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.