‘Bridge-builders’ and ‘boundary spanners’: a qualitative study of youth workers’ perceptions of their roles and practices with vulnerable young people in school-based settings

Abstract

This paper presents a qualitative study of 22 youth workers’ perceptions of their roles and practices in seven school-based settings in a large post-industrial city in regional Australia. Youth workers are often engaged in school-based settings working with vulnerable young people, yet knowledge of how workers perceive and conceptualize their role and practice in these settings remains limited. Through focus group interviews, youth workers were asked how they engage, and work with vulnerable students, how they conceptualize their roles and the bodies of knowledge to which those practices and roles pertain. We find that youth work in school-based settings requires the dynamic and non-linear application of the practices of youth accompaniment, family support and youth-centred advocacy, underpinned by respect for the dignity, autonomy and agency of the young person. We argue that the complex application of these practices positions youth workers as ‘bridge-builders’ and ‘boundary-spanners’. Bridge-builders assist young people to connect and engage with support services. Boundary-spanners build relationships across service providers to network different organizations and professionals for better collaboration and support of young people. These findings have implications for youth policy and practice in the area of youth work with vulnerable young people in school-based settings.

Full text

‘Bridge-builders’ and ‘boundary spanners’: a qualitative study of
youth workers’ perceptions of their roles and practices with
vulnerable young people in school-based settings
T. Corney
a
, J. Gorman
a
, B. Woods
a
, N. Benedict
b
and A. Law
a
a
Institute for Sustainable Industries & Liveable Cities (ISILC), Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia;
b
Higher
Degree by Research student, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia
ABSTRACT
This paper presents a qualitative study of 22 youth workers’ perceptions of
their roles and practices in seven school-based settings in a large post-
industrial city in regional Australia. Youth workers are often engaged in
school-based settings working with vulnerable young people, yet knowledge
of how workers perceive and conceptualize their role and practice in these
settings remains limited. Through focus group interviews, youth workers
were asked how they engage, and work with vulnerable students, how
they conceptualize their roles and the bodies of knowledge to which those
practices and roles pertain. We nd that youth work in school-based settings
requires the dynamic and non-linear application of the practices of youth
accompaniment, family support and youth-centred advocacy, underpinned
by respect for the dignity, autonomy and agency of the young person. We
argue that the complex application of these practices positions youth workers
as ‘bridge-builders’ and ‘boundary-spanners’. Bridge-builders assist young
people to connect and engage with support services. Boundary-spanners
build relationships across service providers to network dierent organizations
and professionals for better collaboration and support of young people.
These ndings have implications for youth policy and practice in the area
of youth work with vulnerable young people in school-based settings.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 6 February 2024
Accepted 28 July 2024
KEYWORDS
Youth work in schools; youth
homelessness; boundary
spanner; bridge builder;
vulnerable young people;
Australia
Introduction
Youth workers are often engaged in school-based settings working with vulnerable young people,
yet knowledge of how youth workers perceive and conceptualize their role and practice in these
settings remains limited. Responding to this issue and seeking to provide greater conceptual clarity
about the role of youth workers in schools, this paper presents a qualitative study illuminating the
practices of youth workers responding to the needs of vulnerable young people in schools in a large
post-industrial city in regional Australia. Youth work is increasingly undertaken in school-based
settings and has received some scholarly attention (Coburn & Wallace, 2011; Corney 2010; Galilea,
2022; Luxmoore, 2000). However, the day-to-day practices of youth workers, particularly with young
people in school-based settings and the theoretical frameworks underpinning those practices,
remain limited and poorly conceptualized, with discussion largely remaining within grey literature
(e.g. Barker et al., 2012; Chowdry et al., 2018; Williamson & Weatherspoon, 1985).
CONTACT J. Gorman Jamie.gorman@vu.edu.au
This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction
(http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02673843.2024.2396208)
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENCE AND YOUTH
2024, VOL. 29, NO. 1, 2387080
https://doi.org/10.1080/02673843.2024.2387080
© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.
org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work
is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or
with their consent.

