Joint Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 18 Apr 2023

Youth Work: Discussion

An Cathaoirleach

I have received apologies from Deputies Ward, Sherlock and Cairns and from Senators McGreehan and O'Sullivan. The item on our agenda today is engagement with stakeholders regarding youth work. At this session we are joined by representatives from the National Youth Council of Ireland, NYCI: Ms Mary Cunningham, chief executive officer, and Mr. Paul Gordon, director of policy and advocacy; from the City of Dublin Youth Service Board: Ms Celene Dunne, director, and Mr. Mark McDonald, director of schools, City of Dublin Education and Training Board; from Rialto Youth Project: Ms Dannielle McKenna, manager, and Mr. Jim Lawlor, youth worker; and from NUI Maynooth: Professor Maurice Devlin, professor of applied social studies, and Dr. Sinead McMahon, community work and youth work team. They are all very welcome. This is our second meeting on this agenda item.

I will go through some housekeeping matters first. I advise anyone who is attending online via MS Teams that the chat function should only be used to make us aware of any urgent matters or technical issues and should not be used to make general comment. I remind members of the constitutional requirement that they must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex in order to participate in public meetings. I will not permit a member to participate where he or she is not adhering to this requirement.

In advance of inviting the witnesses to deliver their opening statements, I advise them of the following in relation to parliamentary privilege. Witnesses who are participating from the committee room are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

Each group will be allocated five minutes' speaking time and after all of the opening statements, there will be time for questions and answers with the members. We are starting with Ms Mary Cunningham and when she is ready, I invite her to make her opening statement.

Ms Mary Cunningham

I really appreciate the opportunity and thank the Chair and the committee members for inviting the National Youth Council of Ireland to the meeting today. My colleague Mr. Paul Gordon and I are grateful to the members for their continued focus on youth work and its impact. A focus on youth work is long overdue. Youth Work Changes Lives is the title of the campaign which we at the National Youth Council of Ireland have run over many years to raise awareness of the very significant personal and societal value of youth work and the need to adequately resource the youth work sector in order that it can continue to support the almost 400,000 youth people that it serves. However, this is so much more than a campaign slogan. Youth work is a truly transformational process for young people the length and breadth of the country. Every day, we hear from our members - youth workers and young people - about how young people, some of whom come from very traumatic backgrounds, can find a safe space for the first time in their lives and about the sense of belonging they experience and which they find in youth work. We also hear about the fundamental feeling of openness that enables them to develop the confidence and resilience needed to flourish as young people in the here and now, and not just as some staging post to adult life.

This kind of work happens in many settings, and broadly speaking, the long-standing principles which underpin youth work include young people engaging as partners, a focus on the needs and experiences of young people as individuals and meeting young people where they are at. In an Irish context, youth work is viewed as a non-formal educational and developmental process based on the voluntary participation of young people. Voluntary youth organisations are the primary providers of youth work in Ireland and this is enshrined within the Youth Work Act 2001, which also recognises the NYCI as the national representative youth work organisation. Youth work has an intrinsic, but often intangible societal value. Often, it is only years later that young people pinpoint their engagement with youth work as a turning point in their lives and their journey to uncovering hidden talents, finding their voice and overcoming adversity. We frequently learn of this recognition from people in all walks of life, including from Members of these Houses. This means that the impact of youth work can be hard to measure in the here and now, but Irish and international evidence reviews clearly demonstrate lasting and meaningful positive outcomes for young people and society as a result of youth work. These outcomes include personal development and growth, including increased confidence, openness to feedback, motivation and identity development; improved physical and mental health and well-being, including enhanced ability to manage anxiety and depression and a reduction in risky behaviours around drug-taking, smoking and engagement in sexual activity; improved education and career skills, including showing greater motivation, engagement, connection in school and enhanced career aspirations, as well as enhanced social responsibility and positive peer connections and connections with adults.

While youth work is not focused on narrow or defined economic outcomes, evidence from Ireland and the UK demonstrates the significant contribution youth work makes to national economies. Research carried out for the NYCI in 2012 made a conservative estimate that every €1 invested in youth work was worth €2.20 to the Irish economy. Despite this, youth work organisations in Ireland are underfunded. Only in 2023 has funding recovered to pre-financial crash levels but it has not risen sufficiently to meet youth population growth and the impact that successive crises, including Covid-19, the war in Ukraine and the rising cost of living, have had on resources, and importantly, on the recruitment and retention of volunteers and qualified youth workers. In 2023, youth work received only 1.2% of the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth budget.

This is despite having the second highest participation rates in youth worth organisations in the European Union and being recognised as having one of the strongest youth work networks, quality standards and education pathways to youth worker careers in Europe. We believe this reflects youth work’s position as the poor relation of formal education, despite its considerable impact on the lives of young people and the strength of this largely voluntary sector.

The youth work sector not only builds resilience in young people, but has demonstrated its own resilience in responding to young people’s needs with stretched resources. Despite being a standard bearer in Europe, the sector has been forced to do more with less. We believe that in facing significant challenges in recruitment, retention and learning and development, it cannot be expected to continue in this vein without a more robust and sustained financial commitment from Government.

NYCI’s vision for youth work is that all young people living in Ireland have access to high-quality, well-resourced youth work services which meet their expressed needs and are delivered by paid professionals and well-supported volunteers. To achieve this and to ensure our sector models best practice in Europe, we ask the committee to consider our recommendations. We call for increased investment and multi-annual funding streams for the youth work sector in budget 2024 and beyond. We propose that investment levels in universal youth work keep pace with targeted youth work. We ask the Department to invest in an independent review of the scale of the sector, to inform a data-driven approach to funding need, and to fund the sector to carry out a workforce planning review to identify current and future education, career pathway and retention needs, including terms and conditions of service and short-term contracts. We also recommend that the Government address the breadth of social and economic challenges facing young people in the forthcoming national youth strategy and position youth work organisations as a key delivery partner.

We believe these structural improvements and investments will allow for the sustainable youth work sector we need to ensure youth work changes lives now and for decades to come. I thank the committee for its time and look forward to taking any questions.

Ms Celene Dunne

I am director of City of Dublin Youth Services. In accordance with the Education and Training Boards Act 2013, the role of City of Dublin Education and Training Board, ETB, is to support the provision, co-ordination, administration and assessment of youth work in its functional area. As part of the youth work function, City of Dublin Youth Services is the conduit for grant aid supporting locally managed projects, groups and clubs to deliver youth work in response to the needs of young people. This funding is provided by the Department and I acknowledge the Department’s commitment to supporting young people who are disadvantaged, marginalised or vulnerable.

I thank the committee for this opportunity and hope our participation today positively adds to the collective discourse around policy direction as it relates to the development of the youth work sector. We are happy to add to previous discussions on the topic and acknowledge the committee's role in this stakeholder engagement process, which has huge potential in terms of amplifying the value of youth work as a vehicle for social change.

In the city of Dublin, with a grant aid investment of €16,233,000 under a targeted scheme, 47 local youth work providers deliver services, programmes and support to 69,000 young people annually. In addition, under a variety of small grant schemes, €683,000 is provided to support 105 volunteer-led clubs engaging almost 7,500 young people delivered by 1,694 adult volunteers.

There are a variety of historic reasons youth work has lacked progression at a policy level, including a lack of understanding of what youth work is, how it works and, consequently, why it should receive investment. I have been in post less than four months and have spent much of that time engaging with stakeholders on the ground. The issues they have raised with me are funding, staffing and premises.

According to the providers, year-on-year management boards await an allocation to continue their services, leading to uncertainty for not only the management, staff and volunteers but also for the young people, their families and their communities. This leads to an instability in the sector which could be addressed by a policy decision to place youth work funding on a statutory basis. A simplified formula that facilitates sanctioned posts, adequate programme costs and appropriate overheads would bring much-needed stability.

It has been clearly articulated to me that without mainstream stable investment, the sector struggles to convince policymakers of its value. This leads to a breakdown in trust and relationships and to a situation whereby so much time and effort is expended seeking resources that little or no time can be given to the articulation of the long- to medium-term contribution of youth work to young people and society.

The retention and recruitment of qualified staff is difficult because offering terms and conditions commensurate with the professionals delivering services is not possible without mainstream funding. In the city of Dublin, it is estimated that 9% of youth work posts are vacant, resulting in cover issues which can ultimately lead to a reduction in services.

Regarding premises, for volunteer-led clubs in Dublin the situation is that there are adults willing to volunteer and training and grants available to support them. However, finding an appropriate space is proving challenging. This results in a frustrating situation whereby young people miss out on programmes and activities and volunteer hours are lost to the community.

