The Key learnings from delivering 10,000 hours of community youth work- Part one

Over a ten year period between 2005-2015, I led the work of Leatherhead Youth Project (LYP), with an amazing team, delivering thousands of youth work sessions in one of Surrey’s most disadvantaged communities. The following learning and ideas were developed through my own personal experience as a young person and over a decade of running an open access youth drop-in, that opened every day after school, for young people aged 11-17. Working with former and new colleagues over the last few years, through Relational Hub, our Key Principles below, have been formalised even more and become the driving force of our work supporting Churches and youth work organisations across the UK.

The spaces we welcome young people into are profoundly important and communicate our values and beliefs. We all intrinsically know about the value of environments. Whether it’s being welcomed into a beautiful home, going for a sunset walk along a beach or enjoying a meal in your favourite restaurant, environments invoke strong feelings, consciously and subconsciously. This is something we clearly observed from the very start of running our youth drop-in in Leatherhead. We made a real effort to make the space feel welcoming and modern, feeling like a home or coffee shop rather than what most young people expected from a youth centre they may of attended elsewhere. We learnt that, If we put the care and love we have for our own homes, into the spaces that we welcome young people into, they saw our values from day one, and although they may not of articulated it at the time, they we much more likely to return and be open to building positive relationships that lasted. One of my personal mantra’s was for this was “If it’s not good enough for my home, it’s not good enough for our youth centre”.

We also placed a high value on the quality of the equipment and furnishings we provided for young people and we were quick to replace or repair anything that got broken. We found that, consistent with the ‘broken window pane theory’, providing good quality equipment and surroundings, young people treated them with respect and they felt valued in a trust building way. Over the ten plus years of working at LYP, we rarely had anything intentionally damaged and on the very rare occasion something was stolen, it was almost always returned.

The other ingredient of Radical Hospitality is human generosity and I think it’s summed up as ‘being available’. Whether it was; a warm welcome, time spent enjoying an activity, a listening ear, finding a solution to a problem or providing healthy snacks and food for free. As youth workers, being able to be generous with our time, our resources and our skills increased young people’s trust, confidence and social skills and gave them the needed platform to work out who they were and how they wanted to contribute to their local community and wider world.

Opening up your doors, to the same cohort of local young people, on a consistent basis will transform your ability to build positive relationships. Human trust is formed through relationships and we form our sense of trust quickest with those we spend the most time with. We trust those around us, through our experience of their honesty, fairness, kindness and generosity towards us and others. For most young people this sense of trust if formed most profoundly with those they spend most time with, their family at home, their peers and teachers at school, but for some it’s not a positive experience. Our job as youth workers is to build trust and relate to young people in such a way that will enable us to positively support their development, in living a healthy life and positively contributing to society. For the young people most in need or at risk, the more time we can give to building trust with them, the increased opportunity we have of being able to respond in crisis moments or when they need to be given support or an opportunity to aid their personal development.

Our experience of opening the doors at LYP, five days a week after school, was that it gave youth workers the time and space required, to build trusting relationships in an informal environment, where young people were trusted (with a beautiful space and good quality equipment) and given choice to participate (a drop-in with no pressure to join in with particular activities). Last year, we heard from former and current young people as part of our ‘Feels like home’ research project that the element of choice alongside the informal nature of the drop-in sessions, were key to them feeling comfortable to be themselves, and in building trust with the youth workers and volunteers present at the sessions.

Another transformational element to running a drop-in consistently throughout the week, is that it gives you the ability to positively manage behaviour and set a positive culture. If you are a youth worker, especially in an open access setting, you will, no doubt know the feeling of ‘fire-fighting’ when dealing with the challenging behaviour of some young people. Even with our best deescalation techniques and most reasoned minds, it can often feel like a losing battle; especially when your next opportunity to interact with the young person involved is in a weeks time, if you haven’t banned them from the next session! We have found that being open and available, as many days as possible throughout the week, can give you the needed time; a calm listening ear, a reasonable respectful conversation, a chance to show some generosity, or positive peer pressure, that can see past behaviour into attitude and respect, in-order to create a welcoming environment for the young people who need to access it most.