This paper builds on and extends prior work through a qualitative study of 22 youth workers in
seven school-based settings in a regional city of Australia. Through focus group interviews, youth
workers were asked how they engage and work with vulnerable students, how they conceptualize
their roles and what bodies of knowledge pertains to their roles. The youth workers in this study
described practice in school-based settings as a dynamic and non-linear application of the practices
of youth accompaniment, family support and youth-centred advocacy, underpinned by respect for
the dignity, autonomy and agency of the young person.
We suggest that the complex application of these practices positions youth workers as ‘bridge-
builders’ and ‘boundary-spanners’. Bridge-builders assist young people to connect and engage with
support services. Boundary-spanners build relationships across service providers to network dierent
organizations and professionals for better collaboration and support of young people. This locates
youth work in school-based settings within the broader human services literature and provides
a common disciplinary basis for understanding between youth workers and other professions in
multidisciplinary settings such as schools. These ndings have implications for youth policy and
practice in the area of youth work with vulnerable young people in school-based settings.
Furthermore, the ndings may support youth work practitioners engaged in school-based settings
and other inter-agency work to communicate their practice to cognate social and pedagogic
professions.
Youth work and school-based settings
The practice of professional youth work is not well understood outside the youth and community
sector (Corney, 2021). The issue of communicating what exactly youth workers do remains
a perennial problem in youth policy design and youth work practice (Davis, 2011; McMahon, 2021;
Spence, 2008). Spence (2008, p. 3), in her foundational research on what youth workers do found that
‘youth workers are generally highly skilled communicators across a range of circumstances and
contexts’, however ‘their work is not fully understood beyond the boundaries of their own profes-
sion . . . ’ and that the youth workers’ ‘processes of intervention with young people remains under-
developed’, particularly in regard to the educational contexts in which youth work takes place. The
relational nature of youth work, and the words used to describe the relationship and the various
frameworks that inform youth work practice, are often contested (Cooper et al., 2024). However,
there is broad international consensus about the social pedagogic nature of youth work and its non-
formal educational basis (Corney et al., 2023). The variety of work undertaken with vulnerable young
people in society is as diverse as the young people themselves are, including non-formal education
programmes with a focus on harm minimization; outreach and street work dealing with complex
social issues such as youth homelessness or drugs and alcohol; and recreational and sporting
programmes focusing on youth development (Corney, 2021). This work is undertaken in a variety
of community settings, including schools.
Professional youth workers have been employed in educational contexts for many years (Corney,
2010), with the origins of youth work being associated with the ragged schools of industrial Britain
(Jes & Smith, 2002). Cooper (2018) has identied schools as contemporary sites for much youth
work, while Galilea (2022, p. 2) has recently asserted the ‘increasing relevance’ of youth work to
formal education systems. Luxmoore (2000) has described listening roles that youth workers perform
in schools, while Coburn and Wallace (2011) state that the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature
of youth work in school settings can be transformational for young people, particularly those that are
vulnerable. Lohmeyer (2020) has recognized the potential for tension between the diering peda-
gogical approaches of teachers and youth workers in school settings. However, consistent with
Spence’s (2008) nding of a decade and half ago, and despite youth work in educational contexts
increasing, there has been little research on the specic practices and theoretical frameworks that
youth workers are drawing on in their work in school settings, particularly with vulnerable young
people (Corney, 2010; Galilea, 2022). One exception is Kährik's (2020) study of school youth workers
2T. CORNEY ET AL.