It has been almost 18 years since the last round of facilities investment. Youth and community facilities built during this period benefited from a sound policy which attached packages of funding to the facility to support the overheads and running costs of a premises and to provide additional youth work staff. This ensured access for the target group of young people was guaranteed and value for money was achieved. Key to the success of this policy was a partnership approach which combined the expertise of the Department, the local authority, community sector and the ETB. As a roadmap, this previous multi-stakeholder approach would be most useful in designing a much-needed new round of investment, addressing the deficit in facilities and upgrading existing dedicated youth spaces.

From my engagements with boards of management, youth workers and volunteers on the ground, it is clear a youth work policy approach which includes all stakeholders and learning from previous iterations could lead to much-needed sustainable developments in the youth work sector in Dublin.

Ms Dannielle McKenna

I thank the committee for the invitation to join it today. I am the youth service manager of the Rialto Youth Project and with me today is Mr. Jim Lawlor. Youth work came to Rialto in the early 1980s and, since then, the project has always approached the practice from a social justice, community and youth development model. In Rialto, we have embedded models that operate from social justice which are collective, work on collaboration and aim to bring about social change.

Through this model, we have learned and know that youth work works and is liberating. It is creating a foundation to understand what is going on for young people as they grow through their adolescence. It is a critical time in a young person's life. They are developing socially, emotionally, physically and sexually. It is a time for them to try or not try things, explore, figure things out, make mistakes and learn. That sounds attainable, and it could be except that we live in a society that is unequal. That inequality means that when young people come through the doors of the youth project, they are walking in with a bag of trauma that is ready to knock them over. That bag now includes a housing crisis, more poverty, an unequal system, a cost-of-living crisis, unemployment, a mental health crisis, addiction and violence, among many other things which brutalise young people and mean their lives can be devastating. At times, youth workers spend the day keeping young people alive and supporting them to get through the day.

Youth workers are in the communities with young people, responding within a system of waiting lists for services, unequal access to services, a lack of services and red tape. The youth work field is seriously struggling because it attempts to respond to all the needs that are wider than youth work within a climate where resources are limited, there is no strategic vision for young people or the field of youth and community and the Departments are failing. We have gone away from the original fundamentals of youth work and become a safety net for and first responders to young people in crisis and pain.

Through that, we still believe in creating a needs-based response because we know the cards have been stacked against young working class and other marginalised young people in Ireland and the inequality they face everywhere they turn. Youth work tries to do the job of many, but we need a more joined up wraparound system that builds a solid bridge between Departments, rather than operating from independent silos that are failing young people. Instead of existing within a failing economic state that is causing real harm to young people, we need to invest in the youth and community fields.

We cannot forget the impact of austerity or the decisions that were made by the State to safeguard certain interests and decimate communities. In 2011, the decision was made to make these cuts and discipline the field. This continued to put us in our place year after year, placing obstacles in the way with a value base that is being driven by a State that does not offer the critical social education that moves us towards a more radical youth work practice. Instead, the value-for-money and UBU outcome-based models emerged and young people became numbers. They became lots of numbers. The conversations became about documentation and they changed from the impact of youth work to counting how many times young people walked through the door of a project. It is no longer about how you support a young person to finish secondary school or build their confidence to become more self-directing in their lives; it is about target groups and time.

Youth work works because it is built on a system of values and integrity. However, it has become a space where governance is attached. In the field, it currently diminishes the critical thinking, passion and creativity of young people; the foundations of youth work. The approach to youth work is being commodified and individualised when it needs to be kept focused on collective action for collective social change. We know there are lots of statistics about how many young people and children are in homeless accommodation. There are statistics on how many children and young people are early school leavers, on waiting lists for mental health and medical supports and for how much trauma they are living in every day. We need the Departments to come together and develop a more strategic wraparound approach to support the young people who are most at risk.

The subject of youth work is critical. It needs to be understood, valued and invested in. This State needs to value it. The field has not been brought to its original funding pre 2008 because we now have the cost-of-living crisis. If we look at other investments, in 2022 the annual funding budget for youth was €73 million but private schools got €111 million. Where is that investment? Privatisation and priorities need to shift. How would youth work look if it existed in an egalitarian system where young people were seen as equal rather than the neoliberal capitalist system where youth and community work has become about employability and social enterprise? Youth work exists because of inequality and the State needs to take the issues young people and the sector face seriously and invest in and resource projects to support young people to meet their needs.

Dr. Sinead McMahon

I thank the Chair and the committee, not only for our invitation here but also for creating this space to publicly discuss issues affecting youth work. My colleague, Professor Maurice Devlin, and I work in the department of applied social studies at Maynooth University. As part of our commitment to the promotion of human rights, social justice and equality, we are the longest-established provider of professional education and training in youth and community work in Ireland. The committee will have received our submission paper and it provides more details on the following points.

Youth work is a way of working with young people that is quite distinctive because though it based on relationships between adults and young people, it is always about putting young people at the centre of that relationship. In Ireland and across Europe we refer to youth work as informal education. This sets it apart from formal education because youth work does not have an imposed curriculum or mandatory attendance system. A core principle is that young people get to decide if they want to be involved in youth work and what they want to get from their involvement in it.

Given that youth work has a 150-year history, many books, reports and research studies have been written about it. Clear evidence of the value and contribution of youth work to young people's lives, communities and society exists. The committee has already heard personal testimony directly from practitioners on the value of youth work to young people's lives. Youth work continues to be relevant to young people today. This was acknowledged by the Minister, Deputy O’Gorman, when he stated in the Dáil that "Youth organisations have been the unsung heroes of the Covid-19 pandemic" and that their ability to adapt quickly enabled them to provide vital support to young people.

There are some challenges facing Irish youth work, and I have a short time to highlight just a few of them. Looking back at the discussions held so far by this committee, I note an emphasis on Dublin-based as well as targeted youth work. I want to remind the committee that Irish youth work is more expansive than this. As someone who grew up in and lives in a rural area and who provides support to rural youth work organisations, there is a lack of understanding about the particular challenges faced by rural young people in social issues, isolation and lack of services. A specific strategy for improving the funding and delivery of rural youth work needs to be considered. While youth work is often recognised for the targeted work it does, particularly with young people who have complex needs, this work does not fully define the purpose of youth work. Universal and open access youth work that happens in youth clubs, youth information centres, uniformed youth groups and participation initiatives provide informal education opportunities to all young people. It does so whether they are rural, urban, settled, Traveller, migrant, LGBT+, neurodiverse or whatever. It provides these opportunities to all young people. However, this type of open access youth work is underfunded and needs more investment.

I want to point to the limitations of value-for-money governance. UBU Your Place Your Space, the reformed youth funding scheme, has brought significant changes to youth work practice. Based on a value-for-money approach, there are now strict governance rules that youth workers must abide by, including time ratios and allowable interventions, as well as preset outcomes to be achieved. The new governance rules seek to enhance the quantitative value-for-money performance of youth work but there is little space given to the discussion of quality. Good quality youth work practice is about more than just value for money and youth work requires appropriate governance that supports quality as well as quantity.

Since the abandonment of the national youth work development plan in 2008, youth work occupies a much more muted position in Irish youth policy today. For example, Better Outcomes Brighter Futures, the overarching policy for children and young people published in 2014, gave only fleeting attention to youth work. The value and contribution of youth work needs to be amplified at a policy level and should be more fully integrated into Irish youth policy, such as in the emergent new policy framework for children and young people. In addition, youth work requires a specific policy framework to harness and protect its distinctive contribution.

This committee has already heard from other speakers on this issue but I want to add our observations. There is a crisis in the recruitment and retention of youth workers and this is evidenced anecdotally to us through our connection with youth work organisations on the ground. At a policy level, while the North South education and training standards committee, NSETS, oversees professional programme endorsement processes on behalf of the Department of Children, Equality, Disability Integration and Youth and the Department of Education in Northern Ireland, there is no co-ordinated approach to workforce planning south of the Border. Youth work organisations needs the support of Government to help address this crisis in a co-ordinated way. A review of NSETS work on professional education and training standards and associated matters is also needed.

Youth work remains as relevant and necessary today as it was 150 years ago. However, it needs the support of policy-makers and funders to continue to realise the actual and potential contribution of youth work in supporting the diverse range of needs of young people in a rapidly changing Irish society. I thank members for listening.

Senator Tom Clonan

I thank the witnesses for coming in. I have two straightforward questions and I invite each of the stakeholders to address them. I am struck by a recurring theme through all the presentations of the use of staffing, funding, premises and another pattern around the qualitative impact of youth work versus the trend towards quantitative measures imposed by funding streams and so on. The national youth work development plan being abandoned in 2008 seems to have been a turning point and a number of the witnesses referred to that time around 2008 when the wheels started to come off the carriage. Can the witnesses identify a lead agency, Department or individual that might be useful in turning that around and getting us back on the correct track?

