YOUTH &POLICY No. 116 MAY 2017 Youth & Policy: The final issue? Towards a new format Editorial Group Paula Connaughton, Ruth Gilchrist, Tracey Hodgson, Tony Jeffs, Mark Smith, Jean Spence, Naomi Thompson, Tania de St Croix, Aniela Wenham, Tom Wylie. Associate Editors Priscilla Alderson, Institute of Education, London Sally Baker, The Open University Simon Bradford, Brunel University Judith Bessant, RMIT University, Australia Lesley Buckland, YMCA George Williams College Bob Coles, University of York John Holmes, Newman College, Birmingham Sue Mansfield, University of Dundee Gill Millar, South West Regional Youth Work Adviser Susan Morgan, University of Ulster Jon Ord, University College of St Mark and St John Jenny Pearce, University of Bedfordshire John Pitts, University of Bedfordshire Keith Popple, London South Bank University John Rose, Consultant Kalbir Shukra, Goldsmiths University Tony Taylor, IDYW Joyce Walker, University of Minnesota, USA Anna Whalen, Freelance Consultant Published by Youth & Policy, ‘Burnbrae’, Black Lane, Blaydon Burn, Blaydon on Tyne NE21 6DX. www.youthandpolicy.org Copyright: Youth & Policy The views expressed in the journal remain those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Editorial Group. Whilst every effort is made to check factual information, the Editorial Group is not responsible for errors in the material published in the journal. ii Youth & Policy No. 116 May 2017 About Youth & Policy Youth & Policy Journal was founded in 1982 to offer a critical space for the discussion of youth policy and youth work theory and practice. The editorial group have subsequently expanded activities to include the organisation of related conferences, research and book publication. Regular activities include the bi- annual ‘History of Community and Youth Work’ and the ‘Thinking Seriously’ conferences. The Youth & Policy editorial group works in partnership with a range of local and national voluntary and statutory organisations who have complementary purposes. These have included UK Youth, YMCA, Muslim Youth Council and Durham University. All members of the Youth & Policy editorial group are involved in education, professional practice and research in the field of informal education, community work and youth work. The journal is run on a not-for-profit basis. Editors and Associate Editors all work in a voluntary and unpaid capacity. iii Youth & Policy No. 116 May 2017 Contents Youth and Policy: The final issue? Towards a new format 6 Youth Work and Informal Education: Finding common ground 9 Tony Jeffs Beyond the Local Authority Youth Service: 24 Could the state fund open access youth work – and if so, how? A speculative paper for critical discussion Bernard Davies Scientism, governance and evaluation: Challenging the ‘good science’ of the UK evaluation agenda for youth work 45 Deirdre Niamh Duffy Extending democracy to young people: is it time for youth suffrage? 62 Kalbir Shukra Youth and adult perspectives on representation in local child and 79 youth councils in Ireland Shirley Martin and Catherine Forde What, no coaching? Challenging the dominance of mentoring 96 in work with young people Tina Salter Effective gang policy and practice: how research with 110 ‘Black male youth’ problematizes the official definition of the UK gang Ian Joseph Social work with children in the Youth Justice system – 131 messages from practice Jane Pye and Ian Paylor Organised Crime, Street Gangs and County Lines 145 John Pitts The American news media and youth: distortion, defamation, 154 demographic fear Mike Males Finding a better way of protecting young workers 167 Jim McKechnie, Sandy Hobbs, Emma Littler and Amanda Simpson Margaret Mead and the ‘Unknown Children’ 181 Mike Males Reviews 194 iv Youth & Policy No. 116 May 2017 Contributors Tony Jeffs is a member of the Youth & Policy Editorial Group and teaches at Durham University. Bernard Davies is a qualified youth worker who has also been a local authority youth officer, a tutor on full-time youth work and social work courses and a trustee of a number of voluntary organisations including In Defence of Youth Work. Dr Deirdre Niamh Duffy is a Senior Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. Dr Kalbir Shukra is a Senior Lecturer and Head of Community Studies in the department of Social, Therapeutic and Community Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. Dr Shirley Martin is a Lecturer in the School of Applied Social Studies, University College Cork. Dr Catherine Forde is a Lecturer in the School of Applied Social Studies, University College Cork. Dr Tina Salter is Programme Director and Senior Lecturer at YMCA George Williams College, London. Dr Ian Joseph is a visiting researcher at the University of East London and a youth work practitioner. Jane Pye was a Practice Manger with Lancaster Youth Offending Team and is now a researcher with a national children’s charity. Dr Ian Paylor is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work in