in Estonia. Through a desktop survey of a national school database, Kährik (2020) identies the
occupational descriptors and activity elds of youth workers in Estonian school-settings. He identi-
es three roles for such workers: being a part of school management, supervising youth activities
and acting as a ‘network promotor’. Kährik (2020) argues that the ‘school youth worker as an active
agent in the cooperative network of youth work in a local community’. Building on this work, our
study seeks a better understanding of how youth workers operate in school-based settings in
Australia.
Background and context of the study
Professional youth workers are often employed in targeted work with young people who are
deemed vulnerable, that is they may be experiencing marginalization, disadvantage or discrimina-
tion and with adverse social and developmental outcomes. The study was conducted with youth
work practitioners employed in a government-funded not-for-prot welfare organization pro-
gramme which works in partnership with schools and other welfare service providers to address
youth and family issues associated with poverty, disadvantage and marginalization including home-
lessness in a large post-industrial city in regional Australia. Youth workers in the study operate across
seven secondary schools which have been identied as being socio-economically disadvantaged.
These schools are participating in the place-based collective-impact Community of Schools and
Services (COSS) (MacKenzie & Hand, 2019) programme. The COSS programme is a partnership
between the welfare agency which employs the youth workers and the schools plus other youth
and family support services. COSS schools adopt a systematic and proactive approach to identifying
young people as vulnerable through annual surveying of the school student population to identify
levels of vulnerability using the Australian Index of Adolescent Development (AIAD) (MacKenzie, 2018).
Once students undertake the survey, the results are analysed and used to identify and refer
vulnerable students to youth workers employed in a welfare agency working in partnership with
the COSS schools. Through the youth workers, young people are then often referred to other support
services.
Within the COSS programme potential for young people to become homelessness was consid-
ered a key vulnerability (MacKenzie & Hand, 2019). The typical pathways to youth homelessness are
known (Martijn & Sharpe, 2006) and while youth homelessness appears to be preventable, youth
homelessness and associated problems are a growing social and public health issue in Australia
(Australian Institute of Health & Welfare [AIHW], 2021). While there is debate in Australia about how
youth homelessness is dened (MacKenzie & Chamberlain, 1992, 2008), and young people can be
either accompanied by parents/guardians or unaccompanied, this paper understands youth home-
lessness to be a young person aged 12–24 living unaccompanied and without the presence or
immediate prospect of stable accommodation (AIHW, 2021; Coey, 2009; National Alliance to End
Homelessness [NAEH], 2009; National Youth Coalition for Housing [NYCH], 1985). This age bracket is
broad, with both young people and those above the age of majority (young adults over 18 years)
being aected. As such, the pathways into youth homelessness can vary considerably (Morton et al.,
2020). In addition to having dierent pathways into homelessness than adults, young people
generally have dierent experiences or ‘careers’ (Chamberlain & MacKenzie, 2006) when they
become homeless. Young people living on the streets are exposed to daily dangers and stressors,
such as physical violence, and may not have the necessary resources available to them to deal with
these situations (Heerde et al., 2014; Thompson et al., 2006). The lack of these resources compounds
the vulnerabilities, especially when coupled with associated lack of access to education and income
(Chowdry et al., 2018; Legislative Council, 2021; National Youth Commission, 2008).
A key role of the youth workers in such contexts (as with the COSS programme) is to engage
with the vulnerable young people, oer support and referral options to them and also to their
families to mitigate vulnerability particularly of homelessness. Data from the AIAD survey and
assessment are collated in a spreadsheet and used to inform meetings between the youth
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENCE AND YOUTH 3

workers and the schools’ wellbeing teams where students’ levels of vulnerability are identied
according to three tiers. Tier one young people are identied as having some vulnerabilities for
homelessness present in their lives and requiring a low level of support from youth workers.
These young people will be actively monitored by school sta and may be engaged through
group work with youth workers. Tier two young people are identied as high vulnerability of
homelessness due to the presence of multiple compounding vulnerabilities. These young people
are assigned a youth worker for casework support. Tier three young people are those who are
already homeless and are provided support that formally involves referral to multiple agencies.
This approach aims to be youth-focused and family centred. The youth workers support young
people in the development of an integrated care plan which engages a range of stakeholders
including family, school and other agencies/services. This includes helping young people to
manage and mitigate family conict; address health issues; access income support; remain
engaged in education, access and/or referral to training or employment and other government
or community-based support services and to develop life skills. Youth workers have access to
small-scale brokerage funding which can be used to support a young person’s immediate needs
in a timely manner.
Methodology
This research adopted a qualitative methodology (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016), involving in-depth
empirical inquiry to investigate a real-world phenomenon (in this case, youth workers’ perceptions
of their roles and practices with vulnerable young people in school-based settings). This study used
focus group discussions, semi-structured interviews and a demographic questionnaire of partici-
pants. This supported the triangulation of data in the analysis phase, before a nal feedback session
with participants to validate the research ndings (Srivastava & Hopwood, 2009). Participants were
recruited through one youth service agency employing youth workers, working in school-based
settings with vulnerable young people. Participants were recruited using purposeful sampling
strategy (Creswell, 1998) and selected based on their knowledge, programme role, willingness to
participate and availability. Invitations to participate were sent with permission of the agency to
youth workers via an email that included a plain language statement explaining the intention of the
research project and included information regarding participant consent. All participants volun-
teered to participate and no reimbursements or inducements were provided. Participants provided
their informed consent prior to their inclusion in the study. The study was approved by the Victoria
University Human Research Ethics Committee (Approval HRE19–47) and performed in accordance
with ethical standards.
Three focus group interviews were conducted with participants (n = 22). All participants were over
18 years old and directly connected to the agency’s work in school-based settings with vulnerable
young people, employed as youth workers. Participants overwhelmingly identied as women (86%);
ranging in age from 17 to 55 years (36% were aged 25–35 years and 29% were aged 35–45 years);
and participants had varied experience in the human services workforce (22% reported being in the
human services workforce for less than 1 year; 14% reported over 20 years; while the majority (33%)
reported being in the human services workforce for between 5–7 years). Focus groups were approxi-
mately 90 minutes long and involved dialoguing around interview discussion questions (see
Appendix for indicative focus group interview schedule). The focus groups were facilitated by
members of the research team and conducted in-person on the premises of the employing youth
agency. The format involved a series of semi-structured questions on the topic of youth work
practices in school-based settings with vulnerable young people (see appendix). The focus groups
were facilitated to enable both direct answers of individuals and dynamic group interactions, to
increase the depth and reliability of the data (Adcock & Collier, 2001). As dominant themes emerged
in the focus groups, they were fed back in situ to participants for further comment and validation
(Guest et al., 2012). All focus group interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim.
4T. CORNEY ET AL.