The second question is whether we have a neighbour in the European Union whose model of youth work is worth looking at or emulating, or which is a model of best practice, impact and efficiency?

Mr. Paul Gordon

I will speak on the broader issues around funding and services. At the moment, youth work organisations and youth workers are effectively running on fumes. Youth work organisations have been underfunded over a long period. That has recovered somewhat in recent years and there has been welcome progress with the Minister, Deputy O’Gorman, in the Department but it is not enough, given the level of population aged ten to 24, which is the age group most members of the NYCI work with and which is set out in the Youth Work Act as the general age group with which youth work organisations work. There has been an estimated 13% increase in growth. We have the second highest participation rates in youth work in the European Union. In the past 12 months, a survey put out by the Department showed one on four young people had engaged in youth work. That gives a sense of the strength of the sector and of how we are doing more with less.

We do not have the data to inform decision-making. The NYCI undertook a study in 2012 on the economic value of youth work. That helped scale the sector in terms of employed staff, volunteer engagement and the number of young people we worked with. It has been 11 years since that was published. The Department is still making decisions on the basis of those numbers. We have to revisit that. Along with that, the cost of living has put further pressure on organisations. We increasingly hear of the challenges in delivering services to young people. A survey of our members in August and September last showed big issues around organisational costs such as heating, food, light and rising insurance costs. That is reflected in the communities they work in. We have a survey in the field currently and much of the feedback concerns food poverty for young people.

To touch on points made by Ms McKenna, Dr. McMahon and others, we hear from members that youth workers are dealing with what would be primarily considered social work issues. Those are the first things they have to deal with when young people come in the door who are hungry and have not eaten in 24 hours. It all combines to put additional pressure on youth workers, who do not have the pay and conditions to keep them in the sector. It is a vocation for many but they need to be kept in the sector. Unfortunately, the funding levels do not allow youth work organisations to consider decisions to look at pay and conditions. It needs leadership from the Department on delivering that funding and looking at youth work and youth workforce development, both for paid staff and also volunteers, who are really the foundation of the sector.

Ms Dannielle McKenna

On the question of which Departments should respond, we have seen over the years the former Department of Youth Affairs has grown and children and young people are now a very small part of it, as seen in the minimal amount of funding put into youth work. The Department of Justice took on a huge piece around investment in justice projects. I am not denying the need for and importance of that work but we have to be very careful not to criminalise young people. That is what has happened because the investment has gone into the justice section. We are criminalising, particularly, young men. Young men of working-class communities are being seen in a different light. We have moved away from the principle of youth work as a needs-based response and have started to react to behaviour.

The Senator asked about different models and a model we have been talking to recently is that which was adopted in Scotland. In Glasgow, they could see a generational issue around violence in communities. Instead of seeing that as a criminal issue, it was seen as a health issue. The idea was to look at the underlying causes that violence stems from. Much of that involves trauma, inequalities and poverty that young people and communities face every day. If that is responded to in a different way, it changes. They got all the stakeholders to come together. Another thing was the social work departments were not responding because they said if it was not happening in the home, it was not a child protection issue and that community violence was not the same but was a justice issue. What we need to take away is how to keep children, young people and communities safe. To do that, we have to look at it in a different way and respond in a way that is not about penalising and justice. It has to be communities moving together in solidarity with Departments and wraparound services from everybody.

Mr. Jim Lawlor

The structure of the UBU-----

Senator Tom Clonan

Can you tell me what UBU stands for?

Mr. Jim Lawlor

It is the funding frame used by the Department for youth work.

Ms Celene Dunne

The letters do not stand for anything. It is like text speech: “You be you and I’ll be me”.

Mr. Jim Lawlor

It is designed in such a way as to limit the work. Youth workers cannot do this, that or the other. That is not the work. It has to have the percentages right. It is all about the numbers. That is a serious issue. Of course, people ignore it because they have no option but to do that if they are to do the job; however, they can be penalised if the agencies decide to move on that. Then add in all the other stuff Ms McKenna spoke about. There are some fundamentals that need to be corrected. It can be the basis for, as Dr. McMahon spoke about, a framework for the development of youth work. Let us use the UBU. Let us take it apart, see if there are any good bits and develop a more suitable structure.

Professor Maurice Devlin

I thank the Senator for a couple of very good questions. Much of what has been said in response is worth teasing out further but I will come in on the question of a comparator or a place to which we might look. There is not, unfortunately, any one place that has got it right and to which we could simply look. It is not surprising, perhaps. It is partly because youth work as we understood it originated in these islands and there is not such a strong tradition of it on the Continent, especially in the southern parts. It has emerged much more recently but people are taking to it the more they learn about it. There is an irony whereby there have been huge strides at institutional levels of the European Union and the Council of Europe in recent years in recognising the value of youth work and seeking to replicate some of what they have seen going on in Ireland and the UK at the very time when, particularly in the UK and more particularly England in recent decades, a thriving youth service sector based on youth work was being dismantled. We certainly do not want to learn from that experience. As in education and many other areas, we could learn much from Finland’s approach to youth work and youth work education and training.

Some of us here, both through training and in practice, have connections with different parts of the EU, where they do not necessarily use the term "youth work" but talk about social pedagogy or social animation and they use similar approaches based on young people's voluntary participation, which is essential. There are aspects we could learn from but what is so frustrating is that we are better placed to get it right than anywhere else. I am not just talking about here, south of the Border, but on the island of Ireland. Ms Cunningham said earlier that youth work transforms lives and I am here because as an 11-year-old, I was a founder member of a local youth group in an abandoned school building in County Derry. I am very conscious of the North-South dimension of all that we do and of not just the need, but the opportunity, to do more on a North-South basis post Brexit.

Unfortunately, the UK is not in the EU any more. The Senator asked specifically about the EU but we could certainly learn from some of what is happening in Scotland in terms of integration of youth work with other approaches to community learning and development, in particular. Some of what is happening in Wales is really valuable in terms of strategically seeing youth work as part of the overall education provision and practice in the country and acknowledging youth workers on a par with formal educators and teachers. As for some of what is happening in the North around the acknowledgement of the workforce responsibilities of the lead Department, to give one example, in recent times we have seen the fast-tracking of routes to professional qualifications for people who do not have them because of the urgent need and the recruitment and retention issues that others referred to earlier. Indeed, those issues came up time and again when this committee spoke to practitioners at a previous meeting. In the North, there is a much more systematic approach to gathering, maintaining and publishing statistical data and other types of information about youth work, whereas here, there is no repository for such data. This is one of the great tragedies.

It is 40 years since I got my first job in social research for the national youth policy committee, chaired by former High Court judge, Mr. Justice Declan Costello. There are so many stories I could refer back to about how, if different options had been chosen and if politics had not come into it so many times along the way, we could be so much further ahead at this stage. There is a terrible lack of institutional memory because of the way the Civil Service runs in this country and particularly because of where youth work sits within that. There used to be an old joke about there being no economists in the Department of Finance but the same applies to youth affairs. There are great civil servants, great individuals who are absolutely doing their best in the jobs they are in but there has been no serious attempt to resource those civil and public servants with the kind of expertise needed. There has been a recent recruitment drive and there have been sporadic ones over the years but there needs to be a dedicated unit, wherever it is located, that gathers knowledge, curates it, analyses it systematically, looks out to the wider world and also digs deeper here, in all the right ways, within youth work and out to the various domains that youth work engages with and adopts a genuinely evidence-informed, strategic approach. We do not have that really.

Deputy Jennifer Murnane O'Connor

As a rural Deputy, I agree with Dr. McMahon. We have our own challenges and the biggest challenge, as the witnesses have said, is funding. The lack of funding is a huge barrier. Our young people are our future and we need to invest in the future. That is a huge concern for me.

When it comes to young people's participation and involvement, is that becoming a challenge now? Our guests spoke about not having enough places and the cost of renting out rooms. With the cost-of-living crisis, has that become an issue? Is Garda vetting an obstacle for volunteers? I see in my own area that there are huge challenges in that regard.

I want to talk about young people and the arts. We have VISUAL in Carlow, which is probably one of the finest arts centres in the country. On Thursday and Friday this week, Carlow Youth Theatre will be back on stage for the first time since Covid, doing a double bill or two-show production. It is so great to see these sorts of activities for young people coming back again, right across the country. That said, there were challenges for the theatre group. For me and for many parents I have spoken to, the arts provide an amazing way to engage with young people and help them to develop personally and socially. That is an area in which I am very much involved.

