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16 Youth Studies Australia VOLUME 31 NUMBER 1 2012
D
by Michael Emslie espite decades of reports on institutions, policies and interventions failing young
Australians, the youth sector in Australia, unlike other human service practices,
is not regulated. Unlike teachers, nurses or psychologists, youth workers are not
required to complete an accredited qualication before they can practice, and they do not need
to register with a professional body that recognises their credentials. There are no uniform
standards of practice or ongoing professional development expectations, and no formal
complaints mechanism to deal with breaches of conduct. In other words, youth work is largely
uncredentialed and unregulated, and has not been professionalised.
This article follows on from earlier discussions about the professionalisation of the youth
sector, and argues that it is timely and important to professionalise youth work now (Barwick
2006; Bessant 2004; Corney, Broadbent & Darmanin 2009; Grogan 2004; Sercombe et al. 2002).
I discuss a range of current “on the ground” and high-level activities that represent a critical
watershed for the development of youth work as a profession. I also present reasons why the
professionalisation of youth work is urgently needed and these include to help alleviate the
prevailing threats to youth work education and to improve the quality of service that young
people receive. Possible obstacles to professionalisation and ways of addressing these are
also identied. This article will be of interest to policymakers, researchers, practitioners and
Michael Emslie argues that the time is right for youth work in Australia
to be professionalised in line with other human service practices such
as nursing, education and psychology. He identies a groundswell
of activities that support the professionalisation of youth work and a
concurrent growth in high-level interest in strengthening social and
community services. He argues that this context presents an opportune
time to professionalise youth work. Emslie provides reasons why it is
imperative to regulate and monitor the youth sector as a profession, and
explains how professionalisation will help address the critical shortage
of qualied youth practitioners and also improve the quality of service
young people receive.
‘It’s time’
A case for the professionalisation
of youth work
Youth Studies Australia VOLUME 31 NUMBER 1 2012 17
educators who follow the professionalisation
debate and have an interest in improving
the standards, standing and practice of
youth work.
The time is right to professionalise
youth work
There is a groundswell of activity and
initiatives that support the professionalisation
of youth work. The youth sectors in Victoria
and Western Australia have established youth
worker associations in their respective states
as they recognise the need for improvements
to the preparation, performance and
management of youth workers (Western
Australian Association of Youth Workers
(WAAYW) 2008; Youth Workers’ Association
(YWA) 2011). Simultaneously, there have been
other recent and disparate activities taking
place across Australia that also aim to improve
the education and training and quality of
service delivery within the youth sector, as
well as prevent harm as a result of youth work
practice (Australian Childhood Foundation
(ACF) 2010; Australian Learning and Teaching
Council (ALTC) 2010; Community Services
and Health Industry Skills Council (CS&HISC)
2010a; Department of Justice (DoJ) 2010; Youth
Affairs Council of Victoria (YACVic) 2007).
At the same time there is a growing array of
agencies and initiatives with a shared interest
in organising, regulating and monitoring
the Australian social and community sector,
which includes the youth sector, in ways
that support professionalisation of the youth
sector and could be mobilised to realise it.
(Australasian Housing Institute (AHI) 2011;
Australian Association for Social Work and
Welfare Education (AASWWE) n.d.; Australian
Community Workers Association (ACWA)
2010; Australian Council on Healthcare
Standards (ACHS) n.d.; Case Management
Society of Australia (CMSA) n.d.; Department
of Families, Housing, Community Services
and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA) 2011;
Department of Human Services (DHS) 2010a,
2010b, 2010c; Healy & Lonne 2010; Quality
Improvement Council (QIC) 2004).
These “on the ground” developments are
complimented by renewed high-level interest
in strengthening the social and community
services sectors. The Australian Prime
Minister, Julia Gillard, is backing non-prot
sector reform and has recognised the need for
a highly skilled community sector workforce
(Australian Labor n.d.; Gillard 2007).
Baldwin (2009) identied 11 recent Australian
Government inquiries and initiatives aimed at
reforming and strengthening the social sector.
Barraket (2008) has argued that Australia has
entered a “new era of governance”, which
is characterised by changing relationships
between the state and the not-for-prot
sector that are based on collaboration and
partnership. The aim is to enhance the role
the sector can play in implementing various
government policies. Similarly Smyth (2008)
has suggested that Australia’s welfare system
is in a “state of transition ... from hierarchical
and market, to network forms of governance”
and that this “new paradigm ... will require
different funding and accountability
arrangements” (pp.212-31). Mendes (2008)
also observed that, after years of “welfare
retrenchment” under the Howard Coalition
government, the Federal Labor government
is committed to greater social investment
to tackle poverty and disadvantage, and
welfare services have a key role to play in this
development. If the Australian Government
is serious about improving the capacity of the
youth sector, then professionalisation is a good
place to start.