A dualistic thematic analysis (Guest et al., 2012) of the data was conducted using both
deductive and inductive approaches, enabling the capture of themes related to the line of
enquiry, as well as other themes emerging as part of the interview processes. Data were
thematically analysed for patterns, frequency of responses and common concerns of participants
(in line with Guest et al., 2012). Themes were crosschecked with eld notes, and the research
team discussed emerging themes. Subsequently, the themes and ndings were fed back to
participants in a third feedback focus group for authentication and validation, comment, con-
rmation and review (Srivastava & Hopwood, 2009). The ndings were armed and validated by
youth workers in the nal feedback session. The nal selection of themes was based on
frequency and relevance to the aims of the study.
Findings
This study set out to understand how youth workers involved in school-based settings with vulner-
able young people, particularly of homelessness conceptualize and describe what they do with
young people in their day-to-day practice. Three practices core to the youth workers’ role emerged
from the data: youth accompaniment, family support and youth-centred advocacy. These practices
are employed by youth workers in complex, non-linear ways because ‘the nature of every case is uid’.
Workers describe a role that operates across multiple spaces and settings to meet the dierent needs
of young people, families and stakeholders at any given time. The three core practices of youth
workers in the school settings with vulnerable young people are described below.
Youth work practices
Youth accompaniment
Accompaniment is a key practice of the youth workers. This involves building meaningful, respectful
relationships with young people and using a conversational approach to support them to reect on
and address issues. Building these relationships takes time and skill to foster. Youth workers report
that many young people ‘hold a lot of trauma’ and ‘really struggle with forming attachments and being
able to trust adults’. This is compounded when families have a negative experience of other human
service professionals. Youth workers reported young people making statements such as ‘I can’t let my
parents know that I talk to you. I’m not supposed to be talking to people like you’ and ‘I hate social
workers. My family hates social workers’. For the youth workers then, building trust is essential. This
begins by being reliable and ‘a consistent sort of person’ who ‘catches up with them every week’. It
requires showing the young person that the worker is ‘someone who’s not going to judge them’ and
who is ‘listening to what they want and trying to work with that’. Workers demonstrate the respectful
nature of the youth work relationship by transparently negotiating with young people around how
parents and teachers were involved in discussions:
After a conversation that you might have had about mum or school or something, ‘okay so when I speak to mum
next, what are you comfortable with me talking to her about? Is there something that you want me to leave out
of that conversation?’
In this way, youth workers fostered the dignity and agency of a young person through a dialogical
method. For example, a young person might approach a worker as say:
‘Oh, I’m failing [class]. I can’t do it.’ And I’m [the worker] just like, ‘I think you can.’ And maybe that’s all they need
to hear. Somebody else believes that they can do it and that helps foster their own belief that they can.
Workers nd that investing in meaningful relationships often leads to the young person ‘being
honest with you about what’s going on . . . so that you can then nd out what the cause is and
then send them on to appropriate services and to appropriate supports.’ Other elements of
accompaniment include signposting to practical resources and/or supported referral to
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENCE AND YOUTH 5