Our guests spoke about young people arriving into services hungry, which is very worrying. At the moment, as per the programme for Government, all DEIS schools have a school meals programme. Not all DEIS schools provide hot meals but they all at least provide sandwiches, drinks and so on. As part of the programme for Government going forward, all schools over the next few years will have a food programme and that is so important for everybody. No matter what area one works in, one does not want a child arriving in to a youth service after school or in the evening who is hungry. The Government really has to make sure to address this.

I want to mention a few groups in the Carlow-Kilkenny constituency that do really important work. I do not know if our guests are aware of the Carlow Regional Youth Service, which is excellent. We also have the Vault Youth Project, with which I do a lot of work. We have the Young Irish Film Makers group in Kilkenny, which is absolutely excellent. We also have Barnstorm Theatre Company in Kilkenny and Carlow Youth Theatre who have really come back on track. We also have Striking Productions, a theatre company set up by Robert O'Neill. He has so many young people involved in theatre and song and has a show coming up soon. It is great to see these things happening again after Covid, which had a hugely negative effect. I worry because all of us lived a different life during Covid. I worry about the young people and the challenges they faced during Covid. I know that all Deputies in the House agree that it is so important that we make sure all of these youth services are funded properly. The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, has spoken about all of the great work done during Covid but we really need to invest. We must invest in our young people, in youth workers and in the great services that they provide. We also need to invest in the volunteers. I know many volunteers who are passionate about this area and are heavily involved in it. That is another area that is important.

Dr. McMahon spoke about the emergent new policy framework for children and young people. She said that in addition, youth work requires a specific policy framework of its own to harness and protect its distinctive contribution. I ask her to elaborate on that. Dr. McMahon also said that youth work organisations need the support of Government to help address this crisis. Does she believe we are in a crisis? I am really tormented about this. Are we at the stage now where we are in a crisis? I know there have been challenges but we must ensure that in challenging times, the Government invests in our young people and in youth services. We have to invest. On education and schools in the context of youth work, what role could schools play in this area? Does the Government need to invest more in education? In what areas do our guests believe we could do more?

Again, I thank all of our guests. Their opening statements were inspirational. As the Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, we absolutely have a duty of care to all our children and young people and it worries me to hear that we are now in a crisis. That really worries me.

I do not know how many questions I asked. I think I got in about ten.

Ms Mary Cunningham

I will pick up on the vetting issue that has been identified as an obstacle. The youth sector is exceptionally committed to safeguarding and protecting children and young people. Vetting is a very important building block for that. NYCI lobbied at the time for the extension of vetting to the youth sector. Brian Lenihan, God rest him, was the Minister at the time. We have worked as an organisation to support our member organisations to engage in vetting. There were challenges in the beginning around timelines, etc. It is a relatively straightforward and smooth operation now. We would certainly say that any volunteer with a concern about vetting is probably not a volunteer one would want to involve in youth work. It is a critical building block.

Deputy Jennifer Murnane O'Connor

That is good to know.

Ms Mary Cunningham

It is not the only thing. It also involves reference checking. It is an important role we are asking both staff and volunteers to do. It is a unique relationship with children and young people. We need to be sure we have the right people doing that. Vetting is a really important block, together with training, support, supervision and the challenges when resources are stretched. Those are the things that fall by the wayside. However, vetting certainly should not be an obstacle for any volunteer or staff member who wants to get involved in youth work.

Dr. Sinead McMahon

I thank the Deputy for her questions. On the rural issue, I am involved in supporting rural youth work organisations. I was visiting some people in County Tipperary last week, and we were talking about some of the challenges being faced there. Anyone who knows Tipperary knows it is two and a half hours from one side to the other.

Deputy Jennifer Murnane O'Connor

I know it well.

Dr. Sinead McMahon

The population of young people is dispersed. There are a number of towns and villages where there are high levels of disadvantage and where young people face really challenging issues around addiction, lack of support services and lack of transport to reach the support services. On the other side, in terms of the youth work response to that, there are massive challenges in funding. Funding rural services is complex anyway. The cost of trying to cover large areas across a county is challenging. Some youth workers can spend many hours travelling from one project to another because the youth population in one area does not sustain a full-time project. That brings complexities to service delivery and increases costs. That is something that has to be looked at in terms of the proper funding of rural youth services. NYCI did a study on rural youth work in 2019 and has made a number of recommendations around this.

On the youth policy question, the overarching strategy for children and young people, Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures, is due to be replaced. There is currently a blueprint to do that. That provides a huge opportunity to amplify the role of youth work in addressing the needs of young people in Ireland. In conjunction with that, youth work needs a particular policy strategy and policy direction to harness its contribution, and its particular distinctiveness needs to be protected.

On the question about volunteering, I have been a volunteer myself. I have volunteered on boards and youth work organisations, etc. I am sure many of us here have done that, and we know the work involved in being a volunteer. Some of the challenges people now face with volunteering is that while they do it to give back, they have often put in a day's work when they come to volunteer their time, and now there can be governance rules about making applications for quite small sums of money to run a youth club, like €500 for the year, which involve huge amounts of paperwork for people who have just left a job they have been working in all day. It is like more work for people. That can be a little off-putting. The reasons people do and do not volunteer are complex but I suggest that is one issue to look at.

We are also definitely facing a crisis in the retention of youth workers. I was having this discussion with people in County Tipperary. It is imminent, with the numbers of positions. Ms Dunne mentioned 9% vacancies in Dublin. We do not have those data for rural youth organisations. However, anecdotally my discussions suggest people are finding it very difficult to recruit. We also do not have that supply of youth workers in rural areas, so I would suggest it is even more difficult.

Ms Celene Dunne

The question as to whether we are in crisis is a really good one. There are a number of crises like food poverty, which is a huge crisis. It is probably easier to get a meal plan going in a DEIS school. It is very difficult when services are sometimes on the street and detached. Sometimes they are in a centre; sometimes they are moving around. Perhaps in rural areas there is a bigger challenge in getting that programme. However, youth work is feeding young people who are hungry and do not have food. If those services are not there, they are not getting that toasted sandwich and it is not happening. That is a reality.

There are a number of crises. Covid created its own situation for schools, and youth work came to the fore in supporting young people and supporting them to get back. There is also a huge crisis with hate speech and those issues in communities. It has been reported to us, with those protests and monitoring on the streets, that young people have starting to withdraw from youth services because they do not want to go out and face the level of hate out on the street. There are a number of crises coming. The rise of the far right creates its own crisis in these communities, and young people are hugely impacted by any of those crises, as we saw with Covid. They are a vulnerable group. The Deputy has rightly pointed out they are children. We are talking about children who are hungry, who are living in fear, who need support and who do not have access to those services. There is a lot going on and there is a lot in crisis.

The funding crisis and the recruitment crisis can be thrown onto that too. We see that instability and the risk even of existing services becoming reduced. If there is nobody there to make the toasted sandwich, it is just not happening. There is a level of urgency. There are a lot of things we can learn from that have gone right and which we have done right over many years. It is a matter of doing those things and investing in them. Instead of scratching our heads and wondering if there are any needs, if we need to be doing this or if it is the right thing, we need to get on and do it and say it has worked, we can do this and we should be doing it. There is almost a moral part that we need to be responding to those very basic needs. Who should be doing it is not really the question. It is a case of let us do it. That is where we need to be.

Mr. Mark McDonald

I am director of schools with City of Dublin Education and Training Board and have responsibility for youth services. Like the Deputy, we welcome the expansion of the school meals scheme. I think all primary schools will be included from 2025. That will be a huge aspect. Having been involved as a school completion programme co-ordinator in a past life and to link in with what Ms Dunne has said, the social element is very important. The most important and basic level is the food provision, but it is actually the social element that sets the atmosphere in a school from breakfast time onwards. Student interactions would often appear on a friendly and relaxed basis as opposed to potential confrontation in the classroom.

On the Deputy's second point on the role schools can have in their linkage with youth work, that is something we have always lacked, not in individual communities but on the national level of trying to connect the two.

Our second level schools are all community colleges. They are called that for a very good reason, because we are supposed to be at the heart of our community in order to reflect and serve it. However, I was principal of two community colleges and if I was the last person out and locking up at 5 o'clock then I was locking up at 5 o'clock and that was it. In her opening statement, Ms Dunne talked about the issue of premises. Having somewhere for young people to go outside of school hours would be beneficial. There are barriers in relation to who is going to do that and protecting the rest of the school but it could be explored.

Professor Maurice Devlin

I wish to remind the committee of points that were made at the previous session on youth work by a number of practitioners about the need for funding schemes to facilitate and encourage links between schools and youth work, rather than actively discouraging them or getting in the way.

