“the cry of the youth is the invitation to act, to build, to labor, to dream if you will, but it...
TRANSCRIPT
“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-
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.
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 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”
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,
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