News from the European youth sector

  • THIS IS YOUTH WORK: Stories from Practice

The book outlines also some of the features of this practice, particularly the importance of  what seems to be no more than chatting and conversation as a way of stimulating argument and reflection.  All of these combine to make youth work such a distinctive way of working with teenagers. Furthermore  the book outlines how it might be used to resist the attacks on this style of work and on the services which provide it.

Though youth work is a practice run through with uncertainties and contradictions which can offer no advanced guarantees of 'success', on the video a group of young people explain why they have so valued their involvement with it and the positive ways it has affected their lives. 
The DVD also contains narrations of each of the twelve stories. 

The authors hope that This is Youth Work will help explain to politicians, policy-makers and senior managers as well as to the wider public why the work it describes is so needed, why young people so value it and therefore why it should be safeguarded, indeed nurtured in these critical times.
The book and video have been produced by the In Defence of Youth Work [IDYW] campaign with very generous support from UNISON and UNITE/the Community and Youth Workers Union. The book can be downloaded front he EC-CoE partnership website.

 

  • Policy review on social inclusion of youth on the margins of society available on EKCYP: more opportunities, better access and higher

"Social inclusion of socially excluded youth: more opportunities, better access, and higher solidarity" - the present policy review is based on the findings of a cluster of five research projects on the social inclusion of young people, financed by the Socio-Economic Sciences and Humanities Programme (SSH) of the EU 7th Framework Programme.
The cluster is composed of the following research FP 7 research projects:
◦    ‘Young People from a Public Care Background: pathways to education in Europe’. (UK, DK, HU, SE, SP);
◦    ‘Combating Social Exclusion among Young Homeless Populations: a comparative investigation of homeless paths among local white, local ethnic groups and migrant young men and women, and appropriate reinsertion methods’. (UK, PT, CZ, NL);
◦    ‘On the Margins of the European Community – Young adult immigrants in seven European countries’ (NO, SE, UK, SP, EE, FR, IT);
◦    ‘Ethnic differences in education and diverging prospects for urban youth in an enlarged Europe’ (HU, CZ, DK, FR, DE, RO, SK, SE, UK);
◦    ‘Youth, Unemployment, and Exclusion in Europe: A multidimensional approach to understanding the conditions and prospects for social and political integration of young unemployed’. (CH, DE, IT, FR, SE, PL, PT).

Altogether, research evidence comes from eleven old and six new EU Member States, which suggests that this policy-oriented review is based on a good coverage of the countries of the European Union.

  • The 33rd issue of the EU-CoE youth partnership newsletter is now available online.