Senator Lynn Ruane

I thank everyone for their presentations. It is a nice addition to the last session, which focused heavily on the principles of youth work and what youth work is. Today's session focuses on why we have not been able to concentrate on actual youth work. We found ourselves, for example, talking about food. That is not really a discussion about what youth work is. However, the need is there, and services are having to fulfil the unmet need. As a result, when we talk about youth work we suddenly find ourselves talking about other stuff like poverty and structural inequality. Poverty is so destructive of communities that it is often very difficult for schools, youth projects and families to be able to fight against such a big, powerful historical, intergenerational system that has set some communities many years behind regarding employment and education. That is a very hard thing to have to keep battling against.

Youth work plays a very specific role in the battle by empowering people to discover who they are and their place in the world separate to what their environment and conditions tell them they are. In New York, there are places where schools take a holistic, community development approach to education and youth work. Everybody works out of the same premises. I remember Ms Áine Lawlor gave examples in another committee about that model, which I think is great. However, there is a part of me that gets a little bit worried about the over-connection between the school and youth work. There have been reports of some youth services refusing to work with certain young people because the school has let the youth service know that the person has not been attending school. Then the youth service makes the decision not to work with the young person unless they attend school, which seems like the inverse of what youth work is actually supposed to do. One cannot ask the young person why they are not in school unless they are in this group. That should be the whole purpose, to be able to explore those things.

It is important to be very clear on the role of youth work, even if it has a relationship with the school. It needs to be independent of what is going on in other services or in the community or with justice. Young people need to know that youth work is still youth work and will still serve them if they are looking to avail of it, regardless of what else is going on. Many speakers have made similar points about the youth work model, which seems to be influencing what youth work looks like in relation to target groups. If an organisation has funding for a target group that is where its focus will be and it makes for an easy report to write. However, when the remit is to simply work with everybody and not a specific target group that can be neatly defined, then youth work cannot really be pinned down that way in terms of outcomes.

Is the real issue here with retention of staff and funding that we need to drastically pick apart the UBU model? This is using a crude instrument to measure what is an essential piece of work happening in communities. We need to move away from the individualised pieces of work that seem to be happening. They seem to be very focused on soundbites like this "individual has been activated" into employment because of their time with us. It is all about job activation and economic units instead of having a funding model and structure that empowers whole communities rather than just individuals within the youth work sector. I have some questions in relation to that point. What is the alternative? What does that model look like? What policy would the witnesses introduce or change or go back to that will allow that type of work to happen?

The second question is about the shortage of youth workers. We can talk about increasing the number of youth workers, but the main issue is retaining youth workers within the sector, so maybe the witnesses could comment on that. What is causing people to leave the sector? Is the pay and conditions? Why are we losing youth workers to other professions? Is it because of the lack of multi-annual contracts? Is it because people cannot make a good living because youth work is not paying them adequately in line with their professional qualifications?.

Perhaps the witnesses can comment on the idea of the youth work apprenticeship. I know a group of people have been working on this idea but it appears to have hit an obstacle. The block seems to be that even though services may want to support a youth work apprenticeship, they would have to use a vacancy that was already there. They would have to use annual funding that is already there, rather than creating a fund which allows youth work apprenticeships to happen outside of guaranteed grant aid agreement funding. That obviously does not address the sustainability of the job when people are in it.

What are the witnesses' thoughts on increasing people's participation in the youth work sector with professionalised accreditation and apprenticeships? Then how should we move beyond that? Under a new model should there also be specific funding from the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science for apprenticeships within the youth work sector?

Dr. Sinead McMahon

I will talk about the UBU and Mr. Lawlor's reference earlier to pulling it apart. UBU is a funding stream for targeted youth work. It has its roots in the value for money review, VFM, completed by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs as it was at the time in 2014. It looked at the delivery of youth work services solely through an economics lens. That led to the design of the current UBU funding stream with all its tight governance rules about what is and is not allowed and how young people are to be targeted in particular ways and at particular levels of risk and so on. It seems to have been put together in such a way to increase accountability within the youth work sector and I would like to take this opportunity to challenge that. Youth work has been funded by the State since the 1970s. Youth work organisations have always been accountable for the money they have received from the State. They have always had to report on how money was spent and return the receipts etc. This has always happened. The reorientation of UBU into a very tight accountability regime has to be questioned regarding the potential it has to undermine youth work practice on the ground. As Mr. Lawlor said already, it is constraining the way youth workers can work.

One of the distinctive features of youth work, the very thing that makes it attractive to young people, is its informality. That is what makes it different from having a curriculum like in school. These rules edge us towards making youth work feel a little bit more like school and seem like there is a curriculum that can and cannot be addressed. This has to be looked at, because the distinctiveness of youth work lies in its ability to respond to the needs of the young people it meets on the ground. Those needs are very diverse. We need to re-examine the issue and find a governance approach that supports youth workers as the experts. Such an approach would recognise them as people who have the wisdom skills, education and abilities to make the right calls, to exercise professional discretion and to do what is right for the young people they meet on the ground.

Therefore, we need a governance approach that supports good quality youth work practice. We did have a national quality standards framework that ran for approximately six years. It was not perfect but youth workers were supported to develop and look at continuous improvement in their practice. I thought this was a really encouraging model in terms of placing and supporting practice, not constraining it. That is one suggestion I would make on that.

Ms Celene Dunne

On Dr. McMahon's point, the UBU is made up of historical old schemes that were there under the special projects for youth, SPY, which was for disadvantaged youth and the young people’s facilities and services fund, YPFSF, which responded to the drugs issues in communities. All of those funds were collapsed into a targeted youth scheme. That scheme was very successful in that it collapsed those streams and reduced the administrative burden. This was the goal of the whole thing, that it would make things work more effectively. Then there was a reform process that introduced UBU. Behind it all was the idea of more accountability. That speaks to the trust issues I mentioned earlier. There is a trust governance issue there that cannot really be ignored. The UBU scheme has 146 rules, which is a huge amount for any community group to be complying with at any time. It is starting to direct practice and that is a difficulty for people. There are nine new rules in the offing as well. The introduction of more rules seems to be the way it has gone. I think that is something that has come from those value-for-money reviews, which did not really take into account the key stakeholders. That was a fundamental problem that arose and it can easily be addressed. As Mr. Lawlor said, there comes a time where you pick it apart. There are parts that are working and there are things we have learned. There are things we have learned from other iterations of schemes. It is not as if those schemes did not have any eligibility criteria or any rules; there were 12 and that was manageable. We have increased the administrative burden. It has quadrupled now and there are more forms and templates coming down the line but we can learn something from the Covid times in terms of how technology can support some of those things. We are basically still on a paper-based exercise under UBU. This means that front-line workers are taken away from the work they should be doing to fill out forms. We should be using some of the technology and some of what has been advanced to support what is needed in terms of figures and accountability. There are ways to do that but an IT solution for some of this could help the sector somewhat. That is a big part of it.

Dr. McMahon pointed out the quality standards. The quality standards framework was in place for nine years. It was on a three-year cycle and there were three such cycles. Then there was a review of it by the middle quarter in 2017, which showed there was a need for some change, particularly in terms of language, but that there was huge value in having quality at the heart of funding youth work. In the reformed scheme, the quality aspect was taken out and then it is just about the numbers that are put through. Everything is there. There is a national quality standards for framework there and it has been reviewed. Any issues there were with that system have already been identified and the recommendation is currently sitting there to reintroduce quality. Including quality gives that assurance that things are going well and it is a focus on the practice of making sure that the experience the young person gets coming in is of a high quality, rather than the paperwork being right. You can write yourself a good project any day of the week really.

There are things we have learned as we have gone along. It is not as if UBU is the first scheme that ever came along. There is lots of learning from practice that we can put into place. That is an area on which we need to be really focused. Any new developments, any continuous improvement of UBU, or any changing or picking apart, need to have the stakeholders on board. There is a lot to be learnt from all of our experiences. The Department has a particular experience and particular needs and we need to acknowledge that. The ETB is in the mid-level governance role and we have a particular expertise and particular needs. The key to all of this is our providers, our youth work staff, our volunteers, and of course the young people and the communities who are at the heart of this. They are the ones who are likely to lose out at the end of the day. All of those things have to be brought together. In the past, there was a national youth work advisory committee under the Act. It brought all stakeholders together and policy emerged that was fit for purpose. That kind of engagement is what we really need to go back to and that we are learning from what went well, what did not work, and taking advantage of the technology and what is there to support the work.

