Ethical Issues in Youth Work

230 Pages·2010·1.949 MB·English

by  Sarah Banks

Ethical Issues in Youth Work
This fully updated new edition of Ethical Issues in Youth Work presents a
comprehensive overview and discussion of a range of ethical challenges facing
youth workers in their everyday practice.
The first partoffers a clear outline of the nature of professional ethics, relevant
ethical theories and an overview of the policy and organisational context of youth
work. The second part is grounded firmly in practice, with experts in the field
exploring specific issues that raise ethical difficulties for youth workers, such as:
• when to breach confidentiality
• information sharing in inter-professional contexts
• the ethics of youth participation and active citizenship
• how to balance the roles of control, empowerment and education
• negotiating personal and professional values, interests and commitments in
youth work
• dilemmas for faith-based and black and minority ethnic workers
• issues for practitioner researchers.

Ethical Issues in Youth Work offers a timely and unique insight into both the
dilemmas of youth work practice and some of the more recent challenges faced by
youth workers and all those working with young people in the light of current
public attitudes and government policies towards young people.
Sarah Banks is Professor in the School of Applied Social Sciences at Durham
University, UK.

Ethical Issues in Youth Work
Second edition
Edited by Sarah Banks
First edition published 1999
by Routledge
This edition published 2010
by Routledge
2Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.
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collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
©2010 selection and editorial material, Sarah Banks;
individual chapters, the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Acatalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ethical issues in youth work / edited by Sarah Banks. — 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Youth workers—Professional ethics. 2. Social work with youth—Moral and

ethical aspects. I. Banks, Sarah.
[DNLM: 1. Social Work—ethics. 2. Adolescent. HV 1421 E84 2010]
HV1421.E74 2010
174¢.93627—dc22 2009051664
ISBN 0-203-84936-1 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0–415–49970–4 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0–415–49971–2 (pbk)
ISBN10: 0–203–84936–1 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–49970–5 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–49971–2 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–84936–1 (ebk)
Contents
Notes on contributors vii
Preface and acknowledgements ix
Introduction to the second edition xi
Part 1 The ethical context of youth work 1
1 Ethics and the youth worker 3
Sarah Banks
2 Working in welfare: youth policy’s contradictions and dilemmas 24
Phil Mizen
3 Ethics, collaboration and the organisational context of youth work 38
Kenneth McCulloch and Lyn Tett
4 Resourcing youth wo rk: dirty hands and tainted money 53
Tony Jeffs and Mark K. Smith
Part 2 Ethical issues in practice 75
5 Youth workers as professionals: managing dual relationships and
maintaining boundaries 77
Howard Sercombe
6 Youth workers as moral philosophers: developing right thinking
and mindfulness 92
KerryYoung
x
vi Contents
7 Youth workers as controllers: issues of method and purpose 106
Tony Jeffs and Sarah Banks
8 Youth workers as converters? Ethical issues in faith-based youth work 123
Maxine Green
9 Youth workers as critical interpreters and mediators: ethical issues in
working with black young people 139
Umme F. Imam and Rick Bowler
10 Youth workers as confidants: issues of welfare and trust 157
Sue Morgan and Sarah Banks
11 Youth workers as researchers: ethical issues in practitioner and
participatory research 178
Janet Batsleer
12 Young people as activists: ethical issues in promoting and supporting
active citizenship 192
Jason Wood
Index 207
Contributors
Sarah Banks is Professor in the School of Applied Social Sciences at Durham
University, UK. She teaches and researches in the fields of youth, community
and social work, with a particular interest in professional ethics. She is co-editor
of the journal Ethics and Social Welfare,and co-director of the Centrefor Social
Justice and Community Action at Durham University.
Janet Batsleer works as Principal Lecturer in Youth and Community Work
at Manchester Metropolitan University, where she has been based for the past
20 years or so. She is interested in the creativity of practice at all sorts of edges
and margins, and remains actively involved in community-based projects in
Manchester,particularly Forty Second Street and The Blue Room.
Rick Bowler is Senior Lecturer in Applied Community and Youth Work in the
Faculty of Education and Society, University of Sunderland, where he is a
member of the Centre for Equalities and Social Justice and the Centre for
Children, Young People and Families. He is a past Chair of Young Asian Voices
and of the Board of Directors of the North of England Refugee Service. He is
currently working on a doctoral study into racisms and counter-racisms in and
around youth work practice.
Maxine Greencurrently works as a consultant and specialises in faith-based youth
work. Her interest in faith-based youth work was influenced by living as a
Christian in a Muslim country for ten years and her work for the National
Youth Office of the Church of England.
Umme F. Imammanages The Angelou Centre, an organisation promoting economic
inclusion for black women in North East England. Previously she taught
Community and Youth Work at Durham University. As a black woman, a strong
commitment to highlighting the intersections of race and gender has underpinned
her work as a practitioner and an academic.
Tony Jeffs teaches on youth and community work courses at Durham University
x
viii Contributors
and the . He is a member of the Editorial Board of
the journal Youth and Policy.
Kenneth McCulloch is a Senior Lecturer in Community Education at the
University of Edinburgh. His interests are in young people and non-school, non-
formal education, sail training, young people’s citizenship and educational work
to help young people become critical social actors.
Phil Mizenteaches sociology at the University of Warwick, UK. He has published
extensively on youth and youth policy, with particular reference to young
people, the labour market, welfare and the state. He is currently interested in
the emergence of ‘new urban childhoods’ through research examining the
survival strategies of children living under conditions of acute deprivation in
Accra, Ghana.
Sue Morgan currently works for the National Trust at Shaw’s Corner. She was a
youth and community worker between 1980 and 2008, most recently based in
secondary schools.
Howard Sercombe is Professor of Community Education at the University of
Strathclyde, Glasgow. Originally from Australia, Howard has worked in a
variety of settings, from inner-city detached work to community development
in outback towns. He has a strong interest in youth work ethics, and has
published widely on the subject.
Mark K. Smithis Rank Research Fellow and Tutor at the YMCA George Williams
College, London.
Lyn Tettholds a personal Chair in Community Education and Lifelong Learning
at the University of Edinburgh. Her interests lie within the broad area of
community education and lifelong learning, and her research has involved an
investigation of the factors such as class, gender and disability that lead to the
exclusion of adults from post-compulsory education and of the action that

