“The cry of the youth is the invitation to act, to build, to labor, to dream if you will, but it is a cry that will be heard”

Raul Manglaplus, 19 yrs

TIMES OF UNCERTAINTY AND YOUTH POLICY

Lasse Siurala

Dr. Lasse Siurala FORMAL EDUCATION:

Phd, University of Helsinki, Sociology, 1994

Adjunct Professor, Aalto University 1995-

OCCUPATIONAL CAREER:

Researcher, Acting Associate Professor of Economic Sociology, Helsinki School of Economics 1975-1995

Director of Youth, City of Helsinki 1995-1998, 2002-2012

Director of Youth and Sports, Council of Europe, Strasbourg, France 1998-2001

Visiting Professor, University of Minnesota, Spring 2009

Secretary General, Finnish Network of Local Government Youth Work, 2012-

Member, Think Tank on European Youth Policies, 2013-

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The Economist30, January 2013

“for young people Belgium is a good place to be”

Outline of the presentation

What is youth work?

How to make cross-sectional cooperation work?

How to engage youth in policy making?

Renovating youth work.

WHAT IS YOUTH WORK?

Youth work: emancipation or integration?

emancipation integration

Sweden: The social democratic government youth policy 1999:

(1)creation of good conditions for autonomy of youth (independence objective), (2) real possibilities for participation (power objective) and

(3) recognition of young people as a resource (resource objective) Government Bill 1999:115

Sweden: The conservative government youth policy 2009:

The objective of the Government's youth policy is for all young people to have genuine access to welfare and influence.

“Opportunities for young people to take part in education and become established in the labour market are vital if they are to create a good life for themselves. Monitoring of the situation of young people has shown that there are certain groups of young people who need special measures to be able to complete their education and find employment.”www.regeringen.se/sb/d/3781

MILESTONES OF FINNISH YOUTH LEGISLATION:

1972 Local Youth Board Act• municipal youth services as a universal service

1993 Youth Act• youth boards lose their legal status

1995 Youth Work Act• Youth policy becomes a new objective

2006 Youth Act• Work with youth at risk gets higher profile.

2010 Youth Act Amendment• Multiagency Network and Outreaching Youth Work become legislative

Targeted work at youth problemsTargeted work at youth problems

Youth workYouth workyouthyouth

familyfamily

Opportunities for all young peopleOpportunities for all young people

YOUTH WORK APPROACHES

Source: Filip Cousseé, Lasse Siurala & Howard Williamson: Review of youth policy in two Dutch cities (September 2011)

Youth work: emancipation or integration?

emancipation integration

BASIC SERVICES EARLY RECONSTRUCTIVE INTERVENTION WORK

COLLECTIVE IMPACT – CONDITIONS FOR INTEGRATED YOUTH POLICY

Collective Impact – conditions for integrated youth policies

Political support (legislation, integrated gov.

programs, Flemish regulation to integration)

Joint start to create trust and shared understanding

Fostering multidimensional problem solutions

Shaking “social and cognitive fixations”

Reflecting the ownership of the process

Involving political decision making

Linking objectives and measures to budgets

Enforce “interprofessional collaboration”

Collective Impact – conditions for integrated youth policies

Political support (legislation, integrated gov.

programs, Flemish regulation to integration)

Joint start to create trust and shared understanding

Fostering multidimensional problem solutions

Shaking “social and cognitive fixations”

Reflecting the ownership of the process

Involving political decision making

Linking objectives and measures to budgets

Enforce “interprofessional collaboration”

Collective Impact – conditions for integrated youth policies

Political support (legislation, integrated gov.

programs, Flemish regulation to integration)

Joint start to create trust and shared

understanding

Fostering multidimensional problem solutions

Shaking “social and cognitive fixations”

Reflecting the ownership of the process

Involving political decision making

Linking objectives and measures to budgets

Enforce “interprofessional collaboration”

PROMOTING ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP

1.Learning active citizenship by doing2.Promoting youth work as a non-

formal learning environment

3.Youth work in the social media

4.Promoting youth welfare

5.Enhancing cultural citizenships

6.Support to youth organisations

Helsinki City Welfare Plan for Children and Youth 2009-2012

Enough time for the directors of the different sectors to develop joint understanding

Collective Impact – conditions for integrated youth policies

Political support (legislation, integrated gov.

programs, Flemish regulation to integration)

Joint start to create trust and shared understanding

Fostering multidimensional problem solutions

Shaking “social and cognitive fixations”

Reflecting the ownership of the process

Involving political decision making

Linking objectives and measures to budgets

Enforce “interprofessional collaboration”

Social issues can be:technical problems, which can be clearly defined, solution are known to us, the organization, which has the capacity tosolve it may be identified,oradaptive problems, which are complex, we do not know the answers, no single organization has the capacity to solve it alone.

