Resisting the professional turn: revisiting youth work as a covenantal process

Youth work in England has its recorded origins (Furlong 2012) in the mid industrial period (circa 1800-1870). Characterised as a social movement youth work, in line with social pedagogy practices on the continent, formed part of collaborative familial and community processes that supported young people’s upbringing within a range of informal, social activities (Davies 2013; Charfe and Gardner 2020). Particular attention was given to adolescent social and moral character development alongside some political education. However, following the Butler Act (1944) the government in England established a National Youth Agency in recognition of the value of youth work as a means to support young people’s social mobility and post WWII economic growth. Subsequently, historical and contemporary youth work practices, policy initiatives and debates have increasingly become subject to the professionalising of these activities.

Specifically, the pedagogical relationship with young people has become led by the imperatives of policy rather than by the interests and needs of the young people and community members participating in the processes of their upbringing. Coinciding with this process has seen the introduction of contractual practices that position young people as clients to a youth service where desired outputs between the youth worker and young person are agreed prior to intervention in order to meet funding criteria.

In this article we revisit the origins of youth work in England to conceptualise the youth worker and young person relationship more centrally within covenantal processes of communal and familial upbringing. We argue, in line with Davies (2013; 2016) and broader claims related to similar issues in social pedagogy practices (Cameron 2013; Charfe and Gardner 2020), that positioning young people as clients to youth workers within contractual relationships that focus on pre-determined outcomes can dissembed the young person from the collaborative processes of upbringing situated within family and community relationships.

Grounded in a youth work project called Beyond the School Gates (BSG) we assert that covenantal relationships offer a more substantive ethical basis for youth work practice than contractual ones. We demonstrate what this might look like in practice and consider how it might be promoted in youth work training.