Mr. Jim Lawlor

A lot of babies have been thrown out with the bathwater. Some of the stuff that was working was just thrown out because we had another set of policies or more rules without the analysis. That analysis cannot be done under UBU. It is so frustrating to think about it. When UBU was coming in, I was still in Rialto at the time and I remember having the conversations within the City of Youth Service Board, CDYSB. People were saying "If you stay around here Lawlor, there is going to be a red card for Rialto". That is how bad it has got. It is not a case of sitting down and looking at the experience any more, or taking the learning that has happened and doing the research required to hold that together. It is just a total disrespect for the work in my view. It shows a complete disrespect for the amount of effort. People do this work anyway; they do this on the sly. People do it when they go home and at all sorts of times. It is seen as of no value to anybody when it happens like that. It needs to be accepted that this research and those learnings are really important and let us do it. Let us not complicate it. We have always had to be accountable and do this. Nobody particularly likes doing it but it is part of it. I think of the times Senator Ruane and I spent up in Bluebell talking about some of the practices when she was arguing with me about some of the people who were drug dealers. In Rialto we were saying they were just drug dealers and she were saying that at the weekend they were not, they were out in Tallaght snorting coke to beat the band and doing all those sort of things. Suddenly that cross-fertilisation and that way of thinking, where people can actually learn from each other, was happening. It will continue to happen but it will happen under cover. People then feel guilty and say they should not be doing this or that. Then there are the ones who will say they will not do something because it is not part of their contract. It creates frustration for me anyway.

Ms Dannielle McKenna

That was part of what I was going to say about the funding. You spend your life chasing funding. It is piecemeal funding that is put out to the youth sector. Within the UBU framework, the work cannot be done the way it needs to be done. You get some funding from the HSE, which means you cannot connect with a school or you get Pobal funding, which means you cannot provide daily school meals and after schools. We are very lucky to have more than just a youth work team in Rialto. We have after-schools, a youth service support worker and we now have a family support worker but all of those things are needed to do the work effectively. The problem is that we spend half our time fighting for funding to get what is needed to create a community-based youth work field. That is what is needed. We are doing the work. We are doing the work every day.

Our people are the community drugs workers and they go and talk to the school about why that young person is about to be suspended when all they need is a bit of support. As part of the after school, they make sure that every young person gets a hot meal through the school meals funding. They become entangled and are part of a system that is not working. UBU does not work. I know we are talking about learnings, but it is so constraining and is crippling the field to the point where we are now looking for alternatives.

Someone earlier spoke about arts funding. There is no arts funding unless we go somewhere else. Art is essential to the work that we do. We do a massive amount including art as play, art as programme and art as socially engaged practice. In order to do deep meaningful work like that, we go everywhere else except the youth work funding that is available to get that funding. That is the reality of the way it is. It is not working.

Mr. Jim Lawlor

Youth work works. This is such a good process for young people. Who makes these decisions? I just cannot understand how people do not see how well youth work works. It brings neoliberalism up for me, but anyway.

Ms Mary Cunningham

For me at the core of the issues we are talking about are not happening in isolation. When we talk about funding, we talk about the restrictions of UBU. We talk about the bureaucracy. We talk about the impact on the workforce in terms of staff and volunteers. We talk about young people potentially being excluded from targeted schemes. We talk about youth work working and therefore every young person in the country should have the opportunity to engage with it.

The bit that is completely missing is the oversight, a framework, a strategy. Professor Devlin and I have been around for a long time. As we were walking over, we were saying what we need is a youth work development plan. Exactly 20 years ago Ireland developed a youth work development plan. All the stakeholders were involved. There were conferences where everybody - the State, young people, youth workers and organisations - signed up and we were all in agreement with it. Then, like so many other strategies and policies, almost none of it was implemented. When James Reilly was Minister, a national youth strategy was launched. Again, there was stakeholder engagement. We want to be given the opportunity. We are stepping up to the plate to say we will have our say. What came out was not quite what we would have wished, but we could have worked with it. Not a single bit of it has been implemented.

It is not really another strategy as such that the sector needs, that youth work needs. What needs to be done is there. Historically it has been there. Issues relating to data, premises, universal access, a development unit and work force development are all there and were there 20 years ago. If it had been implemented, we would not be sitting here answering whether the sector is in crisis because it would not be. There is an urgent need for a strategic look at youth work in Ireland.

The Senator asked if there are models we can look to. There are and of course we should be looking at them. However, Ireland is held up as a model of good practice because we have many things that other jurisdictions would envy. We have a legal definition of youth work. We have the primacy of the voluntary sector identified in terms of delivery. We did have the national quality standards which the sector embraced because we were involved in their development. Something works but then it is stopped.

Loads of data have been gathered but not a single person has seen the data gathered through that entire nine-year process. It is not that we have not been doing some of those things but it needs to be joined up and then of course the funding would come alongside that. We need to develop a scheme to make these boys accountable because we do not know what they are up to and it is destroying youth work as youth work and preventing organisations from doing what they need to do to meet the needs of young people. There is an urgent need for a development plan and action plan. I do not care what it is called. It needs to be implemented and we need a mechanism for monitoring its implementation. There needs to be accountability not just in the sector but at ministerial and official level to ensure it is implemented.

We need something similar to what has happened in other sectors such as early years where there has been a whole-system approach to addressing what has been an historical deficit over many years. That is what youth work needs. We cannot fix this problem like the game where things just jump up and you bash them with a hammer. That is where we are at. Even if we fix the paperwork, something else will happen. When we hear all this, we wonder if a volunteer would go next or near it. Other areas really value what youth workers do and the skills and the knowledge they have. They have sustainable funding and can offer long-term contracts with increments and pension contributions. Why would a newly qualified youth worker not go there? We are at a tipping point and it is urgent that youth work is looked at strategically.

Mr. Paul Gordon

Regarding the sustainability of the role and the vocation, I am glad Senator Ruane brought it back to what youth work is. It is still happening. It is a resilient sector. It teaches resilience in young people. It brings them together in settings where they are in an equal partnership and that still happens regardless of the challenges and regardless of the sector often doing more with less. In terms of where the sustainability of the role has come from and the talk about crises here today, it is mainly underlying issues that have been bubbling under the surface for a while. Covid has an impact on volunteer recruitment which has, in turn, put additional pressure on paid staff. The cost of living has had an impact as it has across society. In a sector that is generally low paid with short term contracts, it has impacted people.

As Ms Cunningham said, they are deciding to go to State bodies and semi-State bodies which offer increments and longer term contracts. Even though they love the role and it is a vocation for them, unfortunately it does not pay the bills anymore, particularly for those based in Dublin, which I am sure Ms Dunne has seen in many instances. In the short term, the sector needs greater funding to manage through the next few years, but in the longer term, we need a workforce development plan so that we have a robust sector.

As Ms Cunningham said, and as Professor Devlin touched on in response to Senator Clonan, it is really well regarded within Europe and has one of the most developed youth work networks. As a representative body we have 55 members. There are great opportunities for learning and sharing good practice across the sector. We are one of six European countries that has degree courses for youth work. That is just not isolated to one institute, but it is nationwide. We have really robust training that turns out great youth workers. Ultimately, it is a major challenge to retain them. We are probably losing them earlier than we might have in the past.

Professor Maurice Devlin

I know from the Maynooth University perspective as well as with other higher education institutes that is exactly what is happening. People are increasingly being enticed into other careers straight from graduation because of the issues that have been mentioned. In response to the earlier question, it is a crisis.

Ms Cunningham said much of what I might have said. I have been around for a very long time. I know I could be accused of romanticising the past, especially regarding things I was involved in. Senator Ruane asked a very interesting question when she spoke about the need to be clear on the role of youth work given that it is pulled in all kinds of directions. Why is it pulled in all kinds of directions? It is because the youth workers are there.

They are available, local, accessible, friendly and committed. When there are issues, they are on top of it, and the young people know that. They get dragged everywhere. Increasingly, the State has come to know that too. The youth workers will do it and can do it like nobody else. There is piecemeal funding thrown at youth work, effectively exploiting its enormous strengths without resourcing those optimally in a way that would be better for everybody. It would be a win-win all round, if only the vision would be brought to bear on it.

The other question the Senator asked, related to that, was what the alternative is and what we would go back to. A few people spoke about the lack of systematic deep engagement between all of the different stakeholders. The Costello report, which is the report of the National Youth Policy Committee, was published 40 years ago next year. It had built into it the principle of partnership with the statutory and voluntary sectors, recognising that youth work is a social profession but, uniquely, that it is also still a social movement. That is a remarkable thing. That principle was taken and built on in the Youth Work Act 2001. It took a long time, mind you - nearly 20 years. The Youth Work Act enshrined that principle of partnership. The Act was never properly implemented. The role of the NYCI as a representative voice for the sector was recognised formally for a time and then discontinued - formally, at least. Thankfully, the assignment of a statutory responsibility to the education and training boards, ETBs, formerly the vocational education committees, VECs, was eventually implemented in 2013, which was a long time later as well, but the partnership was lost and the National Youth Work Advisory Committee was disbanded. That structured engagement and the idea that it is something that will work best when everybody involved gets around the table and ensures we deal with the extraordinary complexity of it all was lost.

