They joined forces on the research project ‘Rethinking impact, evaluation and accountability in youth work’ in 2017 in an effort to defend the spirit of youth work.
The project was inspired by Dr de St Croix’s doctoral research into grassroots youth workers, who she found were often doing the brunt of the face-to-face youth work despite not being considered in key decisions in policy or within the organisations they worked in. She wanted to dig deeper into how they were experiencing their work in a changing policy context, as the research was conducted during the time that the conservative-led coalition administer several cuts to local youth initiatives leading to the sale of buildings, redundancies of youth workers and poor working conditions and pay.
Tania and Louise were invigorated by the challenges and threats they both faced as youth workers, and to the changing face of youth work becoming overly evaluated and measured. They were both cognisant of an unspoken youth impact agenda which sought to quantify the value of youth work to provide evidence and justification for its existence. They comment that this deficit model also manifests in a pressure on working class youth and young people from Black and other marginalised background to produce proof of impact. Both Tania and Louise felt that this approach threatened the open access format of youth clubs and the necessity for voluntary association – the belief that youth clubs are most effective when the youth attend of their own volition and don’t feel that they are being measured.
The pair therefore embarked on the journey of the project, bringing different approaches to drive their outputs. Louise’s background as an artist brought a creative approach to the project, allowing them to slow down and carefully consider how to best craft their output, so as to not sacrifice their personal connection to the policy on which they commented.
Ultimately, the duo published their final formal output from the project, an article titled “‘Embers, and fragments’: social haunting in youth work, impact measurement and policy networks”. In the article they interview policymakers and policy networks, as well as providing the perspectives of youth workers, and commenting on the theory of social haunting which effects all involved in youth work. They acknowledge the work of academics such as Diego Santori and Stephen Ball on the danger of over-quantification and measurement devices in education.
Looking ahead to the future, Louise and Tania share their hopes in youth work being created where it doesn’t exist, and the voices of young people and grassroots youth workers securing the future of youth work.
This episode was hosted by Dr Sara Black and Dr Pippa Sterk. The It's Just Research podcast is executively produced by Sylvie Carlos.