for JNC recognised education and training. If institutions choose to deliver them (e.g. because there is demand from employers and students for this), ETS Wales can scrutinise provision on behalf of employers and youth work practitioners, to help maintain standards and coherence in training. Similarly, the EWC can help ensure fitness to practice for those choosing to employ qualified youth workers or youth support workers.  More recently, the weakness of youth work practice highlighted by regulatory bodies such as Estyn (the education and training inspectorate for Wales) has prompted moves to refresh and renew youth work training to ensure it remains fit for purpose in a swiftly changing world. 

Therefore, this is not a story of a smooth linear evolution of education and training over the last half century. The path has been crooked and composed of multiple tracks. The sector has often been damaged rather than developed by different factions within youth work seeking to shape youth worker education and training and, indeed other facets of the youth work landscape). Therefore, as a result, education and training provision has ebbed and flowed over time. The current phase (post 2017) may mark a new turning point, as increasing stakeholder involvement from the youth sector, government and to a lesser extent education and training providers, may lead to the development of new qualifications for senior youth work leaders and a new professional learning offer for youth workers, that can help ensure that youth work in Wales remains effective and relevant in the 21^st Century. 

Sources

⁽¹⁾ The ETS was initially established by the Council for Education and Training in Youth and Community Work (CETYCW) at the National Youth Bureau.

⁽²⁾ Programmes under franchise arrangements were with “Flintshire, the North West Wales Training Consortium (Conwy, Ynys Mon & Gwynedd),  Neath and Port Talbot Training Consortium, Merthyr and Caerphilly Training Consortium, Vale of Glamorgan, Mg Training and, in England, Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin Training Consortium” (ETS, n.d.).

⁽³⁾ Before national vocational qualifications were developed in 2005, part-time youth workers could complete a regional or locally developed qualification (ETS, n.d.).

⁽⁴⁾ Students may also get a Level 4 Certificate or a Level 5 Diploma as part of their Level 6 BA (Hons) degree course; however, if they do not continue to the full BA (Hons) Degree at Level 6, this is classed as non-completion by the university (Brierly, 2017).

⁽⁵⁾ The EWC covers qualified youth workers and youth support workers and also for example, teachers and support staff in schools and colleges.

⁽⁶⁾ The Council for Wales of Voluntary Youth Services (CWVYS)

⁽⁷⁾ The Principal Youth Officers Group, Education

⁽⁸⁾ Through Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA), and the Principal Youth Officers Group (PYOG)

Bibliography

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