Looking back, the Costello report contained a proposal for the provision of a comprehensive youth service locally throughout the country. It had an eye to Northern Ireland in the development of it, especially with regard to costings. Back then, the South was way behind and Costello's proposals seemed extraordinary at the time. Despite the continuing deficiencies, there has been a huge advance over the years in the funding for youth work, if we look back far enough. However, the North and South are now about equal in terms of funding for youth work, when the funding in the South should be two and a half times greater. The Costello report proposed this idea of a comprehensive local youth service with youth work at its core. What it called mainline youth work is what we would now call universal youth work. It also mentioned special work to supplement that work, which would now be called targeted work. The central piece of it all was what we would now refer to as universal youth work. The funding has been skewed entirely in the other direction in the meantime, meaning people who need it are having resources directed their way but the potential of youth work is not being exploited to anything like the degree it could be if a greater vision were exercised, one that was more expansive and imaginative and that listened to the people who have things to say and who have advised and informed views to express.

Senator Mary Seery Kearney

How do I follow all of that? I first learned the value of youth work under Alan Cleere as manager of the YMCA a long time ago. Coming into the YMCA, I had never had any exposure. I was not in a youth club growing up. I did not know what youth work was until I was impacted, so to speak, by Alan, who is now team leader of the Rialto community drug team. At every management meeting, when we would talk about the use of the building, Alan and Nicola, another exceptional youth worker he worked with, would say the YMCA is the Young Men's Christian Association, and the "Y" stands for "Young". They would ask what we were doing and how we were resourcing. I always thought they championed youth. I am very caught by youth work being a social movement because I encountered it as a social movement and caught the vision of it being about that.

I come from the Just Society wing of Fine Gael and am very much influenced by the late Mr. Justice Declan Costello. I must read the report. It makes me sad that visions and foundations were put in place and we are now looking at decisions that were made that almost put a commercial value on something that was so fundamental to the nurturing of our young people. I suppose I am trying to capture a vocabulary and something out of today's meeting that I can champion and work on influencing, given my background and experience.

One of the big takeaways from today's meeting for me is the idea of elevating youth work as a profession. If we talk about the definition of a social worker, pretty much everybody in society knows what that is, but if we mention an occupational therapist or psychologist or an assessment of needs, which we often talk about at this committee, I am not sure youth work is understood. Mr. Gordon told us that one in four young people in Ireland engage in youth work. I would nearly bet that that figure is disproportionately reflected in different communities. It is not one in four of all young people. It is perhaps three out of four in particular communities because of the necessity. I wonder, in that, if there is a vision we can grab that shows how fundamental youth work is in nurturing young people. Back in 1998, I joined the YMCA. We did not have the terminology or the understanding of intergenerational trauma, trauma-based care and nurturing, cherishing and influencing. We did not have any of that, but we still did it. We did it by instinct. Perhaps it was a mothering instinct; I do not know. We knew we had roles there as role models. What always struck me was the number of young people who wanted to be youth workers when they grew up because of the experience of encountering exceptional youth workers. I suppose that is where my head is at in asking what we can take away from today. I would love to sit and listen to Senator Ruane for ages more, as I always do.

I get the point about the justice piece and the terminology of criminalising people. It diverted away. What we need to do is to get into the preventative work, to catch young people before they are enticed and groomed away from where we want them to be. In other rooms in this building, the Committee of Public Accounts sits, and we have Estimates, where it does come down to bean-counting. The quantity is not an accurate measure, because an afternoon spent with one young person could be life changing, rather than with 30 young people doing whatever, which could equally be life changing. Quantity can never be a measure, but how do we set those metrics and how do we change that? I will stop there and perhaps come back in later.

Ms Dannielle McKenna

What speaks to me is the society we are living in. We are living in the Irish world of a neoliberal capitalist system.

Senator Mary Seery Kearney

I must stop Ms McKenna there. I must say those two words infuriate me because they are an accusation that is made of people like me and my party, and I find it terribly offensive. There are things that fall within the definition of "neoliberal" that I completely, absolutely and utterly reject in the brandishing of accusations.

We need to be careful with language.

Ms Dannielle McKenna

That is okay. I suppose the reason I am using that language is because I see how young people are being treated. I see that things have become so individualised. It is individualisation for personal growth rather than for collective change. The term "value for money" came in and we began to ask what it means to value a young person's life, a person who may not be ale to survive. There arose a serious distrust between the sector and the Department and also between the Departments and the sector. Considerations of value for money arose that should never have arisen. Dr. McMahon used the term "money for value". If we flipped the concept in that way, we would be talking about something completely different. We have seen the State invest in particular communities or different places where they believe in things that will be productive and grow and bring economic growth. We do not see that investment in communities.

I remember seeing Mr. Emmet Kirwan on "The Late Late Show". His piece was around the idea that it was not blokes in tracksuits but blokes in suits who destroyed the country. We are continuing to suffer from austerity, and money is continuing to be paid for the mistakes that were made. That further marginalises the communities in which we work. Young people from working-class communities were the most affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. What happened? Nothing happened. We did not see anything. We have learned that the youth sector already has a very small proportion of funding. When I use the term "neoliberal capitalism", I do so because the funding that is being pumped into areas is seeking economic growth rather than being assigned to youth work that nourishes, loves, cares for and deeply responds to young people who are having very difficult lives. It is against what the State is investing in. Youth work deeply cares for and loves young people but we do not get that investment because of that prioritisation.

Senator Mary Seery Kearney

I disagree with some of that.

Ms Dannielle McKenna

That is okay.

Senator Mary Seery Kearney

However, I do hear Ms McKenna.

Mr. Paul Gordon

In respect of the metrics and the evidence, there is obviously intrinsic value in youth work in and of itself and the experience it delivers to young people. The National Youth Council of Ireland, NYCI, has a campaign, Youth Work Changes Lives, of which I know the Senator is aware. That lifts up evidence by experience and that qualitative experience. Government Departments are obviously making decisions based on metrics, whether economic or otherwise, to support a business case for investment in youth work. That evidence is there. The Department has in the past year done a rapid review of international and Irish evidence as to the value and outcomes of youth work and that value is there across a range of areas, including education and better attainment in the workplace, as well as fostering greater social cohesion, which is incredibly important now. Ms Dunne touched on issues that the City of Dublin Youth Services Board's services are seeing in communities in Dublin city, particularly in respect of far right protests. Youth work has a significant role in that regard.

There is also an economic value. It is almost a byproduct of youth work. We did work about ten years which showed that every €1 invested in youth work generates €2.20 for the economy. Similar studies carried out more recently in England and Scotland have shown that as well. Evidence metrics are there to support decision-making. What is lacking in terms of data is understanding the scale and scope of the sector currently. It is something we in the NYCI has done before and would like to do again. It is very much funding dependent. As a trusted partner, we would like to be the ones to help deliver that. It needs to happen to help the Government make those decisions on the basis of data, evidence and its understanding of the scale of the sector.

The Senator asked about a long-term vision. NYCI has been working with its members in a consultative process over quite a long period to establish a shared vision for youth work. Professor Devlin has had a significant role in bringing that together. We will publish results shortly. We hope that will be influential in defining the scope of where youth work is going into the future under a variety of themes and setting the point that all young people living in Ireland can have that access to high-quality, well-resourced youth work services. That is ultimately what our vision will be. It is something we have developed in partnership with members across the country. Over the coming years, we will be looking for the support of members of the committee and others.

Dr. Sinead McMahon

The Senator has asked an interesting question. I find it confusing how we have ended up placing such an emphasis on metrics around youth work and other human services. As part of my research, I have reviewed Dáil debates and meetings of committees such as this at which youth work has been discussed. It is amazing the number of times that politicians, including Senator Seery Kearney, have recourse to their own story about the impact youth work has had on their lives. I have met Ministers with responsibility for children and youth affairs in the past when I was involved with some youth work organisations. When they came to visit, they wanted to meet the young people and youth workers, and they wanted to hear stories. They did not want to hear numbers. I find it confusing that, on the one hand, we say we need metrics because that is how it is, while, on the other hand, we all want to know about the impact stories and the role that youth work has had on people's lives. That is what we are really interested in. It is a policy decision to place such an emphasis on metrics. It can be undone, and we can make new policies that place an emphasis on values rather than value.

