Working Successfully with Young People

This is a two-day course exploring issues and techniques involved in working with young people.

Day One

Good Practice - relationships, attitudes, and perceptions. These areas will be explored through discussions and exercises, and will include looking at challenging behaviour and attitudes.

Empowerment - what does it mean, and how can it be approached? Setting boundaries in youth work, and use of sanctions and rewards to adhere to them.

Planning - approaches to flexible, but structured, planning for work with young people. What do you aim to achieve? How do you measure success? Why, and when, should you evaluate your work?

Approaches to youth work - discussing the differences in style and suitability of different youth work approaches, including one-to-one work, detached youth work, drop-in centres, groupwork etc.

The day will include a number of activities/games/exercises that can be used with young people of different ages (generally the age range covered is 8 to 17 years). These games and exercises help to illustrate points raised throughout the day, allow participants to become comfortable with being open and active, and are fun! The only requirement for this course is an open mind and comfortable clothes (some of the games involve moving around).

Day Two

At the conclusion of the first day's training the course participants will determine the main content of the second day's training. It might be to explore some aspect touched upon in the first day's training, or an entirely different area (the reason for the gap in the two days training is to allow the trainer to preparation time given that the second day's programme will be set by participants). This decision will be reached by consensus, not majority vote, so all participants will be catered for.

About the course tutor

Tim Deans is a full time organiser of a local children's charity and has previously worked in Treatment and Residential Homes in various parts of the country.