services, ‘facilitating and arranging meetings with the young person [and other professionals]’ and
engaging in structured conversations to prepare and track progress with a youth and family
case plan.
For young people identied as being vulnerable (tier one), youth workers work with the schools’
wellbeing teams to identify the issues presented and ‘tailor that group work to reect those issues.’
Through the practice of accompaniment, youth workers build bridges of understanding and con-
nection with young people ‘integrating all parts of their life’. This relationship becomes the vehicle
which enables workers to proactively foster protective factors in a young person’s life:
When we see a young person, they’ll talk about what’s going on with their friends and then they talk about
what’s going on at school, and then they’ll mention home and then a teacher and then how they’re doing. So it’s
not just focusing on one thing in their life. It’s everything that’s going on in their life at that time and then we can
oer our support in all those dierent avenues for them.
No matter what a young person talks about, workers focus on ‘listening and being curious and
planting seeds’ about alternative behaviours and pathways. In these conversations, workers ‘support
[young people] to identify their own safety net’ and to have ‘ownership’, ‘resources’ and ‘tools’ to act.
Family support
A second key practice of youth workers is building relationships with a young person’s caregivers to
support a healthy family system. Youth workers get consent from young people to have regular
check-ins with parents: ‘We call them up and say, “Hey, look, how are things going on your end?’
Building trust with caregivers is crucial to establishing an eective working partnership to support
the young person. This can be a slow process that ‘happens over months, reminding them that you’re
not here to judge over and over again’. Workers nd that family conict is a major driver of youth
homelessness and reported undertaking family mediation training as a sta team, with a family
support worker also available in complex cases. Family mediation is at times a strong focus of the
work, with workers highlight how they nd themselves ‘supporting young people resolving a lot of
conict that might be going on in the home’.
Conict between caregivers and workers can also arise, requiring patience and the careful
navigating when workers ‘push buttons at times’, as reported by one youth worker who described
a discussion with a parent about paying for a driving lesson from youth service brokerage
funding:
‘So and so [the young person] has just said about the lesson . . . What are your thoughts? We have brokerage. We
could pay for it.’ She’s [the mother] like, ‘No. No. I’m teaching her a lesson that if you want something, you have
to pay for it’, and was quite defensive with me about it.
In cases such as this, workers reported deferring to the parents’ wishes. If trust is established and
conict navigated, youth workers can be a supportive presence in the family:
A lot of what we do is providing emotional support and just holding a space when it’s sometimes hard for
a family to kind of navigate whatever it is that they’re faced with.
Youth workers help caregivers to access additional supports such as food vouchers and family
support workers as well as navigating the social services and school systems. Youth workers
described this as a ‘bridging’ role which recognizes that many families can benet from support in
navigating complex bureaucracies:
A lot of our families haven’t gone through the system. And so are unaware of actually how to do that. So they
want to be part and want to be present. They just don’t know how.
Managing such complexity is ‘delicate and time-consuming work’ with young people, their families,
and other agencies. Indeed, youth workers noted that an intervention ‘doesn’t always work’ and
requires re-evaluation, indicating the iterative nature of youth work practice.
6T. CORNEY ET AL.

