Essential Info:

• Tuesday 4th December 2012, 7:30pm – 9:45pm
• The Wickbourne Centre in Clun Road, Littlehampton. (map link)
• FREE entry, plus Cafe open selling drinks and snacks

What’s It All About?

Talking about sex with young people is never easy, but the need for open conversation about relationships is more pressing than ever before. With 90% of young people saying they feel under increasing pressure to become sexually active (Radio One Bare It All Sex Survey 2008), it’s time we broke the silence and started the conversation.

The ‘Let’s Talk About Sex Roadshow‘ is a fun, interactive and frank evening to help Mums, Dads, Carers, Youth-workers and Churches talk to their teens and future teens, about the HOT TOPICS such as:

The LTAS Roadshow aims to provide some practical guidance to help avoid the pitfalls of being cringy, judgemental or just plain clueless! It is being run by Romance Academy – a national sex and relationships education initiative, and hosted by Arun Community Church. The content is based from a Christian perspective, but will be suitable for those of other faiths and none. You can find out more about Romance Academy and what they do on their website here.

Urban youth ministry, “middle school” youth ministry, new kinds of youth ministry, biblical youth ministry, relational youth ministry, youth ministry discipleship, etc, etc. Now I know these resources can be helpful and I’ve not read most of them so don’t want to be critical of the authors or content, but it did make me wonder whether we need any of these ‘how to’ manuals?

If we’re investing in our own spiritual development and are reflective practitioners in our work, then perhaps we might not need to borrow someone else’s model of youth ministry and can simply get on with being who God has called us to be. Perhaps I’m being a touch naive!

What do you think? Do you buy lots of resources or are they a waste of time?

As part of the conference, on Sunday morning a hosted a one-hour session titled ‘Replacing The Youth Service’. For clarity, the premise was on engaging and encouraging churches (and other orgs) to step in where statutory youth provision has been cut – not to undermine or take-over the existing local authority youth services. To that end, I gave a bit of context to the national situation before explaining the journey we’ve been on locally in re-opening a youth centre alongside Rustington Parish Council, and starting a drop-in with Littlehampton Town Council. We then looked at some of the opportunities and barriers in doing this kind of work. I rather enjoyed myself and want to thank everyone who kindly sat through my ramblings.

For your amusement, I’ve embedded the basic powerpoint below. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

I have been busy with a huge amount of youth worker-y things that demand my time and attention, so please forgive my online absence. I do plan to keep posting here.

This coming weekend I’m back in Eastbourne for Youthwork The Conference where I’ll be running a session titled ‘Replacing the Youth Service‘. It’s a provocative subject, but rather than criticise what’s happening to the statutory youth sector, I’ll be looking at the opportunities and issues for voluntary agencies to get involved. To that end, you can read a new blog post I’ve written on the Conference website here. It’s the entry called ‘Opportunity In The Community’. here’s the intro:

When I was a teenager, there was a thriving youth club in my town. Although girls had been welcome for many years, and lots attended, everyone still called it “the boys club”. It was rough and ready with questionable health and safety, but people loved going along mainly due to ‘Big Al’ who kept a strict but fair eye over the place. It was open nearly five nights a week and excelled at sports with hundreds of trophies for pool, table tennis and boxing lining the walls.

As a young unqualified youth worker I worked one evening a week at the club. It was often challenging and sometimes chaotic, but was still well used by the local young people. I learned a lot of valuable lessons there – experiences I would never have got from just volunteering at my church (which I did for years).

Today I’m a trustee of that youth club, but right now it’s struggling to survive

Click through to read the rest…

Pause by Rafa Puerta Photo on Flickr

As in previous years, I’m taking a blogging break over the summer. I had hoped to post a few things, but I’m juggling a number of fun activities during these holidays and not sure I’ll have the head space to get it done! Check back soon but in the meantime have a GREAT summer.

And @bobweasel who gets a mention in the top 100 websites in @youthworkmag

— Steve Tennant (@stevetennantyes) July 14, 2012

The magazine gets delivered to the church office, so I wasn’t aware of it or able to check it out until yesterday.

I’m honoured to be included in such a list alongside other websites that I consider to be brilliant. However, I was very amused to discover that I’m listed at the significant place of 99 out of 100!

Keeping me humble…

It has led to no end of jokes from friends, so I’m considering a new tagline for this website: “99th out of 100 best websites for youth ministry!”

What do you think?

A chance to have your say!

I first posted about the Institute for Youth Work in May last year where I was quite critical of the idea as it seemed to be a ‘buy-in’ club for qualified workers propped up by government money. After meeting with the NYA to clarify the proposal, I posted an update that explained money had only been given to the Catalyst consortium to explore the idea and find support among the sector – not to set up the institute (even if it had enough support). I was subsequently asked to join a ‘support and challenge group’ where we fed back our concerns about both the idea and the process for moving it forward. Then in September, there was an initial consultation to see what youth workers thought about the idea for a national Institute, and what it might become.

