Youth Work SA

Ms COOK (Fisher) (15:34): On Friday 4 November this year, an exciting and important initiative was launched at the Brocas Community Centre here in South Australia. I was thrilled to represent minister Bettison at this launch, having worked with and employed many youth workers over the past eight years or so. Youth work is a vital profession providing relationship-based support to so many young people, with a huge percentage of them being vulnerable and isolated.

Youth Work SA is a professional association specifically for youth workers. It invites youth work practitioners, managers and academics as well as service providers and training providers to join an educative and restorative movement towards a strong professional identity for youth workers in South Australia. This local association is the embodiment of a much larger international push towards the professionalisation of youth work in recent years.

Youth work emerged in the UK around the middle of the 19^th century with early involvement in the church and recreation sectors. Up until the 1970s, youth work in Australia was still largely being done by volunteers with Christian affiliations and was focused around civil society groups who sought to support young people to become healthy, active citizens. This included organisations like the Scouts, guides and brigades. In the seventies, my uncle formed a youth club in Chester, UK—an informal drop-in-style space for young people outside school hours which continues to be now a dominant form of youth work.

We also see detached youth work in which these workers engage young people in an outreach capacity in the community and on the streets. In Australia, the advent of child welfare and protection of young people from all manner of abuses continues to influence the identity of youth work, with the youth workers today in schools, churches, prisons, local councils, charities, for-profit as well as not-for-profit community services, advocacy and political movements. They employ knowledge and skill from psychology, sociology, criminology, teaching, counselling and social work as well as a range of practical life skills.

In South Australia, the peak body for youth affairs, the Youth Affairs Council of South Australia (YACSA), was incorporated in 1982; however, unlike the other states of Australia, South Australia has had no widely adopted code of professional ethics for youth workers. As such, they have not had a central body to advocate for and educate around the distinct identity of their profession. Across the general sector, there is a shared agreement on the need for a strong identity built on robust education and training.

At its core, youth work is really about professional relationships with young people. The relationship is a basis for young people having the capacity and safety to create changes in their lives. Whilst not an end in itself, the youth worker fosters a professional relationship with a young person for the purpose of supporting them to establish and maintain their own healthy, functioning relationships with other people, their culture and society at large. In doing so, the young person is understood to be a full citizen with the associated rights and responsibilities.

Youth Work SA exists to champion this vision of the youth work profession. By establishing a professional association in South Australia, youth workers and those interested in supporting young people can sustain and grow the profile of the unique and essential work of youth workers. In South Australia, Youth Work SA exists to:

develop and promote a shared ethical framework for youth work practice;

promote practice standards for youth work in South Australia;

develop a strong identity for youth work as a unique profession;

bring credibility and accountability to the unique and essential work of youth workers; and

advocate for the ongoing development of training and development for the profession of youth work.

So far, the youth work association of South Australia has achieved:

the facilitation of a sector consultation with youth workers;

engagement with a number of youth workers and key agencies such as YACSA and the Office of the Guardian for Children and Young People;

incorporation as an association in South Australia;

development of an ethical framework to guide youth work practice;

the successful launch of the professional youth work association, which I attended; and

a register for youth workers as members of the association.

Congratulations to all the amazing workers who have worked so determinedly over and above their paid work to bring Youth Work SA to fruition. I am really grateful to have actually been there at the birth of the conversation around this association, talking about the imperatives and the essential parts of the work it would do, and then also to be able to help with its launch now years down the track. It is a real honour. Every day, youth workers not only change lives but create life itself for the young people they work with in an empowering and individualised way. I congratulate Youth Work SA and look forward to advocating on their behalf.