Youth work Now and then

1.  Youth work Now and then Antti Heinonen, 21.11.2007

2. About Youth Work in Finland In Finland, youth work falls under the administrative responsibility of the Ministry on Education. Youth work and youth activities in Finland are subject to national legislation, which defines young people as everyone under 29 years old. Under this law, the State provides support for national youth organisations, national (residential) youth centres as well as youth research. At local level, state funding for youth work and youth activity is distributed to the municipalities proportionally according to the number of young people. Youth work professionals in Finland are graduates from polytechnics and from secondary level teaching institutions. Source: http://nk.hel.fi/eng/aboutYouthWork/

3. Youth work in Tampere city In Tampere we have done open youth work from the 1960´s. In earlier years all the activity was organised mostly for youngsters with criminal back rounds and for troublemakers. At first activity was organised by Criminal Welfare and church. All the employees were mostly voluntary workers and their job was to plan all the activities and supervise youth centres. There was one educated full-time worker and few part-time workers helping. Their main goal was to offer kids a place to hang around with friends or to participate to the arranged activity, which was offered by youth centre.

4. Youth work in Tampere city Because of the changes of society children and youngsters leisure time increased and youth work developed new needs. People started to value youth work as an educative co-operator with home and school and that’s the reason why youth works education was improved. After that, people started to think youth work as a profession and activities started to show more quality and expanded. In early 1980´s city of Tampere had already six youth centres, and every centre had a one supervising full-time worker. Part of the youth workers, were educated youth leaders as their profession, but most of them were still people who were just interested in helping young people.

5. Youth work in Tampere city Social nature of open youth work began to enhance and projects started to develop like charity, street work and drug prevention. City of Tampere had ten youth centres and one activity centre in early 1990s. Activity centre had a many new things to offer; Youth Information centre, Crafts centre and Workshop etc. Youth centre were well organised and had good equipments. They also had their own money for expenses and activity was organised for two different age groups: 7 - 12 years old and 13 - 17 years old. Youth work services began to be so wide, that it had be to cut in to the sectors like, youth centre activity , organisation work, international work, youth politics and so on.

6. Youth work in Tampere city In 2000´s youth work activities label was as an organized, planned, co-operated, evaluating service. Now, in 2007 Tampere city has reformed whole management model and has moved to the purchaser – provider -model. Youth work services are now Welfare services products. All products competitiveness is evaluated according to other services. Today, open youth work in Tampere city is run by fifty educated youth leaders and all of them are full-time workers. Everything in these services based on full-time workers contribution and volunteer workers are only partners.

7. Good way of action: Organizing activities for different age groups 7 - 12 years old In this age group the level of physical and mental facilities requires special planning in organizing activities. Taking care of basic needs is vital, as the physical and mental development is still strong. The importance of the body is still little and this period of life is marked with playing, learning, experimentation, safety and with a short attention span.

8. Good way of action: Organizing activities for different age groups 13 - 17 years old In this age group the level of physical and mental facilities is already good and the importance of the body is great. The opposite sex starts to attract and it marks the behaviour very strongly. The perseverance increases even if, on the other hand, the interest in arranged activities decreases. The importance of friends is emphasized.

9. Good way of action: As the effects of the different periods of age are great, it is important that the activities are planned considering this. This way we avoid frustration, teasing and too early learning. In Tampere, we are following this way of action in open youth work with good success.

10. Kiitos – thank you! Antti HeinonenNuorisotyön koordinaattoriEnnakoiva nuorisotyöTampereen kaupunkiHyvinvointipalvelutKulttuuri- ja  nuorisopalvelute-mail: antti.heinonen@tampere.fi