Youth-centred advocacy
A third key practice for youth workers is to engage in youth-centred advocacy with other profes-
sionals, schools and agencies. This involves maintaining eective professional partnerships while
carefully advocating for approaches that protect the dignity and agency of the young people. For
example, taking a youth-centred, trauma-informed approach rather than a caregiver-centred or
disciplinary approach. This begins with building eective partnerships with the schools’ leadership
and wellbeing teams to administer and analyse the survey and screening processes:
After the screening day we’ll have a meeting with the AP [assistant principal], the wellbeing team, the [youth]
workers that have done the screening.
In this meeting, teachers, wellbeing sta and youth workers identify what level of support each
young person needs and if additional professionals are required:
Who would be appropriate for group work? Who would be appropriate for working 1–1 for case management?
Who would be appropriate to work with the mental health early intervention worker if mental health is a primary
issue?
Having these close working relationships with teachers and other professionals in the school setting
is important for providing ongoing support to young people and ‘linking’ them to other services:
I kind of see my role as being a link: between the young people and their families, the young people and their
school, the school and [the youth service], young people and other services.
However, youth workers relationship with the schools is challenging at times. Workers note that
schools can have rigid systems and procedures that are slow to embrace youth work’s more dynamic
approach. At times the two ‘systems butt up against each other’, but workers recognize that to
negotiate this space ‘you can’t have someone going to a school that’s rigid, you have to have somebody
that’s able to be good at partnerships’. A further challenge is a clash of philosophical perspectives,
with youth workers drawing from a trauma-informed lens while at school they may be ‘exposed to
a disciplinary response’. In this case, youth workers attempt to ‘advocate for a young person at school’,
working with allies in the wellbeing team and using a conversational approach with other profes-
sionals towards ‘building capacity within the school [for trauma-informed practice]’.
In their youth-centred advocacy, workers engage with a variety of other professionals alongside
the young person. Workers see themselves as a ‘bridge’ and ‘the link between the school and the
community’. Through their unique relational approach to youth accompaniment, the youth workers
are able to support the young people to engage with welfare services such as drugs and alcohol
workers and mental health support workers: ‘we are the person that will make sure that they get linked
in with who they need to get linked in with’. Through their accompaniment and advocacy to help
young people to overcome barriers to accessing supports, youth workers felt like a ‘a one-stop shop
for anything that the young person might need’. In this way, workers variously described themselves as
a ‘link’ ‘connector’, ‘advocate’, ‘bridge builder’, ‘mediator’, ‘coach’, ‘navigator’ and ‘problem solver’.
Discussion: bridge building and boundary spanning
In order to better understand the youth worker’s role in school-based settings, our study
explored how such youth workers conceptualize and describe what they do. Furthermore, we
sought to identify the bodies of knowledge to which practice in school-based settings pertains in
order to provide greater conceptual clarity for school-based youth workers in multidisciplinary
settings. Our thematic analysis of focus group data demonstrates that youth workers conceptua-
lize their role as the dynamic and non-linear application of the practices of youth accompani-
ment, family support and youth-centred advocacy, underpinned by respect for the dignity,
autonomy and agency of the young person. Youth workers described how work with vulnerable
young people requires the novel and responsive application of the practices identied adapted
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENCE AND YOUTH 7

to individual situations. Youth workers apply these practices to ‘link and connect’ young people
into a broad social safety net of support. The work is therefore not static and segmentable with
hard and denable boundaries. Instead, it involves a wide range of possible practices along
a spectrum of interventions. While it is therefore dicult to circumscribe the youth worker’s role,
their self-described linking and connecting function aligns youth workers in this study with the
concepts of ‘bridge building’ and ‘boundary spanning’ in the broader human services literature
(Figure 1).
Bridge building
In the human services literature, a ‘bridge builder’ is described as an initiator of cooperation,
someone who actively brings dierent parties together (e.g. students, parents, teachers and service
providers) to the benet of all (Bradshaw, 1999; Dunst, 2000; Kährik, 2020; Miller, 2009; Oliver, 2013;
Williams, 2013). Higgins et al. (2020) suggest that bridge builders operate at the intersection of two
needs – establishing lines of communication and solving urgent problems – and they build the
bridges between vulnerable young people and an array of community and personal resources. This is
consistent with the youth workers’ descriptions of their mediating and advocating role between
young people and other adults, and with youth work practices generally (Corney, 2021; Williamson,
2017). Furthermore, it coheres with Kährik’s (2020, p. 214) ndings that Estonian school youth
workers are ‘network promotors’ who are engaged in ‘maintaining information ows’ and coordinat-
ing cooperation ‘between the school and other [local] institutions’. In the Estonian context, such
workers engage the general student population in recreational and cultural activities. Kährik (2020,
p. 219) argues that that youth workers are therefore ‘one of the key players in the local community
initiating and managing dierent networks for common communal educational, cultural and youth
work related activities.’
This ‘bridging’ role of youth workers is particularly important for vulnerable young people to
assist them to locate and access support services and other resources in times of need (Rhodes &
Roman, 2003). This sees youth workers assisting young people to ‘navigate’ and traverse dicult
‘spaces’ in order to ‘connect’ to resources and services (Higgins et al., 2020). Williamson (2017, p. 16)
calls this youth work task the ‘winning and giving of space to young people’ and the ‘creating of
opportunities, experiences and interactions that represent stepping stones, or bridges’. It is in this
context that he sees ‘youth work as a distinctive practice and as a discrete component of wider
[social] policy directed towards and responsive to young people’ (2017, p. 16). For Williamson, youth
Bridge
building &
boundary
spanning
Youth
accompaniment
Family support
Youth-centred
advocacy
Figure 1. Youth workers’ practices contribute to strategic bridge building and boundary spanning.
8T. CORNEY ET AL.

