National Youth Work Strategy

The long awaited National Youth Work Strategy was launched at Youthlink's annual conference on 13th March 2007. Entitled "Moving Forward" the strategy includes a year of action on youth work, new funding structures for youth work buildings, recruitment and training of volunteers and a £2.5m fund for Youth Opportunities in local communities.

YMCA Scotland warmly welcomed the strategy and the recognition of the need for targeted support at both national and local level in Scotland. YMCA also looks forward to a commitment to extend this strategy from the newly elected government in 2008. Beyond a year of action and some encouraging elements of initial funding support YMCA Scotland was particularly pleased to see the introduction of a cross departmental approach to include youth work in services to young people whether they be in the social work, youth justice or school fields. Only this sort of culture change to integrate youth work skills to work with disaffected young people where appropriate can truly transform the way we help underachievers to become successful learners.

It is vital that the Scottish government builds upon this Year of Action for youth work and on the mass interest and sense of optimism in the sector that the youth strategy consultation provoked.

A Spiritual Aspect to every Young Person

One of the key issues for YMCA in the delivery of the youth strategy is the aspect of spiritual well-being for young people. It is crucial that we as youth workers provide support to young people from a physical perspective, from a mental perspective and from a spiritual perspective. If we fail to provide support on all three we fail to provide a holistic and rounded youth service and ultimately fail our young people.

It is the spiritual aspect that we struggle with in Scotland. Often interpreted as religion, it is important that we recognise that when crises land and when circumstances put young people under real pressure the inner strength and character that brings them through the situation is their capacity to be spiritual.

Some young people may name this strength as learning from experience, others may attribute some of this strength to their faith, others may attribute some of this strength to character traits formed over the years. However described we must facilitate the development of such strength to avoid young people failing to achieve their full potential because they haven't dealt adequately with crises and pressures in their lives.

Since 2005 YMCA has convened a large group of youth organisations which has explored this theme ultimately submitting a paper to the Scottish government as part of the youth strategy consultation.

When the National Youth Work Strategy was finally launched in March 2007 it made very brief reference to the issue of spiritual well-being. It proposed, "support for training and opportunities to share good practice on the handling of issues and discussion relating to ethics, morals, equality and faith issues which might arise in working with young people in a youth work context".

Though much less than YMCA might have anticipated this provided an opportunity to take forward the debate and as a result a grant application was submitted to Youthlink for a major piece of research into spiritual well-being. This application produced a small grant to enable engagement with young people on the issue but did not fund the research.

YMCA Scotland has subsequently developed and piloted a consultation on the issue which will target over 1,000 young people in their teens and which will ask them to explore how they cope with difficult circumstances and how they perceive their inner strength. If your youth group is interested in taking part in this consultation between now and March 2008 please contact jeanette@ymcascotland.org