There are also peak national advisory and
intergovernmental forums in place that have
an interest in improving social and community
services, as well as the jurisdiction to formally
progress the professionalisation of youth work
nationally (Australian Government 2010a,
2010b, 2010c; Department of Prime Minister
and Cabinet (DPMC) 2010; Community and
Disability Services Ministerial Advisory
Council (CDSMAC) n.d.). For example, the
Council of Australian Governments (COAG)
(2009) recently recognised the urgent need
for reform to child protection systems across
Australia, and Healy and Lonne (2010)
recommended “COAG examine the need
for national regulation of the social and
community services workforce” (p.68).
The Australian Government’s “innovation
agenda” has also prioritised improvements
to service delivery in the community
18 Youth Studies Australia VOLUME 31 NUMBER 1 2012
At the
moment,
youth workers
do not need
to be a
graduate of
an accredited
university
youth work
course to
practice.
sector, and professionalising youth work
would be a tting way to improve the
quality of service that young people receive
(Australian Government 2009). Likewise,
the Productivity Commission (2010) recently
recommended “workforce planning” for the
community services sector and observed a
“clear trend to the professionalisation of the
community services direct care workforce”
(p.262). Skills Australia (2010, pp.24-25)
similarly recommended “skill strategies” for
high-growth industries such as community
services. A national strategy aimed at building
and improving the youth sector workforce
should prioritise the professionalisation of
youth work.
Australian governments across all
jurisdictions have recently taken unprecedented
action to strengthen the health sector workforce.
In light of the synergies between health and
community services, these developments
provide strategic opportunities to formally
move on professionalising youth work.
COAG, for example, recently introduced the
Australian Health Practitioners Regulation
Agency (AHPRA), a new statutory authority
responsible for the national registration
and accreditation of 10 health professions
across Australia (AHPRA 2011a). In 2012,
registration will expand to include a further
four professions (AHPRA 2011b). One of these
is Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health
practice, which demonstrates the scope of
AHPRA to oversee the professionalisation of
specialist practitioners whose work focuses on
a specic population, as is also the case with
youth work. Health and community services
also share much in common, often working
collaboratively to achieve similar outcomes for
people and communities. This puts AHPRA
in a strong position to expand its expertise
and operations and take on the regulation of
the social and community services workforce,
including youth work.
Professionalisation would
assist in securing youth work
university courses
The professionalisation of youth work is
urgently needed to help stem the tide and
threats of cuts and closures to undergraduate
youth work education in universities. In 2010
the University of Western Sydney youth work
course closed, and concerns have been raised
about the upheavals and effects of changes
to the quality of the youth work program at
RMIT (Parliament of Victoria 2010). There
are only ve government-accredited youth
work degrees or degrees with youth work
majors offered within Australian higher
education institutions and typically the
numbers of students who commence youth
work courses are small. At the same time,
universities are under increasing pressure to
make nancial savings as a result of prolonged
and signicant government underfunding.
This context places “boutique” courses
such as youth work more and more at risk
of restructures and rationalisations, which
involve generalising youth work into other
disciplines such as social work, education or
psychology to enable larger class sizes and
cost savings; moving youth work courses
into the vocational education and training
(VET) or technical and further education
(TAFE) sector because they are cheaper to
deliver; or closing the programs altogether. An
accreditation authority, which is commonplace
for professions, is desperately needed for
youth work to set and enforce standards of
education within higher education programs.
Universities would only be able to alter youth
work courses if such changes were in line with
the accreditation standards.
Regulating youth work as a profession
would increase demands for more university-
based youth work education, which would
in turn help prevent the closure of university
youth work courses and facilitate the offering
of new programs. All professions require
an accredited university qualication that is
both scholarly and practical in orientation as
a minimum for registration. At the moment,
youth workers do not need to be a graduate
of an accredited university youth work course
to practice. This means that anyone can call
themselves a youth worker whether or not
they have had any formal education. It also
means that governments and universities
are not required to invest in youth work
education to ensure the ongoing supply of
professionally educated graduates. The Senate
Community Affairs References Committee
Youth Studies Australia VOLUME 31 NUMBER 1 2012 19
(2009, 2004) recommended the establishment
of specic tertiary courses in recognition of
the value of higher educated professionals
in improving responses to vulnerable young
people. Ross, Shafer and Klein (2006) similarly
argue expertise and expert performance is
achieved by well-designed domain-specic
training. However, most Australian states and
territories do not have university youth work
programs and are unable to educate their own
local youth work workforce. Filling this gap is
long overdue. The professionalisation of youth
work is needed now to ensure more quality
youth work education across the country.
