Youth work is a rewarding profession. Youth workers can change the course of a young person’s life – helping them to gain essential life skills, overcome barriers and unlock their potential.
Our curriculum
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Identity and Belonging
Having a sense of identity and belonging is important for young people to feel respected and valued.
An understanding of their characteristics, beliefs values and cultural heritage underpins how young people view their own identity. Belonging is about having a secure relationship with, or a connection with a particular group of people.
Youth work provides opportunities to explore and celebrate young people’s backgrounds, cultures, beliefs and languages to help them develop pride in who they are, as well as be able to able to deal with challenges and difficulties.
During the teenage years some young people may find themselves at odds with their family, religion or culture, as they begin to express their own identity. Youth workers can support them as they move through this exploration and signpost them to further support if they need and want it.
Youth work helps young people explore and understand their identity and sense of belonging by:
- Providing an opportunity to share their experience, whether that’s amongst a group of young people with a particular protected characteristic or a common life experience.
- Facilitating young people to consider their own identity and how other’s perceive them.
- Helping young people to discover their personal values, principals and preferences.
- Enabling young people to express their rights and show an understanding and regard for the identity, rights and views of others.
- Provide a safe space for young people to explore the impact of stigma and challenge discrimination.
Health and wellbeing
The transition from child to adult can be a challenging time for some young people, with both physical and mental health impacted by changing hormones, educational pressures and the increased demands that come from adult life.
Looking after their physical, mental and emotional health is vital at this time, and it crucial to understand the role that the wider context of young people’s lives plays in this.
Class, gender, race, sexuality, culture, religion, neurodiversity and disability all have an impact on a young person’s happiness and feelings of self-worth.
A young person can be perfectly ‘healthy’ at first glance, but if they are unable to find meaningful employment, or have limited access to leisure activities for example, their chances of staying well will be harder.
Youth workers can play an important role in ensuring young people have an influence in decisions that impact their health and wellbeing, supporting and facilitating discussions that empower young people to speak out about the issues affecting them.
Youth work also helps young people to explore and understand issues relevant to their health and wellbeing by:
- Promoting the positive physical, social, emotional and mental health of young people.
- Helping young people make informed choices about how they live, approach risk and take responsibility for their own life style choices.
- Facilitating activities that promote good health, such as physical exercise and educational leisure, including outdoor and play activities
- Making appropriate support and services accessible when necessary.
- Providing relevant and up to date information and guidance.
Leadership, civic engagement and participation
Giving young people the opportunity to help shape their world is vital.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that young people have a right to ‘express their views, feelings and wishes in all matters affecting them, and to have their views considered and taken seriously’.
Engaging young people in decision-making – whether that be local or national democratic processes or choosing the equipment they want to see at their local youth club – helps to foster a sense of belonging.
Creating leadership opportunities for young people through youth work gives them confidence they will be listened to. It helps them learn to understand the power they can have, how to use it and how to advocate on behalf of themselves and others. It also teaches wider transferable skills such as leadership, public speaking, and campaigning.
These opportunities may come in a variety of forms from consultations and volunteering to more formal structures like youth councils.
Youth work supports leadership, civic engagement and participation by:
- Enabling young people to direct discussion, activities and projects.
- Providing opportunities to participate in democratic decision-making within youth projects and engage in campaign groups or youth councils.
- Helping young people to understand different types of engagement and the respective power this gives to individuals.
- Advocating for and encouraging young people to challenge and question services and organisations, to be heard and responded to
- Providing them with the tools to lobby local and national government on issues they are passionate about.
Economic and financial wellbeing
Helping young people to cultivate a healthy relationship with money from an early age can help with many aspects of their lives.
Financial literacy is vital to enable young people to live independently, pay bills and manage debt. An understanding of budgeting, bank accounts, credit cards, pensions and tax empowers young people to make informed choices and ensures they are less at risk of exploitation.
The transferable skills young people learn from engaging with economic and financial activities can also build skills such as decision-making and critical thinking which are valued by employers.
Youth work gives young people more control over the economic and financial aspects of their lives by providing:
- Opportunities to understand budgeting, either personally or via projects that involve applying for funding or grants.
- Financial literacy education, for example access to learning about credit, interest rates and how to work out if a deal is as good as it looks.
- Access to further opportunities for study and employment, as well as advocacy for employment rights and fair pay.
- Opportunities to nurture entrepreneurship, through identifying young people’s skills, interests and passions.
Creativity and fun
Fun and relaxation breeds creativity. It helps young people explore new things, move out of their comfort zones and become more open to learning.
Developing creativity and critical thinking helps young people to look at things in different ways, come up with ideas and imagine new possibilities for their futures.
It also has huge benefits for mental health, showing young people that they can move away from existing, ingrained ways of doing things, fostering a sense of confidence and a positive outlook.