Professor Maurice Devlin

It can be done. As with everything else, it is a question of balance. I completely understand that civil servants are under enormous pressure in many aspects of their work in the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. Even within youth affairs, it is a highly complex environment. I can understand that it is entirely attractive to have numbers that communicate something about something that is going on. Those numbers can then be communicated elsewhere relatively readily. As the Senator said, that is the national policy and the context in which we live. It is not just the case for youth work. However, it seems, given the nature and history of youth work, and the previous richness of some of the policy discourse around youth work, including the Costello report, which people in the sector still refer to respectfully, that things have moved extraordinarily far in one direction in youth work. We are teaching social research to students all the time, including youth workers who we hope will become researcher-practitioners. We are telling them that a good research design will very often have both a quantitative and qualitative dimension. It is often their integration that will tell you most. It is an awful shame. If the opportunity to even discuss these matters at the committee is valued, we can build on it.

I will return to Senator Ruane's question about apprenticeships because I do not think anyone touched on it and I meant to do so. At a previous session, I heard the Senator speak from her own experience about the importance of recognising there is a variety of routes into youth work and opportunities for progression to wherever people might want to go. Different people will want to go in different directions and take different steps to arrive at different stages and levels and so on. That was precisely what was envisaged 20 years ago in that national youth work development plan. It was proposed that there would, on a North-South basis, be a co-ordinated approach to education and training for what is now called "the workforce" but that term was not used at that time. It was to be applied to all of those involved in the practice of youth work, including volunteers, part-time workers and full-time paid workers. It envisaged a coherent set of pathways that would align with the national framework of qualifications and would be designed and delivered as appropriate for the various constituencies within the workforce.

A great deal of what we have done in Maynooth over the years has been by means of our part-time in-service programme, which was first introduced at the end of the 1990s in partnership with NYCI as a response to what was then seen as an urgent need for people who are practising without qualifications to be given opportunities. That was supported by the Department of Education's youth affairs section. That support, modest but vital, continued up until the economic crash. Now, on a much more appropriately resourced scale, the apprenticeship approach might help meet some of the critical need. It can and should be done. That has been part of the discussion up to now. It should be done in a way that ensures people who enter youth work through the apprenticeship route are on a par with people who enter it any other way.

In that regard, I want to mention one other thing that was briefly touched on in both our paper and NYCI's. The North-South education and training standards committee for youth work was a policy initiative arising out of that national youth work development plan 20 years ago. One of the few elements of the plan that got up and running is in overseeing the professional endorsement of youth work programmes, very successfully. That is due for review. The Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth knows that and it was very welcome when it said it would wish to review it. However, the review is being held up by the fact that it is a North-South committee and the political stasis in the North means that Northern approval for a review process cannot be secured. We would suggest that in the absence of that formal review of that committee going ahead, there is no reason why the Department could not or should not go ahead and review the aspects of its policy remit that relate to professional education and training and associated matters like workforce.

An Cathaoirleach

Is there anything else members would like to ask?

Senator Lynn Ruane

I have one or two small points but only if Ms Cunningham is finished.

Ms Mary Cunningham

Go for it.

Senator Lynn Ruane

First, I would like to pick back up on the Garda vetting piece that was previously mentioned. Although I fully support Garda vetting, it is a little unfair to say that if someone is worried about Garda vetting they are probably not suited. People are worried because they have to divulge particular aspects of their lives to a potential employer but they may be completely irrelevant to the job at hand. Unfortunately, even though Garda vetting is necessary, many sectors beyond youth work, such as in community work, addiction or social work, have not really used discretion to the right extent. If particular things come back on Garda vetting and if they are not relevant to the job, then they should not be a barrier to accessing employment. I know that is not what was meant but it was just to-----

Ms Mary Cunningham

The Senator is absolutely right. In our support for our member organisations we would certainly be urging discretion.

Senator Lynn Ruane

Discretion - exactly.

Ms Mary Cunningham

I like to use an example. How many people here have ever flashed their lights at somebody because they had seen a Garda car? My daughter did it and the next thing the Garda car came up behind her and she was referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions for obstructing the police in the line of duty. She is a schoolteacher, so you can imagine what that might mean for her. I always use that as an example to show that people need to know what the story behind something like that is and to use absolute discretion. The nature of youth work particularly, where the workers should believe in the potential of everybody, is well placed. There are lots of people who did things when they were younger and the vast majority grow out of it. That was not what I was saying at all.

Senator Lynn Ruane

I know. It was just to clarify.

Ms Mary Cunningham

I thank the Senator. It is important to put that on the record.

Senator Mary Seery Kearney

If I could add to that, I am a DPO for an organisation that is a conduit in Garda vetting. It is the last vestige of my life before the Seanad. I do a monthly briefing with companies and their liaison people who are affiliates for Garda vetting. One of the things I would say with my employment lawyer hat on is that before a company ever decides it is going to go Garda vetting or is going into an area that needs it, it must have a policy that asks why. Companies need to look at the criminal justice list and think why they would exclude someone from that job for that reason. There are obvious ones, like sexual crimes, where that would be a bar but there are a load of others where it is nonsense. There is a formula that any organisation can apply. When there is a vision for people living the life they would dream of for themselves, regardless of what has happened in their life, there is a formula that can be put in place that is very sensible and protective of organisations. I am fully behind Senator Ruane on that.

Senator Lynn Ruane

We just need to communicate that more across different sectors. Drug possession is in the same category as murder, rape and sexual assault so when it comes back on the Garda vetting, sometimes people just look at the category it is captured in. Having been in possession of €20 worth of cannabis in the 1990s could all of a sudden prohibit someone from a job later in life because it is caught in a category that it just should not be in.

On the second point, I am not great at seeing beyond Dublin, or even Tallaght. That is probably obvious, although I am not as bad as Deputy Murnane O'Connor with Carlow. This is more of a question from my own insight into potential underfunding of projects in the North. I have become aware, through some of my drugs work specifically, that projects up North are suffering because of the removal from the EU. There is lots of EU funding that has been taken away across many different projects, whether women's projects or restorative justice, practice projects and so on. Is the youth sector up North falling to that as well? Is it losing portions of funding that have not been reinstated anywhere else because it is EU funding?

Professor Maurice Devlin

Yes. There are all kinds of other associated problems around exchange opportunities that were there and so on. The Senator is absolutely right about that. There is a terrible crisis of funding for youth organisations in the North now across the board. That is again related to the political stasis but also the financial climate whereby they are being basically drip-fed funding on a month-by-month basis. It is a truly shocking crisis. Maybe Ms Cunningham could give a more informed and broader response to the question because of the NYCI's North-South partnership.

Ms Mary Cunningham

Obviously, the loss of the European Social Fund has been absolutely massive for a whole range of organisations. There is an eye being kept on PEACE+, which is going to be advertised in the next short while. A very significant amount of that will be going towards children and young people, and specifically youth work as we would understand it. Hopefully that will help. There is a real crisis because the end of the financial year is the end of March and the only commitment that can be given after that is on a month-by-month basis.

An Cathaoirleach

I thank everyone for their contributions. There is a huge amount of crossover, which is helpful for us when we are looking at this area. I want to very briefly mention the school completion programme. I am a massive advocate of that. We have a great programme in Kilkenny. Like the youth sector, it is one that is lesser known. I have sometimes come across people who actually think the school completion programme is about the completion of school buildings. That always amuses me. It is a great service because it is totally based on the needs of the child. I have come across it a lot and I think it is a good one. Whenever we have the opportunity to mention it I like to try to get it in. We would be conscious of the mix of rural and urban. We have a good mix of both in our constituency but transport is the number one issue for young people in rural areas who cannot get to or access services.

Parents may not be in a position to help with that, particularly depending on what the service or what the activity is. That is a major issue.

What we see happening more now is young people taking a chance and driving in all sorts of circumstances where they should not do so. This is a major issue. It comes back to some of the issues about which we spoke in regard to matters operating in silos. Obviously, there is a role for the Department of Transport in that regard, particularly in the context of rural communities. So much of this is down to the fact that the Department is dealing with too much. I do not know if I am going outside my remit as Chair in saying that. However, we work very well as a committee. We have a range of issues with which to deal. We actually see at first hand how much work the Department has on hand because we are its shadow committee. Perhaps youth work has unintentionally become the poor relation in that regard. There is so much involved. Many of the sections within the Department have their own specific and niche individual issues. Much of what has been said about going back to strategies that were there and which just need to be funded or given a bit more focus is helpful to us in our work. However, a good point was made, namely, that there is a huge amount involved in this. It went from just children and youth affairs to encompassing so many other issues, all of them important. There is a great deal involved.

I really just wanted to make those comments as opposed to ask any questions. I found many of the observations, such as those in the NYCI's submission on the lack of data, to be very interesting. We will look at all of that when we are compiling our follow-up report.

I thank the witnesses and members. We need now to get agreement to publish the opening statements on the website. Is that agreed? Agreed.

The joint committee adjourned at 5.02 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Tuesday, 25 April 2023.