Background/Objectives: The main objective of the article is to study, analyze and organize the modern German experience in the sphere of social pedagogical and educational work with socially unprotected adults, including youth and the elderly. The retrospective analysis threw light on the background of work with socially unprotected adults in…

The sociopolitical movement to enhance youth workers' occupational status and related emoluments strategically links this goal to competency-based assessment. While the goals of improved conditions, remuneration, and career opportunities for workers is supported, the joining of those goals to both professionalization and in turn competency-based…

Across the United States, researchers and youth workers alike have identified an increasing number of civically engaged youth who are organizing to improve their communities and schools. By taking an action-oriented approach, these youth are speaking back to the notion that they are uninvolved in society. This interview-based study explores the…

In this article, the authors use a comparative historical approach to examine the consequences of professionalization within teaching and social work and to answer the following questions: What are the unintended consequences of professionalization? Has professionalization in these fields supported higher quality practice, increased working…

The importance of giving young people a say in casework has received much attention in recent years. Little attention, however, has been given to the question of how to educate youth workers as a way of ensuring young people's involvement in such professional practices. This paper reports on a model for preparing youth workers for participatory…

Professional identity is an ongoing topic of discussion in the youth work literature. This paper looks at one of the key elements of the definition of youth work: the relationships that youth workers establish with young people. It presents research findings which suggest that youth workers have multidimensional relationships with young people…

Phenomenological research investigates the meaning of lived experiences for participants, as well as the implications of those experiences. This chapter presents brief biographical sketches of 12 youth workers who participated in a phenomenological investigation of the experience of self in moments of not-knowing what to do. Each participant's…

This chapter provides a context for the concept of not-knowing, including a discussion of how the concept was framed. The experience of not-knowing in professional youth work is framed in relationship to other concepts explored by the social work and therapeutic literature (including vicarious trauma, helplessness, secondary trauma, and burnout),…

One of the few truly reassuring features of not-knowing among youth workers is the realization that not-knowing cannot last forever. Eventually, some feature of the situation shifts, and youth workers move back into the capacity for action. This chapter describes the last of five themes associated with youth workers' experiences of not knowing…

Phenomenology offers a unique and useful approach to understanding how people experience events or phenomena. The method is particularly instructive in exploring how youth workers experience and make sense of moments of not-knowing in the context of their professional relationships with young people. This chapter provides an introduction to…

When describing how they experience moments of not-knowing, youth workers often talk about a sense of paralysis, as though their uncertainty becomes physically constraining. This chapter describes the first of five themes associated with youth workers' experiences of not knowing what to do: the paralysis of stuckness. In addition to describing and…

Youth workers operate within a professional climate in which competence is perceived to be linked to a worker's ability to respond quickly and effectively to whatever situations clients may present. Many youth workers perceive their own inability to respond in moments of stuckness as indicative of their own failing and lack of professional skill.…

Among youth workers who experience moments of not-knowing what to do, many often describe their thoughts and reactions to the phenomenon in vocational and existential terms. They ask what right they have to work in the helping professions if they find themselves simply unable to be helpful. In many cases, the vocational crises following…

Describes the adaptation of social work practice skills to serve black urban youth gangs. Presents a model for practice which respects youths' right to self-determination and community needs. Model stages discussed include contact, rapport, setting goals, assigning roles, procuring resources, and evaluation. Model applicability is suggested. (NRB)

The research presented in this paper is a study of the values underpinning the curriculum and teaching of current Australian degree-level youth work courses. The paper looks at the implications that values raise for the introduction of competency-based training in the youth and community services sector. The paper raises some of the potential…