Month: January 2008

I've just booked a place at Children and Young People Now's 'Keeping Children Safe Online' conference. It's not a conference title I'm entirely comfortable with. It appears to embody two key errors in thinking about young people and the internet

• An over-emphasis on risk
• The wrong response to risk

In exploring my concerns on these points, the provisional thoughts and explorations I've been working through emerged as this blog post.

An over-emphasis on risk

It's easy to talk about risks. When you're looking for the possibility of trouble – you can usually find it. And when you've identified trouble – the (cognitively) 'easy' response is to put up fences – block it off and 'protect' people from it. If you can stop one person from experiecing the 'risk' – then putting up the fences is worth it. The logic follows that risks are bad – and risks should be removed.

Lizzie Jackson perceptively writes:

“What concerns me is the child protection industry which is increasing apace and, through its expansion, it could be argued, the promotion of the perceived risks to children.”

It's far trickier to talk about:

a) Navigating risk – that altogether more sutle process of possessing the right skills, having the relevant cognitive and emotional assets, accessing the right advice, and being in the right settings to turn what could be a seen as a potential 'trouble' situation into an opportunity for individual development.

b) Opportunities – If 'all risks are bad' are all opportunities good?
Opportunities are prospective, provisional spaces for exploration. We don't know exactly where they lead. We can't specify what will definitely happen when an opportunity is pursued. And most opportunities involve some risk (which, by implication, makes them bad?). If you tell me not to do something because of the risk, you know what happens. I don't do it. If you encourage me to explore the opportunity, sensitive to navigating risk, then you need to accept you don't know exactly what is going to happen. That can be tricky.

The wrong response to risk

The recent BBC Panorama documentary 'One Click from Danger' suggested that, in response to risks online, under 18's should not use their real names and only talk to those they have had real world contact with.

That's a set of recomendations that cut young people off from a rich range of opportunities and experiences for social interaction and development online.

And it's a set of recomendations that entirely ignore the crucial role of young people's participation in their own protection.

*

The slide above (a rightful favorite of Bill Badham's) outlines how young people's right to participate is the keystone that holds together their rights to be protected, and their rights to provision. Effective protection can only happen through participation.

We should be engaging young people in all the decisions that affect their online lives – not setting down arbitary rules that exclude them from key decisions and fail to engage young people in managing risks in partnership with trusted peers and adults around them.

Asking the right questions

How can adults keep young people safe online? They can't. Not on their own. And certainly not by using inflexible rule and systems of control.

Rather – we need to be asking about how we can support young people to be safe online? And – how we can support young people to make the most of the opportunities and provisions available online?

Or to rephrase the question into a form that might provide a little for structure for discussion and sharing of practice:

What does young people's effective participation in their own protection, and the provision for them, look like in the online context?

*As an (important) aside – given the UK has signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child from which the rights in the model above come – surely it should form the basis for our public policy in this area?

This is cross-posted from 'Tim on Youth Work' over on the C&YPN blogs. If you want to leave a comment, that's probably the best place to head to.

On the back page of this months Youth Work Now Michael Bracey highlights the lack of engagement between youth work and new technology. Search online for 'Youth Work' and you find very little from anyone outside of the world of youth ministry. And I've not yet managed to find a single one of the 27,000 statutory sector youth workers out there blogging about youth work!*

When you look at our colleagues in education, not only is there masses of technology innovation happening in places like Futurelab, but the 'eduBloggers' are so active they even have their own awards ceremony for best blogs of the year! So perhaps it's time for youth work to catch up and get blogging.

Why should you be blogging?:

A blog is a flexible platform for sharing and communication. You've probably seen blogs that are someone's personal diary telling you everything they did or thought this week – but blogging is about a lot more than that. It is about generating communities of practice sharing news, resources and stories. It is about building strong networks and championing causes. And it's about creating the space for innovation, exchange of ideas, and new connections that all spill over into our day-to-day work and make youth work work better.

Reason #1: Sharing resources

How many different resources have you used in the last month? How many have you put together? How many would others benefit from knowing about and being able to use?

With a blog you can share links to useful resources, or, if you've created your own, you can easily upload digital copies and make them available for others to download and use.

You don't only have to share the resource, you can also share the story of how you used it to give context to the tools, and you can invite feedback from others through the comments feature of a blog.

Try, for example, these resources from a consultation I ran on promoting the local offer…

Reason #2: Reflective practice

A blog can be your professional reflective journal. It is a space to 'think aloud' about the successes and challenges of day-to-day work with young people. And you can invite others to join you in your reflections through the comments on your blog, or making postings on their own blogs.