The learning that takes place through the activities facilitated by youth workers can sometimes be incidental to the activity itself, but can include critical thinking, open-mindedness, teamwork, decision-making and creative skills.
Youth work gives young people the opportunity to have fun, be inspired and develop their creativity by:
- Providing spaces where young people can socialise and exchange ideas.
- Offering activities that young people enjoy and want to participate in.
- Helping young people to learn from these activities and to question and look at issues from different perspectives.
- Supporting young people to develop their own recreational and creative activities and opportunities.
Global citizenship
Understanding our place in the world, beyond the confines of our local community can be crucial in developing our sense of self.
Youth work can help by encouraging young people to explore different cultures and social norms, discovering the differences and diversity within our communities, but also the common bonds that unite us.
It helps young people explore their role as a global citizen, how our lives are interconnected and impacted by events across the world and how many of the decisions they make can have global impacts.
Advances in travel and technology, particularly the growth of digital youth work, are making the world a smaller place, making it easier to interact with others around the world.
While this is often very positive, it can also spark difficult and interesting conversations. Youth groups provide a safe space to discuss issues like human rights, the environment and social injustice.
Youth work helps young people develop an understanding of their place both locally and globally by:
- Providing opportunities to explore how a local community and everyday choices have global links and influences.
- Offering opportunities to understand the impact of globalisation on our lives.
- Exploring human rights and social justice and different political, economic and environmental policies around the world.
- Offering opportunities to develop links with young people from other countries, both virtually and through international experiences.
- Helping young people access opportunities to volunteer and work abroad.
Skills development
Youth work provides an array of opportunities for young people to learn new skills.
This could be skills they’ve chosen to develop because they have an interest in them – like cookery, music production or football – or simply skills they pick up while taking part in activities without even realising, like problem solving, decision-making, or communication.
Youth work also supports young people to develop their personal and social skills. They develop an understanding of themselves, their communities and society, as well as what they want to change and how to challenge themselves and take ownership. These skills are all transferable into their wider lives.
Youth workers play a crucial role in equipping young people with new skills and helping them to reflect on what they’ve learned and how far they’ve come.
Youth work is about giving young people skills through:
- Offering opportunities for young people to learn specific skills.
- Developing life skills like how to participate in discussions and resilience.
- Providing opportunities to reflect on and identify learning.
- Providing further opportunities to apply and develop those skills.
The environment and sustainable development
Today’s young people will be impacted by environmental issues more than any other generation before them.
With the impacts of climate change already being felt in many parts of the world and an increasing awareness of the way our lifestyles impact on the environment, it is an issue of serious concern for many young people.
Role models like Greta Thunberg have proved the impact that young people can have in creating change, inspiring many others to take action.
Youth work can help channel this desire for change into positive action, helping young people connect with existing campaigns, or supporting them with the logistics involved in lobbying local councils or demonstrating for changes in national policy.
It can also give young people the chance to consider and critique the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and how they might implement and contribute to them.
Youth work can help young people to consider the environment and sustainable development by:
- Enabling young people to consider their own impact on their environment.
- Implementing the SDGs in their own practice.
- Offering opportunities for young people to develop creative responses to their areas of interest.
- Supporting young people in taking collective action, including linking with and signposting to other groups and initiatives.
Healthy and safe relationships
As young people become more independent, learning how to develop healthy relationships is crucial – whether that’s friendships, sexual relationships or those with colleagues and people in the community.
Youth work gives young people the opportunity to meet their friends and other young people beyond their family and communities, and to mix with people from different backgrounds and with different values, beliefs and aspirations.
Relationship and sex education, delivered by youth organisations, can help young people understand what safe and healthy sexual relationships are, as well as facilitating discussions around self-esteem, self-worth, sexuality, gender and broader identity.
It can also provide vital information on how to navigate relationships in the digital world.
Youth work helps young people to understand their right to have healthy and safe relationships by:
- Offering relationship support and guidance to young people, including sex and relationship education, in settings and in a way chosen by the young people.
- Modelling positive respectful relationships and exploring the differences between healthy and unhealthy relationships.
- Helping young people enjoy the opportunities provided by digital technology, whilst staying safe and being able to connect in the real world.
- Offering opportunities for young people to meet with their friends and mix with others outside their usual peer groups.
Arts, culture and heritage
Arts, culture and heritage provide a great way to learn more about the lives of others, but projects are not always as accessible as they could be for young people.
Many young people do not see themselves and their lives represented in galleries, museums and theatres and may feel alienated as a result.
Youth work can help provide opportunities to engage with the sector, giving a voice to a diverse range of young people and ensuring they have the chance to influence and shape the arts and culture landscape.
