Resisting the professional turn: revisiting youth work as a covenantal process

Youth work in England has its origins in the mid-industrial period (c. 1800–70). Characterised as a social movement, youth work, in line with social pedagogy practices on the continent, formed part of collaborative familial and community processes that supported young people’s upbringing within a range of informal social activities. Following the publication of a Government Circular in 1939 called The Service of Youth, a youth service was born in recognition of the value of youth work to support young people’s social and physical development. The pedagogical relationship with young people has since become subject to professionalisation, led by the imperatives of policy rather than by the interests and needs of young people and community members. The introduction of contractual practices further positions young people as clients where desired outputs between the youth worker and young person are pre-agreed to meet funding criteria. We argue that positioning young people as clients to youth workers within contractual relationships can disembed the young person from the collaborative processes of upbringing situated within their family and community relationships. Grounded in a youth work project called ‘Beyond the School Gates’, we revisit the origins of youth work in England to conceptualise the youth worker/young person relationship more centrally within covenantal, open-ended processes of communal and familial upbringing