Blogging has a real role to play in lifelong learning and professional development. Michelle Martin provides some great pointers on blogging for reflection and learning over here…

Reason #3: Building networks

The chances are that your professional interests are not just in 'youth work'. You might be interested in 'youth work' and 'health', or 'youth work' and 'activism'.

You have a network of interests, and there are networks of bloggers out there with interests that overlap with yours. You can use a blog to join in those critical conversations, find and share ideas and to build dynamic and evolving interdisciplinary networks.

Plus, your blog doesn't just sit there on the internet linking you to 'virtual people'. You can use it to carry on the conversation after a conference, or to keep in touch with a growing network of colleagues across the country.

Reason #4: Innovating and raising the bar

Good ideas should spread. If you've had a good idea – share it.

Stories of good practice should inspire and challenge us. If you've seen a great example of youth work doing what youth work should – share it.

When I say 'share it' – I mean, 'blog it'. A blog gives you a platform to make sure everyone can hear the new ideas, and can see what good youth work can achieve.

Reason #5: Sharing positive stories about young people

We all know there are too few positive stories in the media about young people. But with a blog you can be the media. What are the positive stories you have to share?

Readers of your blog can subscribe to get updates using an RSS reader, or sometimes be e-mail as well. What is your local paper was reading your blog of positive stories? And your local councillors?

You might even want to experiment with audio and video and create a vodCast or podCast.

Reason #6: Linking with the local community

The guardian recently ran a story on the evolution of local 'blogospheres'. Blogging isn't just about talking to people the other side of the country – it can be an effective tool for sharing information locally.

Take for example Andrew K Brown's overview of the blogosphere in Lewisham. Does your area have a vibrant community of local bloggers? Could being part of it help you develop links and social capital, and promote a positive local voice for young people?

Reason #7: Enhancing your youth work

All the reasons above are about why youth workers should have person blogs. But there are many more opportunities to use blogs in your work with young people. Does your youth forum have a blog? How could a blog be used to showcase young people's work? What role does a blog have to play as a portfolio of informal learning? If this group of 9 and 10 year olds can do it, so can you…

Why else should youth workers be blogging?

I'm sure the list above only touches a few of the reaons you might want to start blogging as a youth worker – if you've got other ideas, do drop them into the comments.

And if you're inspired to get started with a blog – do let me know as well – we could try and launch a bit of a learning journey together to get started blogging and building the youth work blogosphere community…

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(*Are there really no youth workers blogging: I'm very much hoping someone will correct me on this and point me to lots of great youth worker blogs. If you do, I'll link to them here and on a future post…)

Update: You can download the final paper here. Or head over onto the NYA website to vie a Voice Thread presentation with an overview of the key findings.

 

In my last Round Up post I mentioned a new research report on 'Positive Youth Development'. Well, I'm rather excited to be able to tell you we'll be having a 'research launch' for the paper on the 21st January 2008 from 10am till 12 noon at the Thistle Bloomsbury in London.

I'll be co-presenting with Sarah Schulman on what Positive Youth Development is, and we'll be looking at what it has to offer the landscape of policy and provision for young people in the UK.

And you are most welcome to join us.

What is Positive Youth Development?

Well – that's what we were trying to explore in the paper.

Positive Youth Development as a concept has its roots in US based work with young people. It draws upon ideas from the science of adolescent development to inform the design and structure of 'developmentally appropriate' programmes, activities and settings for work with young people.

In the US there is a strong Positive Youth Development that is seeking to create a positive 'public idea' about youth – challenging negative attitudes towards young people and replacing them with a vision for young people as thriving members of communities.

In the United Kingdom the recent Ten Year Strategy for young people referenced a number of Positive Youth Development sources when it set out a vision for young people – although the substance of the document was only an incomplete shift towards Positive Youth Development ideas.

Why should I care?

I first came into contact with Positive Youth Development (PYD) when co-facilitating particition training for health professionals in the US in 2006. Since exploring it further, I've found it to be a school of thought with a lot to offer thinking about young people in the UK:

• PYD can help us articulate a vision for thriving young people
• PYD can help us think about what it means for an activity to be structured – or why it is that positive activities will be so positive
• PYD encourages us to shift from measuring deficit to measuring the positive assets young people develop
• PYD offers both an intellectual, and a practical, framework for thinking about work with young people

PYD ideas shouldn't be wholesale imported into the UK context – but I strongly suspect there is a lot to be gained from a deeper conversation about what they have to offer us. And it's that conversation we're hoping to make a start on on the 21st January in London.

The research launch

If you're interested in coming along then it would be great to see you. There will be refreshments available from 10am. To register to come you'll simply need to let ritaK@nya.org.uk know who you are, any organisation you'll be representing, and any special requirements you might have – and Rita will send you the full paper and final details of the venue.

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Attachment: Davies and Schulman – Positive Youth Development Literature Review.pdf