Youth work helps young people to take part in and explore arts, culture and heritage by:
- Providing opportunities for young people to develop and perform their artistic and creative aspirations, such as writing poetry or lyrics, creating music and participating in dance.
- Giving young people the opportunity to explore their social, cultural and community heritage and bringing artists into youth work settings.
- Helping young people to engage with the arts, culture and heritage sector as audience members, visitors, curators and creators.
- Understanding the barriers to participation in arts, culture and heritage and working with young people to overcome these.
- Exploring cultural diversity and commonalities through arts and culture.
Youth work is a vitally important part of many young people’s lives, yet availability and provision can vary so much from one geographical area to another.
We created the National Youth Work Curriculum to develop a greater understanding of the educational framework upon which high quality youth work is based.
The youth work Curriculum is an important reference tool for youth workers, decision makers, policy makers, commissioners, and last but not least, young people. It aims to guide individual and collective journeys and describe how relationships between youth workers and young people provide opportunities for learning.
Above all, the Curriculum responds to the diversity of young people’s needs, interests and concerns of young people.
The Curriculum is not just for youth workers, it can be used by a wide range of stakeholders from young people themselves to policy makers, local authorities, commissioners and other decision makers.
It highlights good practice in youth work and describes the key governing frameworks that underpin it.
It can be used to support the design of a youth work offer to ensure it is both led by and responsive to young people’s needs. Young people are experts in their own lives and the youth workers are there to support and facilitate learning and development informed by the young people’s interests, experiences and concerns.
It is not designed to be followed in the same way as a school curriculum, rather as a means of exploring the different themes that may be of interest and of benefit to young people, and which respond to their particular needs, concerns and aspirations
We have created a number of detailed guides on how to apply the Curriculum in each of the key allied sectors and settings where youth work takes place. You can view these here. [link down Curriculum guides].
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Outcomes framework
The Framework of Outcomes for Young People 2.0 was developed by the Centre for Youth Impact with the sector on behalf of the Local Government Association.
Its aim is to help organisations and agencies across the youth sector develop and agree mutual aims to support young people in their local areas.
By focusing on common outcomes it aims to help both providers and commissioners ensure their work with young people is focused on creating long-term positive change in their lives
It was based on an extensive review of research and is for everyone working with and for young people, regardless of setting. The primary goal is to connect and strengthen provision for young people at a local level, rather than drive the agenda of any single organisation acting alone.
It is informed by key principles common to youth work and non-formal education, including:
- Taking a holistic, young person-centred approach: ‘meeting young people where they are at’
- Building on young people’s positive assets rather than ‘solving problems’
- Engaging young people as active partners in their learning and development
National occupational standards
As the Professional Statutory Regulatory Body (PSRB) for youth work in England the NYA sets the occupational standards for youth work.
The National Occupational Standards (NOS) are the agreed standards of performance and knowledge required in youth work practice. They can be used by employers to inform job descriptions, consider skills needs and identify areas of improvement, and can also support an individual’s professional and continuous development.
Each National Occupational Standard comprises a number of performance criteria which an individual should demonstrate in order to be competent in the sector.
Quality standards
There are a number of documents and frameworks that are used to inform best practice in youth work.
These are:
- The NYA Quality Mark – reflective tool that intends to support local authorities and youth work service providers to develop a culture of learning and growth.
- The NYA Hear by Right framework – an organisational development tool designed to ensure that youth voices and active participation are at the heart of organisational development and decision making.
- The Framework of Outcomes for Young People 2.0 – designed to ensure youth organisations are working towards common positive outcomes for the young people they help.
- A Guide to Commissioning Outcomes for Young People from the National Youth Agency – supports local authority commissioners in understanding the challenges of commissioning youth work and involving young people in the process in a meaningful way.
- First Steps and Safe Spaces by UK Youth – a quality assurance framework with an overall focus on safeguarding and ensuring appropriate policies and procedures are in place across key functional areas such as health and safety, HR, governance and diversity/equality and inclusion.
- The London Youth Quality Mark, which supports member organisations towards better practice in: g. Involving Young People; Health and Safety; Outcomes for Young People; h. Partnerships; Safeguarding; Leadership and Management; i. Diversity, Equality and Inclusion; New Improvements; Staff and Volunteers
UNCRC (The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child)
The UNCRC is a legally binding international agreement that sets out the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of every child.
It contains 54 articles that outline children’s rights and how governments should work together to ensure they are available to every child.
These include the rights to express their opinions and be listened to, and the right to an education that enables children to fulfil their potential.
Youth work plays a key role in these and the NYA strives to ensure its work, and that of the organisations it supports, is fully aligned with the UNCRC.
Our Hear by Right organisational development tool, for example, highlights the importance of encouraging organisations, policymakers, and decision-makers to involve children and young people in decision-making processes, policies, programmes, and more that impact their lives.