The main response drawn from that first consultation was that an Institute for Youth Work was worth investigating as an idea (92% of respondents agreed), although any detail beyond that was difficult.

There were strong views both for and against the proposals for a register of practitioners (49% in favour) and the licence to practise (38% in favour). However many comments revealed that respondents wanted more information in order to make a decision, rather than having an outright objection.

All this has now led to a second, more focused consultation which sets out a proposal for what the IYW might do. The proposal includes the aims, objectives and outcomes, membership of the institution, fees and governance, and more. But rather than being a finished document, it is a starting point to aid thinking and discussion. As is mentioned in the introduction:

It is important to stress that this is a truly open process. We aim to find out if there is real support for an IYW, whether or not youth workers and youth work organisations would join it in the form proposed, or whether there are ways in which the proposal could be amended to better meet the requirements of the sector. If our consultation reveals insufficient support within the sector to make it viable, the project will not be taken forward.

And this is why it is really important that YOU as a youth worker, volunteer, manager or student complete the survey. If you don’t voice your opinion now, then we may end up with an umbrella organisation that does not do what you need it to do. You need only do 2 things:

1. Go here and read the proposal as it stands. Decide if you agree or not and form some opinions, then;
2. Go here and complete the survey.

The deadline for submissions is 31st July so there’s only a couple of weeks left. Please pass this around as far and wide as possible so we can get enough representation from across the sector. Once you completed the survey, let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

There’s a full press release on their new website which states:

The world around us is constantly changing, and we need to change with it to make sure we are in the strongest possible position to respond to new opportunities and in the best place to advocate on behalf of our member youth organisations. We want to make sure everyone knows who we are and what we do, and communicate our messages to a wider audience.

The sudden transformation reminds me of how Crusaders became Urban Saints a few years back, and from reading Ambition’s 3 year plan (PDF link) I’m equally impressed with their vision and direction:

Our Vision: To inspire and encourage all young people to achieve

Our Mission: To lead young people’s services across the UK

How we do it:

• Provide and manage personal development opportunities for young people
• Develop our quality standard for youth organisations
• Invest in our training programmes
• Work collaboratively
• Listen to and involve young people
• Evidence the impact of our work and our membership
• Influence local and national policy

Our Values:

• We are spirited Our energy and determination inspire others
• We collaborate We value working with others to achieve our goals
• We are creative We are forward thinking and make the most of our resources
• We lead We are proud to use our knowledge and experience but also to listen and learn from others

I genuinely hope this is beginning of great things for Ambition as they seek to support youth clubs across the country.

How about you? Are you affiliated to Ambition (or previously Clubs for Young People)? Why or why not?

This is the third year the event has run and the organisers from schoolswork.co.uk are billing it as “an opportunity for visitors to schools to gather together and celebrate the start of a new academic year by reminding ourselves why we’re doing what we’re doing and how to be better connected with each other while we do that”. If you’re involved in going into schools as part of your work, then this will be a very useful day!

• This year we will be about getting to grips with how the Bible sees education and what we can understand about our mission within that.

• We will be hearing about a collection of challenges that schools workers around the UK are facing, after which will be an opportunity to dialogue about some of those challenges and how we might approach them strategically.

• With space for worship, prayer, coffee and networking, we also want to bless and encourage you as you set out for a whole new year of ministry.  With input from Krish Kandiah, you will be inspired and commissioned to go out and serve across 2012 – 2013, making a difference in the lives of thousands of children and young people across the UK.

If you’re interested it is running from 10am – 3.30pm at London School of Theology, central London. The cost is £15 per person and it’s suggested you bring your own lunch. There will also be an opportunity to access schoolswork.co.uk resources at discounted prices!

Book online here

The purpose of the National Occupational Standards is to describe the knowledge and skills needed to perform a job role or work task. They exist for a huge number of vocations and provide a benchmark of good practice as they explain what needs to be done. For example, the NOS outline the purpose of youth work and define its values:

There are potentially loads of uses for the National Occupational Standards. They have been used by voluntary organisations to help design youth work training courses where the learning outcomes match the NOS criteria. You can download the Uses Document from NCVYS to find out 113 things you can use the NOS for. Having said that, I don’t know many practicing workers who are very familiar with the NOS, it seems to be managers and trainers who know their way around them.

The new 2012 Youth Work NOS looks different to previous versions, although it is mostly the format that has changed. However I understand that there was great deliberation around the inclusion of the ‘Spiritual Development’ standard that was present in the 2008 version (1.1.4). Sadly as a consensus wasn’t reached by the stakeholder group responsible for the NOS, this was removed and references to spirituality have been downgraded under the ‘Beliefs and Values’ standard (YW14). As someone who works in a faith and community setting, I find that dissapointing.

Take a look for yourself and download the new Youth Work National Occupational Standards here.

What do you think about the NOS? Have you ever read them or used them? Let us know in the comments!