Dignity at work

It follows that if you are a worker that, despite the nature of your employer, or your manager, and their approach to your worth and value, you take pride in what you do and you want to do it well. This, in essence, is why workers are professionals. It is not a question of status. Youth workers, whatever their employment or volunteering situation, want to do a job well. Knowledge, skills and dedication, together with a clear recognition of capacities and boundaries, enable workers to do a job better and to feel in command of what they do.

The problem is that the words ‘professional’, ‘professionalisation’ and ‘professionalism’ have become associated with negative things in the minds of a small but vocal minority of youth work practitioners. Some have benefited from union rates of pay and pensions and stable jobs for many years, some have earned quite nicely within the freelance market and some have worked as volunteers within the voluntary sector and have devoted so much of their lives to unpaid or low-paid labour that they see any well-paid employment position as a bit of a cheek. Some more straightforwardly reflect employers’ demands for a deregulated cheap labour market (Nicholls, 1997).

In return for all the expense of the blood, sweat and tears that went into the professional formation of youth work, as alluded to in the previous chapter, youth workers are still categorised in the official designation of occupational areas as a subprofession, or a para-professional occupation. And funding for youth and community work students is considerably less within higher education than it is for social work and trainee teachers. Unlike comparable occupation areas there is no regulatory body outside of the CYWU’s Code of Professional Conduct for members.

The history of youth work has been self-defined in that they have done what they have done. But employers and the state have also defined it.