Pigeons, Stereotypes and Lego Land!

August 6th, 2007 by kirsty | Filed under Courses & Events, Participation & Citizenship, Society & Issues.

pigeonThe last time I wrote a blog, I believe the title was “Pigeons and Ears” exploring the issue of these earless creatures, later discovering they have holes in their heads, as do most birds, also receiving vibrations from their bottoms?! Hopefully my interests, knowledge and general ideas have progressed since then…

It was interesting reading mas’s blog about judging people after working on a course this weekend. I was warned to expect anyone, anything! But when six 20 year old lads with diamonds in their ears from lewisham turned up, I did feel rather nervous! Would I have felt that if it was six 12 year old girls from York?! I dunno. I didn’t expect negative things from them, quite the opposite after experience with working with similar people. Maybe it was the fact it was me and sarah, two younger girls who were responsible for the course. These feelings soon went away after chatting with the lads, and meeting the 2 workers who were of a greater concern!

I was genuinely shocked when hearing and seeing the carelessness this adult “role model” showed, first demonstrated while falling asleep during prospective, in a discussion about issues in their local area- the area where she is supposed to be concerned about, be encouraging change or even showing slight interest! She later retired to bed at 4 o’clock in the afternoon after quotes such as “I know I never open the youth club on time, I still get paid though” and “I do it for the money”. Somewhere along those lines anyway, you get the idea…

My first question is - Why is a person like this working with young people? And my second question is- How does she get away with it?! Its so disappointing to see those lads, who want to do something positive in their area, (despite being informed they were coming to an outward bound weekend), and being let down through lack of support from someone who is supposed to be encouraging this, yet spent the whole weekend end moaning about lack of facilities for “kids”, that the food was tom tit and slagging off our training? This left some of the lads feeling negative to whether or not they were going to carry out the project which was such a shame to see, but thankfully we left knowing that nearly all the lads left thinking positively, I just cross my fingers and hope they get the support they deserve. As for the women, they abuse their positions, and would prefer a week in legoland where they can leave the young people and sit on their… RANT OVER!

On a positive note, it was great to hear that the lads actually enjoyed the weekend despite no pool table, they experienced something new and got something out of it which they will hopefully put to use when returning home.

In terms of judging, those lads went against the stereotypes despite they way they looked, dressed, and spoke and proved themselves a lot. Boyish banter was rife- and expected, which was fine!

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Viewing 3 Comments

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    Interesting one.

    When we recently ran a series of dialogue events on The Local Offer to young people (http://www.timdavies.org.uk/2007/07/03/consulti...) we got thinking a lot about accountability.

    There is a lot of talk about young people being able to have their say in the design and development of services - but all to often, the mechanism for those who finally take decisions, commission services or run the services to be held to account are not there.

    Two challenges:

    1) We need to make sure young people know about the level of service and support they are entitled to (have a right to...)

    2) We need to make sure organisations have the processes in place for young people to make complaints, provide day-to-day feedback, and raise concerns in a safe way that will lead to real action...

    Ok - maybe three challenges:

    3) We need to make sure that when the complaint system doesn't work - young people are empowered to make some noise about it until things get sorted out...*

    ---
    *Four things: plus we need to do this in a way that helps celebrates good youth services and supports their good work as much as weeding out the bad ones...
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    Dead right and I think your suggestions raise some important points:

    1. How many Youth Services are actually accountable to young people? and if so how? - I mean really accountable - not just reporting to them.
    2. How many Youth Services would have asked the young people to report on their experiences and the effectiveness of the adult workers following this kind of thing? (I bet nearly all expect a report from adults about the young people though?!)

    The key here is accountability - and the people and organisations/departments that supposedly work towards the best interests of young people should be held accountable to them. I'm not talking about 'empowering' young people either - I mean a relationship where the adults in positions of power have effective dialogue with their users - it should be as normal for a head of youth service to talk with young people as it is for their staff to report to them.
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    lol only just noticed your fourth comment Tim and agree with that too - something to try and build into the Youth Awards site in the future maybe - perhaps a way of recgonising adults that have supported young people towards their projects?

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