A melting pot of the needs, interests and skills of the young people, alongside the skills, interests and resources of the youth workers, volunteers and wider community. At LYP, if our five day a week, after school drop-in was the bread, the butter was, the dozens of off shoot projects that we co-designed with the young people we worked alongside. Whether it was a weekly football tournament, lads and girls nights, support into work, 1 to 1 mentoring, a band night, a mountain bike project, DofE, a community allotment, an annual residential or trips abroad, these projects seeked to provide the support and opportunities needed for the young people to thrive in all areas of life. The off shoot projects, were of course, designed to meet the needs of local young people and give them key skills for life, but intrinsic to their success, was for them to be co-designed by passionate, skilled and well resourced youth workers and volunteers. It was such projects that had the biggest long-term impact and often created further opportunities for young people to move into leadership roles, learning new skills that equipped them for life. Because our drop-in sessions were informal, these offshoot projects were the spaces that could be designed for more formal support, that was still relational but gave us the opportunity to equip young people in a more individual way, depending on their needs or a groups interests or skills. At LYP, a youth work continuum and levels of need tools were developed to be used to bring a more intentional method of working in our informal environments, whilst making sure young people, especially those most at risk were being offered the support and opportunities they needed to be empowered and to thrive in all areas of life. These tools developed at LYP are now available for use for our Relational Hub partners and Collective members and play an important part in providing long term and impacting support for young people.

Why having a long term approach and plan alongside a clear fundraising strategy is essential to creating a positive impact that is relational, sustainable and effective. When we first opened our doors back in April 2005, to a cohort of local young people aged 13-17, who were already causing difficulties in our local community. It didn’t take us long to discover that we needed a longer term approach, starting by working more strategically with this cohorts younger brothers and sisters. A substantial majority of the initial group we targeted, had such negative view of adults in their life, so much so that we found there to be many more barriers, for us to create the type of safe, welcoming environment for them and their peers needed. After just a few months of opening up our doors a few days a week, we made the decision to take a long break over the Christmas period and regather with a new strategy of working with those aged 11+. There was no doubt that this was a pivotal turning point in our story, and although we didn’t stop offering support for those from the initial cohort, who showed us a respectful attitude, we did focus on those young people, often from the very same families and local community aged 11+. It was in January 2005, that we reopened our doors, five days a week; with a new determination on creating a welcoming and respectful environment that could be safe for everyone who wanted to access it. We went on to support a large cohort of those aged 11+ that year and every year on, many of whom stayed involved for years to come, took up leadership positions, became employees, volunteers and friends. It takes a long term approach to see transformation in a local community and often in a young persons individual life. So committing to the long term, increases your ability to build strong relationships that really make a difference to young peoples lives and equips them to transition positively into a healthy adult life.

At my interview for the job managing the work of LYP back in 2004, I was asked to present a five year plan. As a visionary type, I loved this challenge and really enjoyed presenting to the group of trustees and local young people. My vision was to have a five day a week drop-in centre that focussed on building positive relationships alongside opening up as a community coffee shop to offer employment opportunities. There is no doubt that I had a big vision for the work, but the truth was I didn’t have much experience of knowing how to plan well, especially not with SMART goals, thorough budgeting or with a clear fundraising strategy. Fortunately for me, I had a team of excellent trustees who had some of the experience and skills I didn’t and between us we worked it out - often one month at a time! If there’s a mantra I learnt through this experience it would be to ‘keep a big vision, but head towards it one step at a time’ and ‘that it will often take longer than you think’. In fact, my five year vision plan outworked itself after nine years of being at LYP, when we eventually opened up our social enterprise, speciality coffee shop alongside our community youth drop-in. Thinking in the long-term organisationally, having good administrational support, with strong governance and planning is key to a sustainable and impactful community youth work project.

Another element of this is with finance. Over the 10 years I led LYP, we raised over £1.3 million to support our work from grant and trust fundraising, local community support and local government contracts. Each year, from the very first to my last, we grew our income and expenditure, growing in number of employees and able to support more and more young people, in more impactful ways. In the early years, we often didn’t have more than 3 months running costs in the bank, but we had a confidence in our approach and we were passionate about the difference it was making in the lives of the young people attending and we communicated it as much as we could. The one bit of advice I have on fundraising from this, is ‘not to panic, keep a positive, can do attitude and keep that pipeline flowing’, whether it’s grant and trust fundraising, encouraging community support or sharing your vision and passion with HNWI’s. All in all, and now 17 years since opening, LYP continues to thrive, led by passionate and skilled staff, supporting the young people who need it most in their local community and in the wider Mole Valley area.

I recognise, that these principles and our approach to open access, community youth work, isn’t rocket science, but it also isn’t easy to do! We are passionate about the positive impact the approach can make to a young persons life and to a local community. At Relational Hub, we are now supporting organisations throughout the UK, who share the ideas of these Key Principles and are seeing their work positively impact the young people who are most in need of support in their local communities. We are seeing, every month, that with our support, these Key Principles can unlock the ability of any church, organisation or community group to provide a home-away-from-home that gives life changing support and opportunities to young people in a sustainable and impactful way.

In part two of this blog, I will be looking at the foundations that are needed for any organisation to open up a relational hub in their community. If you would like to know more about receiving our support by partnering with Relational Hub or becoming a member of our Collective, you can arrange a call to chat further here.