Youth Workin' It

Consultancy and Resources for Youth Workers and Organizations Worldwide

Working with Youth – Group Development

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Forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning - youth group development
If only they always got on this well!

Working with youth in a group can be both rewarding and challenging.

When youth work together in a group effectively, you can see some really great things happen. They can achieve more together than on their own, they can support each other through effective team work and they can build long lasting relationships.

Or, when youth work together in a group you can see things fall apart – fast. They can have trouble focusing their collective energies, they can decide that personal feelings or vendettas aren’t worth overcoming for the common good and they can fight and bicker until some young people stop coming to the youth group altogether.

Sometimes working with groups of youth it is a mixture of both. While you can work hard to facilitate team work and encourage relationships, each group development is different and they aren’t always going to get along like you wish they would. In fact, it’s almost guaranteed according to Tuckman (1965) that they won’t, at least for some of the time your group is together.

That’s why it’s important to recognize and understand the dynamics of youth group development. They don’t make every group experience rainbows and sunshine, but by understanding and recognizing the stages outlined by Tuckman and Jensen (1977 – see below), you can better understand where your group development is at. Also, teaching these phases to your youth you can help them become more self-aware group participants in the process.

The five stages of group development are:

  1. Forming stage – Early phase of the group meeting with one another
  2. Storming stage – Conflicts arise within the group as they get more comfortable with one another
  3. Norming stage – The group begins to work out their differences
  4. Performing stage – They work cohesively- getting things done and working together
  5. Adjourning stage – The group ends

Over the next few Wednesdays, we’ll go over these stages in greater detail so you can be better prepared when working with youth and identifying what stage of group development they’re at. We’ll also discuss ways you can help the youth in your program learn about Tuckman’s stages of group development. (n.b. use the links on the bullet point list above to read more about each of the stages).

Question: What is one of the biggest challenges of youth group development for you? Let us know in the comments below.

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4 Steps You Can Take To Promote Child Protection

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Child ProtectionQ: What steps can I take to make sure the youth and workers in my programs are safe and protected?

A: The protection and safety of your youth workers and youth should be paramount to your youth work practice and programming. You can safeguard everyone with a few simple, but important, steps for child protection.

  1. Background checks – In the UK it’s the CRB check, in the US there are fingerprint and background checks. However, in the US they are not mandatory in all organizations for working with children and youth. Simply because something isn’t required by the government doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t make it a requirement for your program or organization. Some things are ‘best practice’ for a reason.
  2. Clear policies and procedures for working with youth – We’ve discussed giving out your personal cell phone number. Some things are common practice, like taking a youth home in your car alone, or giving your personal cell phone number out, but that doesn’t mean they are good child protection practice – for the protection of your youth or for your workers. Decide, before your work begins, what is acceptable and unacceptable in your youth work programming or organization and make the expectations clear for everyone involved. Ensure that all workers and volunteers sign agreements that they understand the expectations and will follow all procedures when dealing with youth.
  3. Clear policies and procedures for reporting suspected abuse or to deal with disclosures – Make sure that everyone in your organization and youth programming understands what to do if they suspect child abuse or have a youth disclose information to them. Are there logs they should document it in? Who should they contact first – you, the police, someone else? Who is your Child Protection Officer – do you have one in your organization? These are questions that can be answered easily with a few simple instructions on a policy document given out to all volunteers and workers.
  4. Hold child protection training… and refresh it regularly – Child Protection Training often covers how to handle disclosures by youth, the signs of child abuse and neglect and how to work with the youth in your organization – it’s a good introduction to the policies and procedures they will be required to understand and sign later. By training your workers and volunteers how to handle disclosures and suspected child abuse, you will be arming them with information that they can draw on in a crisis, rather than feeling unable to cope and possibly mishandling a very serious matter.
Question: How do you protect the youth and workers in your program? Let us know in the comments below.

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Efficiency in Youth Work Administration

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Efficiency in youth work administrationIn my experience, a lot of youth workers are fantastic with face-to-face delivery but not all of them work very efficiently or in an organized manner. Here are 3 tips to help you run your youth work administration more efficiently:

1) Computer Folder Organization

Do you spend most of your time searching your documents, desktop or memory sticks looking for that document…from that time…when you did that thing… with those youth?

Setting up folders, and not just saving everything to your desktop (makes your computer slower anyways!) or to My Documents, will shorten your searching time because you’ll know where to start.

2) File Naming

So you’re ready to put those files in folders, only to have documents 1-982, PDFs with names like ‘Dear Mr Jones’ and ‘August 15, 2006’ and Excel Workbooks 1-6 to have to search through to put them in the correct folders.