work is about ‘bridging the gaps between the circumstances of young people and their destinations’
(2017, p. 18).
Unlike the Estonian context Kährik (2020), the school-based youth workers in our study, and in the
Australian context generally, often plan a targeted role supporting vulnerable young people along-
side other human services professionals. In such instances, their role aligns with emerging literature
around the role of wellbeing-focused professionals in school-based settings which suggests that
they play a mediating role between adult-led, discipline-orientated school environment and young
people themselves (Marcus, 2020; Williams-Livingston et al., 2020). However, it must be acknowl-
edged that youth workers are operating in a wider social context over which they don’t have control.
The ecacy of youth worker’s bridging eorts can therefore be limited when the institutions or
services being linked into are punitive, coercive, overwhelmed or ineective. Further research is
needed to explore how practitioners navigate such challenges, recognizing that many youth workers
are employed in contexts shaped by neoliberal policy imperatives.
Boundary spanning
Boundary spanning is a related but distinct concept in the human services literature. Boundary
spanners are professionals who can work across systems and communicate eectively with a variety
of actors (Leung, 2013; Miller, 2009; Oliver, 2013; Peel, 2013). The ndings of this study suggest that
workers go beyond ‘connecting and bridge building’ responses and can be considered ‘boundary
spanners’ because they are required to operate across a wide range of spaces and institutions with
a variety of stakeholders who hold dierent and at times competing concerns, systems and
philosophies of service provision. Quick and Feldman’s (2014) describe boundary spanning as an
activity that renders boundaries porous, overcomes barriers, increases connections, enables ex-
ibility and builds resilience in systems. This involves three practices.
Firstly, translating dierences (i.e. using dierent language to express multidirectional under-
standings in order to create new shared understandings and junctures that diminish boundaries).
Youth workers engaged in translating dierences in a variety of ways, for example through active
collaboration with the wellbeing team during the screening process. Secondly boundary spanning
requires aligning dierences (i.e. recognize dierences but enhance connections). Workers reported
aligning dierences between schools’ disciplinary approach and workers’ trauma-informed philoso-
phy. They attempted to work with school leadership to recognize these dierent approaches while
building understanding between professionals and across professional boundaries. Finally, bound-
ary spanning requires decentring dierences (i.e. minimizing meaningful distinctions between
parties). Workers recognized their asymmetric position within the schools’ systems and prioritized
exibility and nding common ground with school sta who may misunderstand more non-formal
youth work practices. In practical terms, Oliver (2013) describes the interprofessional practice skills
and activities of boundary spanning as characterized by networking, collaborating, bridge building,
advocating, connecting, referring, preventing and intervening. This aligns strongly with the youth
workers’ description of their work, which relies on building strong relationships to cultivate
a network of trusted contacts.
Implications
This study investigated the practices of youth workers in school-based settings working with
vulnerable young people in order to provide greater conceptual clarity around how youth workers
perceive and understand what they do. Our analysis nds that three core practices of youth
accompaniment, family support and youth-centred advocacy are employed in a non-linear and
complex manner by youth workers. These practices contribute to workers’ overarching strategic
approach: to build bridges and span boundaries for and with young people to mitigate vulnerabil-
ities and increase supports. While other scholars have considered the role of youth workers in school-
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENCE AND YOUTH 9