Professionalisation would help
address the shortage of qualied
youth practitioners
There is a growing need to produce
competent and qualied youth workers,
and professionalisation would lead to
improvements in youth work education,
which could satisfy that need. The Australian
Council of Social Services (ACOSS) (2010),
Healy and Lonne (2010) and the Productivity
Commission (2010) have indicated that
there is an undersupply of professionally
qualied human service practitioners to meet
community sector workforce demands. Access
Economics (2008), Rose (2008) and Rose and
Atkins (2006) also report critical skill shortages
in the youth sector.
Child protection and youth justice services
struggle to attract and retain suitably qualied
staff (Bamblett, Bath & Roseby 2010; Brouwer
2009). Likewise, the Australian Institute of
Health and Welfare (AIHW) (2009) reported
consistent growth in employment in child
and youth services from 1996 to 2006, and
Access Economics (2009) as well as the
CS&HISC (2010b) predict this trend will
continue in community sector industries,
which include youth work. The Department
of Education, Employment and Workplace
Relations (DEEWR) (nd) also reports job
prospects for youth work are good. The
CS&HISC (2010b, pp.28-29) forecasts that
community service workers will need higher
levels of education and qualications. There
is ongoing and sustained funding in services
for young people across Australia, and new
government initiatives continue to emerge
that specically seek to employ youth work
graduates. Government youth policies and
agendas also identify workforce development
and producing “capable people” as a priority
(Baillieu & Wooldridge 2010; COAG 2009; DHS
et al. 2010).
Professionalisation would make youth
work more attractive to newcomers and
encourage experienced practitioners to stay.
High staff turnover is a critical problem that
jeopardises the sector’s viability and capacity
to provide quality services. There is a greater
demand for youth services, as well as an
increase in complex “cases”. The need to stop
worker “churn” is more urgent than ever
because of the dearth of qualied, skilled and
experienced youth workers. There would be a
number of benets associated with registration
such as that offered by the Victorian Institute of
Teaching (VIT) (2010), for example a structured
induction program to support youth workers
in their rst year. Professionalisation would
also improve the status of youth work, making
it a more attractive career to enter and stay
in. It would demarcate practice domains and
the settings and situations in which it would
be preferable to employ youth workers rather
than other professionals, because their skills
would be the most appropriate and effective.
Professionalised management could
also result in improved pay and working
conditions. Decent wages, reasonable
workloads and quality supervision would
also assist in addressing the critical workforce
concerns of recruiting and retaining qualied,
skilled and experienced youth workers.
Professionalisation would help
prevent harmful interventions
Improvements in the quality of service young
people receive are long overdue, and could
be achieved by professionalising the youth
sector. The record of intervention into the
lives of young Australians is littered with
cases of abuse, neglect and unprofessional
conduct, as well as repeated failures to
adequately and appropriately manage such
instances (Bessant, Hil & Watts 2005). The
violations of young people’s human rights by
governments, churches and other agencies
20 Youth Studies Australia VOLUME 31 NUMBER 1 2012
have been extensive (Human Rights and
Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC)
1997; Senate Community Affairs Reference
Committee 2004). Ofcial reports on the
systemic failures of statutory child protection
systems, youth justice centres and out-of-home
care services have also become commonplace
(Bamblett, Bath & Roseby 2010; Brouwer
2009, 2010a, 2010b; Commission of Inquiry
1999; Layton 2003; Wood Commission 1997a,
1997b). Accounts of serious misconduct and
negligence by staff employed by government
and community sector agencies meant to care
and protect vulnerable young people also
regularly feature in the media (Francis 2011;
Hagan 2010; Nader 2010; Robinson 2010).
In addition, Kelly (2007) and Tait (1995)
have argued that too often interventions by
“experts” into the lives of young Australians
are oriented towards regulating and
controlling populations of young people
problematised as “at risk”.
Examples of failure to care for and protect
young people or deal with structural inequities
that cause youth poverty and disadvantage
demonstrate that tighter regulation of the
youth work workforce is desperately needed.
Basically it is time for youth work to be
oriented towards realising youth rights,
and professionalisation could assist in
this reorientation.
