Meet the Team

Mike Gilsenan

Mike Gillsenan

Hi, I’m Mike Gilsenan and I am, alongside Paulette, joint Programme Lead of the BA Hons Youth and Community Work. I began my youth work career in 1988 and have worked in youth centres, on street-based detached and outreach work, and on projects with specific targeted groups of young people across the country. My latter years as a Youth Worker focused on the rural areas of Shropshire and North Staffordshire where I managed large teams of youth workers undertaking centre, detached and mobile youth work. I have always viewed youth and community work as an educative process, based on building up trusting relationships in informal settings. This relationship-building process, I bring into my teaching and is part of my current Doctoral level study, which focuses on learning that takes place outside of ‘planned’ learning activities.

You can contact me with any questions you have about this course: m.gilsenan@staff.newman.ac.uk

Paulette Sawyers

lecturer paulette nominated for role model of the year award

Hi, my name is Paulette and I am Joint Programme Lead on the BA Hons Youth & Community Work course alongside Mike. So, my career cuts across the voluntary and statutory sectors and contains a variety of roles working with young people and communities. I have worked in domestic abuse as a project worker and manager, with looked after young people in residential children’s homes, with homeless and exploited young women in hostel accommodation, as a personal adviser with young people who were labelled as NEET (Not in Education, Employment of Training), as a senior centre-based youth worker and latterly as a lecturer in a 6th Form college with 14-19 years old. I am an asset-based, solution-focused practitioner and bring this approach to my teaching. I am a part time PhD student at Nottingham Trent University.

You can contact me with any questions you have about this course: p.sawyers@staff.newman.ac.uk

Understanding Youth and Community Work: This module will form a foundation of the historical philosophies, origins, policies and present-day contexts of youth and community work. It will aim to encourage you to begin to contextualise your own professional identity in relation to the broad range of areas that practitioners work with young people and communities. Finally, the module will critically analyse the inherent political nature of youth and community work practice.

Study Skills: Study skills is an important aspect of your university education and allows you to become an independent learner. This module therefore provides you with the space and time needed to practice and develop your interdependence. This will include exploring key university systems, processes and support mechanisms. You will also be encouraged to plan for the development of your individual skills and abilities to enable success at Newman University. There are four strands to the module; Learning about Education, Knowledge and Learning, Reading, Academic and Professional Writing, Reflecting, Planning and becoming a Professional.

Working with Children, Young People and Families, Key Thinkers and Their Big Ideas: WWCYPF is a multi-disciplinary subject that draws on key ideas from a range of different academic traditions – sociology, psychology, development studies, cultural studies and PPE. In this module students will be introduced to some of the key thinkers and the big ideas that have shaped the way these different academic traditions have characterised children, young people and families and what they have had to say about working professionally in that field. The module will seek to give students a broad foundation in the theory that has shaped and influenced service developments and delivery and introduce them to the way conflicting ideas help to shape the way we think about basic questions like what we mean by notions of ‘family’, ‘childhood’, ‘kinship’ or our ideas about ‘need’, ‘vulnerability’ and ‘good’ or ‘bad’ childhoods.

Mondays 12:00 – 15:00pm

Wednesdays 10:00am – 13:00pm

Thursdays 9:00am – 12:00pm

Full details of your individual academic timetable will be available on mynewman after you have completed online enrolment and set up your student login.

We will be holding four online sessions to help you prepare for your degree.  These will be informal discussions with a little preparatory material for you to look through beforehand.

Session one will include an introductory activity where we will get to know each other a little and then discuss your current understanding of Youth and Community Work. In preparation for this session, please watch this very short video: What is youth work? and this TED talk:  When Youth Workers Make All The Difference (with BSL) | Ghino Parker | TEDxLadbrokeGrove and be ready to offer your thoughts.

In Session Two, we shall talk about some of the organisations that our current and previous students have undertaken their fieldwork with. In preparation for this session, please browse through the organisation’s websites below:

Session Three will cover any things that may have been raised for further exploration in session one, and a discussion of the roles of some of the national organisations that influence practice currently.  In preparation for this session, please browse through the following sites:

As an extra bit of food for thought, please watch this: Does Youth Work Make the Youth Work | John Loughton | TEDxQMU. Again, in Session Four, we will discuss anything that may have been raised previously (you’ll be aware by now that these sessions are quite informal) and we will then look in more detail at the modules you will be covering in your first semester and we will be inviting some guests to meet with you and offer their take on the programme.  Prior to the meeting, we will send you relevant module information.

Finally, for you to listen to as and when you like, here is a really interesting podcast:  Does Youth Work Make the Youth Work | John Loughton | TEDxQMU.