John Kania & Mark Kramer: ”Collective Impact”, Stanford Social Innovation Review 2011

“The single biggest failure of leadership is to treat adaptive challenges like technical problems.”

Ronald A. Heifetz & Marty Linsky: “Leadership on the Line”, Harvard Business School Press, 2002

Collective Impact – conditions for integrated youth policies

Political support (legislation, integrated gov.

programs, Flemish regulation to integration)

Joint start to create trust and shared understanding

Fostering multidimensional problem solutions

Shaking “social and cognitive fixations”

Reflecting the ownership of the process

Involving political decision making

Linking objectives and measures to budgets

Enforce “interprofessional collaboration”

“Social and cognitive fixations”

becoming stuck with internal discourses of the organization, unwillingness to engage in dialogue with those outside, the perception that the reality which the organization has created is the only one.

Preserving ones autonomy and identity is overemphasized.

Peter Peverelli & Karen Verduyn: Understanding the basic dynamics of organizing, 2010

Collective Impact – conditions for integrated youth policies

Political support (legislation, integrated gov.

programs, Flemish regulation to integration)

Joint start to create trust and shared understanding

Fostering multidimensional problem solutions

Shaking “social and cognitive fixations”

Reflecting the ownership of the process

Involving political decision making

Linking objectives and measures to budgets

Enforce “interprofessional collaboration”

Collective Impact – conditions for integrated youth policies

Political support (legislation, integrated gov.

programs, Flemish regulation to integration)

Joint start to create trust and shared understanding

Fostering multidimensional problem solutions

Shaking “social and cognitive fixations”

Reflecting the ownership of the process

Involving political decision making

Linking objectives and measures to budgets

Enforce “interprofessional collaboration”

Collective Impact – conditions for integrated youth policies

Political support (legislation, integrated gov.

programs, Flemish regulation to integration)

Joint start to create trust and shared understanding

Fostering multidimensional problem solutions

Shaking “social and cognitive fixations”

Reflecting the ownership of the process

Involving political decision making

Linking objectives and measures to budgets

Enforce “interprofessional collaboration”

Collective Impact – conditions for integrated youth policies

Political support (legislation, integrated gov.

programs, Flemish regulation to integration)

Joint start to create trust and shared understanding

Fostering multidimensional problem solutions

Shaking “social and cognitive fixations”

Reflecting the ownership of the process

Involving political decision making

Linking objectives and measures to budgets

Enforce “interprofessional collaboration”

ENGAGING YOUTH IN POLICY MAKING

Youth councils – weaknesses identified by the international review team:

Weak mandate, Lacking diversity, Consisting of a small group of young people, Lacking impact, Sometimes the voice of the government and not of the young people, Deals with ‘safe’ topics,

“There is a case for interrogating the value and validity of the weakness of the youth councils. Currently there is some attention to some of them, perhaps there should be more”

ACCESS, SPACES AND DIALOGUE

providing a maximum number and a broad variety of young people an access to express their citizenships (access)

supporting easy to get in and out spaces for versatile agency (spaces)

developing dialogue with the City’s decision makers (dialogue) 

Lasse Siurala and Heini Turkia: Celebrating pluralism – beyond established forms of youth participation, in Loncle, Cucunato, Muniglia & Walther (eds.) Youth Participation in Europe: Beyond Discourses, Practices and Realities. Bristol: Polity Press, Fall 2012

engaging youth in drafting policies:

not to rely on surveys and youth councils only,

Finding ways to listen to those who are missing from surveys and youth councils,

the art is to read weak signals,

in the minimum, apply some form of deliberative democracy,

include youth in the entire process,

RENOVATINGYOUTH WORK

Department of Youth, City of Helsinki www.verke.org

TRADITIONALYOUTH CENTER

YOUTHACTIVITYCENTER

YOUTH LEARNINGCENTER

YOUTHSUPPORTCENTER

YOUTHCLEARINGHOUSE

Why we need youth work and youth centers? – reconciling the interests of youth and the government. Lasse Siurala, Nov. 2012

Thank you!