Professionalisation entails compliance with
set standards of behaviour, codes of ethics
and practice guidelines (Professions Australia
1997) and these regulatory mechanisms should
be introduced as a priority to enhance the
quality of professional youth work practice,
prevent harm and restore public condence
in services that care for young people. Most
states and territories have mandatory working-
with-children checks; however, in the light
of ongoing failures, they are insufcient to
elicit good practice (Rayner 2007). If youth
work were regulated, the ethical values and
dispositions youth workers commit to, the
reasons why they commit to them and the
ways they can give effect to them would
be claried in a code. Professionalising
youth work would build a “community of
practitioners” who were trusted and expected
by the public to deliver youth work. Using
the Australian Medical Association (AMA)
(2009) as a model, a youth work professional
association would act in the public interest by
challenging governmental and organisational
policies that have the potential to cause
harm to young people. Formal sector-wide
mandatory notication of misconduct,
investigation, and disciplinary mechanisms
that aim to address instances of malpractice
and protect young people are urgently needed
and would be put in place if youth work
were regulated.
Overcoming obstacles
to professionalisation
I have presented a case for the desirability,
necessity and urgency to professionalise youth
work; however, there are possible obstacles
to professionalisation that may need to be
overcome before signicant progress is made.
Arguments for the professionalisation of youth
work in Australia have been aired for over 20
years, but nothing has happened (Sercombe
2004). One obstacle could be doubts and
conicts within the sector around the issue
of professionalisation (Quixley & Doostkhah
2007). Sercombe (2004) argued that youth
workers are difcult to organise, and reaching
a consensus in the sector is hindered by
competition between players. Organisations
have to compete for funding and contracts,
which is an effect of reform to the public and
non-government sectors shaped by neoliberal
ideas. The economic rationalist approach to
welfare provision and governance has been
characterised by the closure and appropriation
of the sector’s peak organisation, curtailment
of advocacy, generic management, inadequate
levels of funding, underpayment of workers,
increased casualisation of the workforce, and
short-term and insecure funding contracts
(Bessant & Weber 2003; Eddy 2004; Phillips
2007). These concerns further limit the capacity
of the youth sector to work collectively in ways
that could progress professionalisation.
An inability to secure adequate resources
for professionalisation could be another
reason for inaction. Grupper (2003) identied
professionalisation as costly, and a youth
work professional association would need
to charge fees; however, low youth worker
wages may restrict the setting of fees at a level
Youth Studies Australia VOLUME 31 NUMBER 1 2012 21
that would make an association viable. At the
same time, underpaid workers are unlikely
to pay registration fees when registration is
not required for practice. The trend to new
forms of governance between Australian
governments and the community sector may
provide opportunities as well as the political
will and leadership needed to overcome these
barriers. Efforts within various states towards
professionalising their youth sectors, as well
as Fair Work Australia’s recent ruling on social
and community services industry wages, could
also assist (Fair Work Australia (FWA) 2011).
Another hindrance could be resistance
from youth workers who have not undergone
tertiary training who fear that they may be
excluded from a professional association,
making them ineligible to practice. Different
levels of and pathways to membership, based
on type and level of education as well as
work experience, could be offered initially as
a way of addressing such concerns. Diverse
membership options could be complemented
with “grandfather” or “sunset” clauses,
which are one way professional associations
provide workers time to upskill and retrain
to meet eligibility criteria. An investment in
university youth work education enabling the
delivery of exible and accessible upskilling
and retraining opportunities, such as high
quality distance education and online courses,
could also assist. In addition, education
providers could offer recognition of prior
learning that includes crediting demonstrable
capabilities acquired through work experience
as a way of supporting workers to secure
necessary credentials.
Conclusion
I have argued that it is time youth workers
were required to complete an accredited
university qualication and register with
a professional body that recognises their
credentials. Uniform standards of ethical
practice, ongoing professional development
expectations, and a formal complaints
mechanism to deal with breaches of conduct
are long overdue. The groundswell of activities
and initiatives that strategically make now the
right time to professionalise youth work have
been identied.
Reasons for professionalising youth
work at this time were also examined.
Professionalised management is urgently
needed to help protect, secure and expand
university-based youth work undergraduate
courses, as well as address the critical shortage
of qualied youth practitioners. I also argued
that professionalisation should take place
now as a way to prevent further harmful
interventions into the lives of young people.
Professionalisation should be a priority to
improve the quality of service to young people
in ways that they deserve but have gone
without for too long.
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Michael Emslie is
a lecturer in youth
work at RMIT in
Melbourne.
AUTHOR
