“The cry of the youth is the invitation to act, to build, to labor, to dream if you will, but it is a cry that will be heard” Raul Manglaplus, 19 yrs TIMES OF UNCERTAINTY AND YOUTH POLICY Lasse Siurala

Dr. Lasse Siurala FORMAL EDUCATION: Phd, University of Helsinki, Sociology, 1994 Adjunct Professor, Aalto University OCCUPATIONAL CAREER: Researcher, Acting Associate Professor of Economic Sociology, Helsinki School of Economics Director of Youth, City of Helsinki , Director of Youth and Sports, Council of Europe, Strasbourg, France Visiting Professor, University of Minnesota, Spring 2009 Secretary General, Finnish Network of Local Government Youth Work, Member, Think Tank on European Youth Policies, 2013-

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Outline of the presentation  What is youth work?  How to make cross-sectional cooperation work?  How to engage youth in policy making?  Renovating youth work.

WHAT IS YOUTH WORK?

Youth work: emancipation or integration? emancipationintegration

Sweden: The social democratic government youth policy 1999: (1)creation of good conditions for autonomy of youth (independence objective), (2) real possibilities for participation (power objective) and (3) recognition of young people as a resource (resource objective) Government Bill 1999:115

Sweden: The conservative government youth policy 2009: The objective of the Government's youth policy is for all young people to have genuine access to welfare and influence. “Opportunities for young people to take part in education and become established in the labour market are vital if they are to create a good life for themselves. Monitoring of the situation of young people has shown that there are certain groups of young people who need special measures to be able to complete their education and find employment.”

MILESTONES OF FINNISH YOUTH LEGISLATION: 1972 Local Youth Board Act municipal youth services as a universal service 1993 Youth Act youth boards lose their legal status 1995 Youth Work Act Youth policy becomes a new objective 2006 Youth Act Work with youth at risk gets higher profile Youth Act Amendment Multiagency Network and Outreaching Youth Work become legislative

Targeted work at youth problems Youth work youth family Opportunities for all young people YOUTH WORK APPROACHES Source: Filip Cousseé, Lasse Siurala & Howard Williamson: Review of youth policy in two Dutch cities (September 2011)

Youth work: emancipation or integration? emancipationintegration BASIC SERVICES EARLY RECONSTRUCTIVE INTERVENTION WORK

COLLECTIVE IMPACT – CONDITIONS FOR INTEGRATED YOUTH POLICY

Collective Impact – conditions for integrated youth policies  Political support (legislation, integrated gov. programs, Flemish regulation to integration)  Joint start to create trust and shared understanding  Fostering multidimensional problem solutions  Shaking “social and cognitive fixations”  Reflecting the ownership of the process  Involving political decision making  Linking objectives and measures to budgets  Enforce “interprofessional collaboration”

Collective Impact – conditions for integrated youth policies  Political support (legislation, integrated gov. programs, Flemish regulation to integration)  Joint start to create trust and shared understanding  Fostering multidimensional problem solutions  Shaking “social and cognitive fixations”  Reflecting the ownership of the process  Involving political decision making  Linking objectives and measures to budgets  Enforce “interprofessional collaboration”

Collective Impact – conditions for integrated youth policies  Political support (legislation, integrated gov. programs, Flemish regulation to integration)  Joint start to create trust and shared understanding  Fostering multidimensional problem solutions  Shaking “social and cognitive fixations”  Reflecting the ownership of the process  Involving political decision making  Linking objectives and measures to budgets  Enforce “interprofessional collaboration”

PROMOTING ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP 1.Learning active citizenship by doing 2.Promoting youth work as a non- formal learning environment 3.Youth work in the social media 4.Promoting youth welfare 5.Enhancing cultural citizenships 6.Support to youth organisations Helsinki City Welfare Plan for Children and Youth Enough time for the directors of the different sectors to develop joint understanding

Collective Impact – conditions for integrated youth policies  Political support (legislation, integrated gov. programs, Flemish regulation to integration)  Joint start to create trust and shared understanding  Fostering multidimensional problem solutions  Shaking “social and cognitive fixations”  Reflecting the ownership of the process  Involving political decision making  Linking objectives and measures to budgets  Enforce “interprofessional collaboration”

