Youth workers educate and support young people and amplify their voice. It is the combination of these three intended impacts that makes their work unique. The three threads cannot be unwoven; if they are, it is not youth work. Youth workers are on young people’s side for the purpose of emancipating their minds and altering the social constraints on them.

There is a fourth element strongly implied by the notion of gaining a voice for young people, ‘speaking truth to power’ and debating power relationships, and that is, of course, that no educator can give someone a voice, they can only facilitate, encourage and nurture it in a freely chosen relationship. Youth workers are therefore informal educators in the traditions of social and cultural education outlined particularly at an international level by Paulo Freire and Antonio Gramsci, and domestically by a range of authors, from Josephine Macalister Brew to Janet Batsleer, Bernard Davis, Kate Sapin and Mark Smith.

You can educate in order to create acceptance of the status quo and the world as it is, or you can educate for change. Change is a neutral concept. Much can appear to happen, but not much may go on, or actually change. It is an automatic consequence of any educative process, but educational change is not necessarily structural change to the conditions that create ignorance and poverty in the first place.