settings (Galilea, 2022; Kährik, 2020; Luxmoore, 2000), the unique implications of this study are to
explicitly conceptualize the practices and strategies that characterize youth work in school-based
settings. The ndings of this study have several implications for youth work practice, education and
training as well as for community practitioners engaged in inter-agency collaboration. Greater
conceptual clarity can support youth workers in communicating and evaluating their work, as well
as collaborating with other professionals and services. Furthermore, it can better enable youth work
educators to prepare practitioners and enable employers to support them in such roles.
Furthermore, it may assist policymakers in designing interventions which utilize youth work practices
and methods.
The frames of bridge building and boundary spanning oer youth work practitioners and scholars
an enhanced conceptual frame to theorize and communicate the role of youth workers engaged in
school settings with vulnerable young people and other forms of inter-agency collaboration. This
framing may help such youth workers to better articulate and communicate their role, achievements,
challenges and training needs (Goodrich et al., 2020), particularly in communication to other
professionals and policymakers, thereby fostering an even stronger interprofessional identity and
sense of purpose (Oliver, 2013).
Professional preparation and training are paramount to the success of interventions with vulner-
able young people (Curry et al., 2021). Yet Oliver (2013) suggests that some social professions are not
necessarily equipped by their professional training with the skills, competencies and traits for
eective boundary spanning. This suggests a clear need for youth worker education and continuous
practice development to incorporate boundary spanning training to better understand interprofes-
sional and inter-agency collaboration, including between formal and non-formal educational set-
tings. Several studies in the human services literature report individuals who were observed to act as
boundary spanners beyond formal role expectations or descriptions (Schotter et al., 2017). However,
Needham et al. (2017) stress that the work of boundary spanning is ‘emotionally laborious’ and that
emotional labour is likely to be dierently experienced depending on whether the boundary
spanning is an ‘emergent’ expectation or an ‘explicit’ part of the job. Therefore, it is important for
employers to reect on whether existing roles require boundary spanning and explicitly recognize
and resource this work.
Finally, we recognize that youth workers may be engaged in boundary spanning interactions with
the cultures and practices of other social professionals with strong professional and organizational
identities (such as teachers, nurses, psychologists and social workers). Korschun (2015) argues that an
employee’s professional identity signicantly inuences how eective they will be as a boundary
spanner, with boundary spanning more likely to be successful when the employee perceives the
group identity of the other organization to be similar to their own. Conversely, a lack of identication
with other professionals or organizations can result in a relationship that is more adversarial than
cooperative (Korschun, 2015). This presents challenges for boundary spanning youth workers, who
tend to be in a structurally asymmetric power relationship with other professions of greater social
capital. Developing cross-professional understanding and collaboration through joint-education
initiatives at tertiary level and continuous practice development could address this barrier to
eective cross-professional boundary spanning.
Conclusion
Youth workers are often engaged in schools in work with vulnerable young people and their
communities. Through a qualitative study, this paper builds on and extend existing scholarship on
youth work by illuminating youth workers; perceptions of their roles and practices. This research
suggests that youth work requires the dynamic and non-linear application of the practices of youth
accompaniment, family support and youth-centred advocacy, underpinned by respect for the
dignity, autonomy and agency of the young person. The complex application of these practices
position youth workers as bridge-builders and boundary-spanners. Bridge-builders help young
10 T. CORNEY ET AL.

people to navigate spaces and services to mitigate vulnerability. Boundary-spanners build relation-
ships to network dierent organizations and professionals for better collaboration. The ndings of
this paper have implications for the education and training of practitioners as well as their ongoing
support in the eld. Clearer conceptualization of what youth workers do can also support practi-
tioners and policymakers to design eective programmes with young people.
Disclosure statement
No potential conict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Funding
The work was supported by the Jack Brockho Foundation .
ORCID
T. Corney http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1980-6835
J. Gorman http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5153-2045
B. Woods http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1580-4258
A. Law http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1246-1301
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENCE AND YOUTH 13

Appendix. Indicative focus group interview schedule
(1) How would you describe your role in The Geelong Project?
(2) What do you do on a day-to-day basis with young people?
(3) Can you specify what eective youth work practices and/or approaches you are currently using with at-risk young
people?
(4) Can you specify what eective youth work practices and/or approaches you are currently using with young people’s
families?
(5) Can you specify what eective youth work practices and/or approaches you are currently using in schools?
(6) What services and other professionals do you work with regularly outside of the BCYF team?
(7) Can you name and describe a theoretical framework or model that your interventions and practices may be
informed by?
14 T. CORNEY ET AL.