might be taken to promote social inclusion.
Jason Wood is Head of Research in the Youth and Community Division at
De Montfort University, Leicester. He recently completed a Ph.D. study that
investigated how young people define and experience active citizenship; he has
research and teaching interests in youth work, social policy and criminal justice.
He co-edited Work with Young People: Theory and Policy for Practice (with
Jean Hine, Sage) and is currently writing a book about young people and active
citizenship.
KerryYounghas been involved in youth work since 1976, first as a part-time and
later full-time detached youth worker. She has also worked for a number of
national youth work organisations and is currently a youth work consultant
and researcher at Harrington|Youngorganisation development consultants.
Preface and
acknowledgements
Iam delighted that it has been possible to compile a second edition of Ethical Issues
in Youth Work. For a long time the first edition was the only book on the theme
ofethics in youth work. It was published as part of a series on professional ethics
for which the series editor was Ruth Chadwick. I am grateful to her for accepting
the proposal for such a book in the 1990s when youth work was a relatively low-
profile, small occupational group. Other books are now beginning to emerge on
this topic. This is a good sign, as the late Jo Campling (my early mentor in the
publishing field) always said – indicating a vibrant subject area and giving readers
achoice of perspectives, styles and approaches. As an edited collection, this book
covers a wide range of themes from a variety of perspectives – written by authors
who are practitioners, managers, trainers and academics.
Naively, I thought that preparing a second edition would be a relatively easy
task. However, the world has changed a lot since the late 1990s. Most chapters
have been substantially revised, many completely rewritten and some new ones
added. I am verygrateful to the chapter authors for the enormous amount of work
they have put into their chapters and for their patience with the endless rounds of

revisions and amendments. I hope they feel the effort was worthwhile and that we
have maintained the uniqueness of each author’s voice, while adding standard
features at the end of each chapter (questions for reflection and discussion and
recommended reading). Rewriting a chapter after a decade is always a challenging
task – causing uncomfortable reflections on the thoughts, arguments and modes
of expression of the (former) self that wrote it, as well as requiring a laborious task
of updating and reviewing changes in literature, policy and practice.
In addition to the chapter authors, I would like to thank Grace McInnes at
Routledge for her positive support for this second edition and Khanam Virjee for
keeping the project on track.
This book builds, of course, on the first edition, for which my colleague Tony
Jeffs gave great encouragement. It also builds on the theorising and thinking of
many authors, practitioners and students whose works have inspired us and with