Supporting Long-term Outcomes With Youth Work

Background This project promoted long-term and inclusive 'slow' youth work policy and practice in project partner countries and across Europe by initiating a deeper discussion on and delivering responses to the prevalent outcomes-oriented youth work approaches. Youth work is being increasingly formalised and politicised. As it gets called on to solve deeper structural challenges societies face, the focus of youth work policy and practice shifts away from the needs of young people themselves, particularly of young people with fewer opportunities. The priorities and topics in youth work seem to change fast, along with sets of elaborate indicators and outcomes that youth work should produce, with little time given to reflect on transformative nature of youth work, approaches used and lessons learned from them. One of the consequences of this is that youth work becomes dependent on interventionist measures demanded by policy makers, and the funds it receives are directly affected by the (in)ability to deliver. This contributes to a disconnection between the purpose and mission of youth work and the expectations of outcomes, affecting the retainment of professionals in the field and the quality of youth work services that young people receive. Objectives The objectives of the project were to (1) to identify the implications and impact of outcomes-oriented youth work on experiences of youth work of young people and youth work professionals; (2) to develop and promote the idea and practice of 'slow' youth work focused around holistic, youth-centred, deep value-based, long-term thinking about youth work in diverse contexts; (3) to support youth work professionals in developing a language for expressing the value of youth work beyond the quantifiable indicators; (4) to contribute to better evidence-based policy making in the youth field and to promote better youth work practice by disseminating project's results to interested and affected parties; (5) to advance the capacity in youth interest advocacy of all involved organisations through forging new partnerships and alliances. Implementation The project team conducted research activities, such as desk research on current youth work policies in the included countries, focus groups with youth workers, collection of best practices and interviews with youth work providers /organizations, on-line survey for youth workers etc. As a result, the main project outputs were produced, these were a research report on the impacts of outcomes-oriented youth work policy and practice (IO1), a compendium of good practices and guidelines for designing 'slow' youth work practice (IO2), and a policy pack for youth work interest advocacy strategy and messaging related to promotion of 'slow' youth work (IO3). Additionally there three transnational project meetings were held - one moved online (TM1), one in Skopje (TM2) and one in Riga (TM3). Also, a final multiplier event in a format of a conference took place in Riga, Latvia on 10 June, 2022. Transnational meeting 1 (TM1) took place online on 8 and 9 June, 2021. Transnational meeting 2 (TM2) took place on 27 and 28 November 2021 in Skopje, North Macedonia. Transnational meeting 3 (TM3) took place in Riga, Latvia on 9 and 10 June, 2022. Achievements IO1 - a research report on the impacts of outcomes-oriented youth work policy and practice; IO2 - compendium of good practices and guidelines for designing 'slow' youth work practice; IO3 - policy pack for youth work interest advocacy strategy and messaging related to promotion of 'slow' youth work. The key outputs were accompanied also with a varied selection of visuals and multimedia material. All the documents, information about key events, the intellectual outputs and their translations, as well as the multimedia materials and posters prepared during the project implementation are available on a dedicated project website: https://slowyouthwork.org