Social issues can be: technical problems, which can be clearly defined, solution are known to us, the organization, which has the capacity to solve it may be identified, or adaptive problems, which are complex, we do not know the answers, no single organization has the capacity to solve it alone. John Kania & Mark Kramer: ”Collective Impact”, Stanford Social Innovation Review 2011 “The single biggest failure of leadership is to treat adaptive challenges like technical problems.” Ronald A. Heifetz & Marty Linsky: “Leadership on the Line”, Harvard Business School Press, 2002

Collective Impact – conditions for integrated youth policies  Political support (legislation, integrated gov. programs, Flemish regulation to integration)  Joint start to create trust and shared understanding  Fostering multidimensional problem solutions  Shaking “social and cognitive fixations”  Reflecting the ownership of the process  Involving political decision making  Linking objectives and measures to budgets  Enforce “interprofessional collaboration”

“Social and cognitive fixations”  becoming stuck with internal discourses of the organization,  unwillingness to engage in dialogue with those outside,  the perception that the reality which the organization has created is the only one.  Preserving ones autonomy and identity is overemphasized. Peter Peverelli & Karen Verduyn: Understanding the basic dynamics of organizing, 2010

Collective Impact – conditions for integrated youth policies  Political support (legislation, integrated gov. programs, Flemish regulation to integration)  Joint start to create trust and shared understanding  Fostering multidimensional problem solutions  Shaking “social and cognitive fixations”  Reflecting the ownership of the process  Involving political decision making  Linking objectives and measures to budgets  Enforce “interprofessional collaboration”

Collective Impact – conditions for integrated youth policies  Political support (legislation, integrated gov. programs, Flemish regulation to integration)  Joint start to create trust and shared understanding  Fostering multidimensional problem solutions  Shaking “social and cognitive fixations”  Reflecting the ownership of the process  Involving political decision making  Linking objectives and measures to budgets  Enforce “interprofessional collaboration”

Collective Impact – conditions for integrated youth policies  Political support (legislation, integrated gov. programs, Flemish regulation to integration)  Joint start to create trust and shared understanding  Fostering multidimensional problem solutions  Shaking “social and cognitive fixations”  Reflecting the ownership of the process  Involving political decision making  Linking objectives and measures to budgets  Enforce “interprofessional collaboration”

Collective Impact – conditions for integrated youth policies  Political support (legislation, integrated gov. programs, Flemish regulation to integration)  Joint start to create trust and shared understanding  Fostering multidimensional problem solutions  Shaking “social and cognitive fixations”  Reflecting the ownership of the process  Involving political decision making  Linking objectives and measures to budgets  Enforce “interprofessional collaboration”

ENGAGING YOUTH IN POLICY MAKING

Youth councils – weaknesses identified by the international review team: Weak mandate, Lacking diversity, Consisting of a small group of young people, Lacking impact, Sometimes the voice of the government and not of the young people, Deals with ‘safe’ topics, “There is a case for interrogating the value and validity of the weakness of the youth councils. Currently there is some attention to some of them, perhaps there should be more”

ACCESS, SPACES AND DIALOGUE  providing a maximum number and a broad variety of young people an access to express their citizenships (access)  supporting easy to get in and out spaces for versatile agency (spaces)  developing dialogue with the City’s decision makers (dialogue) Lasse Siurala and Heini Turkia: Celebrating pluralism – beyond established forms of youth participation, in Loncle, Cucunato, Muniglia & Walther (eds.) Youth Participation in Europe: Beyond Discourses, Practices and Realities. Bristol: Polity Press, Fall 2012

engaging youth in drafting policies: not to rely on surveys and youth councils only, Finding ways to listen to those who are missing from surveys and youth councils, the art is to read weak signals, in the minimum, apply some form of deliberative democracy, include youth in the entire process,

RENOVATING YOUTH WORK

Department of Youth, City of Helsinki

TRADITIONAL YOUTH CENTER YOUTH ACTIVITY CENTER YOUTH LEARNING CENTER YOUTH SUPPORT CENTER YOUTH CLEARING HOUSE Why we need youth work and youth centers? – reconciling the interests of youth and the government. Lasse Siurala, Nov. 2012

Thank you!