Youth and Community Work
Welcome to the Youth and Community Work Programme
Team
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.
My name is Paulette Sawyers 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.
Brief Summary
Semester 1 of your first year will cover the following modules:
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.
Interdependent Learner – This module provides you with the space and time needed to practice and develop your interdependence as learners and as professionals. It 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.
Planned Online Meetings
We will be holding two teams-based 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? – YouTube and this TED talk: When Youth Workers Make All The Difference (with BSL) | Ghino Parker | TEDxLadbrokeGrove – YouTube and be ready to offer your thoughts. We may also talk about some of the organisations that our current and previous students have undertaken their fieldwork with. So, please browse through the organisations websites below.
All youth centres in Birmingham | Birmingham City Council
Compass Support — Part of The Pioneer Group
https://www.kineticyouth.co.uk/
Aston 614 | The Salvation Army
Session Two 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.
The Institute for Youth Work providing a voice for Youth Workers in the UK
As an extra bit of food for thought, please watch this: Does Youth Work Make the Youth Work | John Loughton | TEDxQMU – YouTube
The Teams meetings will take place on the following dates:
Session 1 Monday 4th September at 12:00
Session 2 Monday 11th September at 12:00
Timetable information
Semester 1
Mondays 10.00 – 13.00
Fridays 9.00 – 12.00 and 13.00 – 16.00
Full details of your individual academic timetable will be available via your university email calendar after you have completed online enrolment and set up your student login.
Subject Sessions
Here are the dates and times during our welcome week when your teaching team will be expecting you on campus for welcome activity. Come to main reception and the welcome mentors will get you to the correct rooms:
- 21.09.23 10-12 EL109b
Even if your course team are not expecting you to be in during Welcome Week on Tuesday 19th September, we strongly encourage you to come in and participate in our Student Union Fresher’s Fair.
Running between 10am and 3pm, it will give you a great insight into the Student Union, its societies and its engagement with community groups and employers. You can find out more at Newman Students’ Union – Your Voice.