When you save a file, think of it like a canned (or tinned, my UK friends) vegetable, fruit or bean. Just like you wouldn’t take all the labels off your canned food and put it in your cupboard (UK friends – mmm… instead of beans on toast for breakfast its a surprise – today could be asparagus!), don’t just save your files with generic or indecipherable titles.

Save youth work session plans as ‘youth work session plans (with year)’ or project budget spreadsheets as ‘youth program name budget (with year)’, etc. It will help you organize and find old resources so much faster. Remember: The key to good file naming is that it should ‘do what is says on the tin’. Plus you can use the computer’s search function much more easily.

3) Invest in a Scanner

Scanners are getting cheaper and smaller all the time. You can save all those important youth work papers for years to come. Scan old permission slips, photo release forms, youth work evaluations, paper resources that are not from the internet, receipts for budgeting… this list goes on and on.

Not only will your desk and office feel less cluttered, you’ll be able to find it far more easily because you’ll have named it properly and saved it in a file… right?!

Question: What is one thing you could do, right now, to make your youth work administration more efficient? Let us know in the comments below.

Do you need support with your youth work administration?  Contact us!

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How To Create A Youth Work Session Plan – Part 1

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I did try to warn you that I was part administrative nerd.  How to create a youth work session plan

My name is Shae Pepper and I’m an Excelaholic. ‘Hi Shae.’ I LOVE Excel. And Word, Publisher, Outlook and PowerPoint but please don’t get me started on that red-headed step-child that is Access (it’s ok, I’m red-headed and a step-child – I can say things like that).

I use Excel to create my youth work session plans, although I have to admit that I was trained up in the way I should go by the fantastic staff at the Plantation Cafe.

I’m able to plan my entire year’s worth of sessions in ONE Excel spreadsheet. You can do your session plans in Word tables, but using Excel means you can keep them all together.

I even have an overview of the year on the first tab. I include my session evaluations in them so I can look back when it’s time to plan the next year’s sessions. This helps me to see what worked and what didn’t, as well as why or why not for any session.  Plus – everything is color-coded; it’s an admin nerd’s dream.

Having a clear youth work session plan will help your session run smoothly. You can easily see all your necessary resources, who is doing what and the timings. If things are ahead or behind, you can easily change your plan around because you’ve given careful thought to your plan from the outset.

Here are the first 7 items I include in my youth work session plans:

  1. Date and Location – This is helpful when you run several sessions a week at various locations
  2. Team Leader Name and Assistant Team Leader Name – Different people led on different days, by specifying who was leading which days and who was assisting it gave clear direction for the team for each day
  3. Time – A list of times that each activity starts so you can be time-sensitive
  4. Activities – A list of each activity that you will be doing for the day, including break times, etc.
  5. Resources – A list of what resources were needed for each activity and game – that way, you can easily identify what needs to be gathered for the session’s activities
  6. Leader – Who was leading each activity throughout the day (either the Team Leader’s or Assistant Team Leader’s initials)
  7. Support Staff – What was the role of the person not leading? Facilitating a discussion, preparing for the next activity, monitoring behavior, etc.

See part 2 of Creating A Youth Work Session Plan for the next 7 items.

Would you like assistance in creating youth work session plans or other administrative jobs? Contact us about our Consultation Services today!

Question: How do you plan your youth work sessions? We’d really like to hear your ideas in the comments below.

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Problem Solving And Praxis From A Global Youth Worker

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Youth Work Blog

Welcome to the first post on the Youth Workin’ It blog, where we’ll be sharing our ‘pearls of wisdom’ about all things youth work related.

In the future we hope to be able to offer guest writing spots, so if you enjoy the blog and have something interesting, funny or useful to share about working with young people anywhere in the world we would love to hear from you.

I want this to be a really useful resource for people working with young people ages 11-21 the world over. Some topics we’ll be covering include (but are not limited to):

Before we get started you may be wondering ‘What is Praxis?’ I’ll always do my best to explain any youth worker speak in an easy to understand way. Praxis is the combination of Theory – all that book-learnin’ – and Practice – what actually happens when you’re working face to face with young people. For more information, see our post where we answer the question What Is Youth Work Praxis?

The best practitioners (there we go again – people who ‘practice’ or ‘do’ the profession of youth work – be it voluntary or paid employment) I have met are able to take what they learned in a class, training or read in a book and put it to good use, in a real and practical way, with young people.

This website and blog are dedicated to serving young people by equipping their youth workers and youth organizations with the tools, resources, ideas, training and support to provide the best programs for them.

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