Youth Work Process, Product and Practice: Creating an authentic curriculum in work with young people

Jon Ord
Russell House Publishing / £16.95 / ISBN 97819055411

Reviewed by Ali Campbell, adviser for work with children and young people in the Diocese of Chichester.

I have to be honest and admit that when I excitedly ripped open my package from Youthwork, my first thought was, ‘you’re having a laugh’. I opened the very academic looking book to discover tiny type covering every inch of the 130 pages (turning it into a book at least twice as long) with no pictures or funky illustrations… but then, I began to read.

I had thought for a long time that everyone with a ‘statutory sector’ head on had a thing about targets and outcomes - you just have to look at the National Occupational Standards for youth work (in draft form at the moment) or the Every Child Matters agenda (in fact, there is even a website called www.outcomesuk.com) - and, more and more churches are encouraging their youth workers to have targets. Finally a book that begins to redress the balance.

Although a totally different book from Contemplative Youth Ministry, Jon Ord’s book could be renamed ‘In Praise of process’. The best chapters are in the third section with some great overviews of the essential elements for good youth work (Christian or otherwise), participation and power, relationships and group work, choice and voluntary participation, methods and experiential learning.

For me, this quote sums of much of Jon’s thinking about current methodology (prevalent in both the church and external youth agencies): ‘The question of what, or how much, power the young people have in any of the decision making processes they are asked to be “actively involved” in amounts to little, if any real, power. This lack of power is evident in some of the “newer” incorporations of participation which conceive of participants as “consumers” rather than as “genuine participants”. The involvement of the young person is seen as necessary in order for the deliverer of the service to receive feedback on the service and make alterations accordingly. It is not a model founded on equality, mutuality, joint responsibility and empowerment.’

So much is missed if we do youth work for outcomes’ sake alone. Jon Ord reminds us that at the heart of all we might seek to do for young people or to young people - it is the journey with young people that is most enriching.