the Department of Sociology, Lancaster University. John Pitts is Vauxhall professor of criminology at the University of Bedfordshire. Mike Males is senior researcher for YouthFacts.org and the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (http://www.cjcj.org), San Francisco, CA USA. Jim McKechnie is a Professor of psychology in the Psychology Division, University of the West of Scotland. Sandy Hobbs is an honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Child Employment Research Group, University of the West of Scotland. Emma Littler is a PhD student in the Child Employment Research Group, University of the West of Scotland. Amanda Simpson is a Lecturer in psychology in the Psychology Division, University of the West of Scotland. v Youth & Policy No. 116 May 2017 © YOUTH & POLICY, 2017 Youth & Policy: The final issue? Towards a new format Youth & Policy: The Journal of Critical Analysis was formed 35 years ago in 1982, to address a need for ‘a serious journal of analysis and review which focused its attention upon the whole area of youth policy’. The journal aimed – and continues to aim – to address itself not only to youth work, youth services and education, but also to the wider field of young people and how young people are impacted by (and how they have an impact on) policy. The journal has been highly influential in the field and valued by students, researchers, lecturers, practitioners and activists. Those who set it up, and those who have been involved throughout the last 35 years – editorial group members, reviewers, writers, proof-readers, and others – should be justly proud of what it has achieved. We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has contributed in any way. However, the time has come for a change. In recent years, Youth & Policy has faced a few challenges, including: • A steep fall in the numbers of high quality articles submitted. We are always glad to see excellent articles from our valued, committed and regular writers and new contributors, but overall the numbers are falling, and this means we do not have enough quality articles to release the journal on a regular basis. There are a number of factors underlying this decline in quantity and quality. The Research Excellence Framework (REF) and similar processes internationally tend to incentivise academics to submit to journals with high ‘impact factors’ – and while we know that an article in Youth and Policy has more likelihood of being read than one in most ostensibly ‘higher impact’ journals, readership does not count for a great deal. At the same time, academics’ and practitioners’ workloads are increasing exponentially, hence there is reduced time for any of us to write (or, for that matter, to peer review, edit and coordinate journals)! Sadly, it seems that many lecturers in the field of Youth Studies and Youth and Community Work are given negligible time – if any – for research and writing. • A growing proportion of inappropriate and irrelevant articles are being submitted, which do not meet the remit of our journal and/or are not in any way ready for publication. Presumably this is also due to the ‘publish or perish’ culture. Often it feels as though we are receiving articles that have been rejected elsewhere and have not been adapted for our journal – we are not talking here about articles from the field, but irrelevant articles that do not address the aims of our journal and have often not been proof-read. It takes a great deal of (voluntary) time and energy to read through these submissions and provide helpful feedback. 6 Youth & Policy No. 116 May 2017 EDitorial • Technological challenges and workload pressures amongst some members of the editorial group have conspired to take the journal offline for periods and/or hold up the publication of some issues for an unacceptably long time. We realise that this may feed into the first challenge – the lack of quality submissions – but because the reduction in quality submissions predated our technological challenges, we feel that this is not the main factor. We know that Youth and Policy continues to be valued, particularly by lecturers, researchers, students and (to some extent) practitioners in the field of youth and community work. We also aim to reach and contribute towards wider youth and policy related networks, beyond ‘youth work’ and its related practices, but it is less clear how successful we have been in regard to this aim in recent years. Overall, we have had a general feeling that Youth & Policy is not responsive enough (we know that we are too slow to publish time-relevant articles), is not reaching a wide enough audience, and is not attracting sufficient high quality submissions to sustain the publication of a journal that is produced regularly enough to contribute in a timely way to present policy debates. As REF-type procedures and heavy workloads are likely to continue to affect the quality and volume of articles received, we feel the time has come to make a change.