Detached youth workers are so incensed over the increasing "tracking" of young people that many are considering resigning, the vice-chair of the Federation for Detached Youth Work has warned.

Read: Detached youth workers angry over information-monitoring demands.

Information gathering, local authorities are having to justify themselves - for funding I guess - it's probably happening in all departments. Statistics, we are all just numbers.

Yes. People working with children are being turned into apparatchicks of state policy. \(It isn't just about statistics - the monitoring is a way of enforcing policy). The vision of children in this is that they are raw materials who can be shaped by inputs. It wasn't 'education, education, education'. It was 'the economy, the economy, the economy'. If everyone resigned that would help.

Are there details anywhere of what the questions are? I've never seen them and the ones listed in the article do sound invasive but its hard to judge without context.

I think the principle of information sharing is important, whether or not the current approach is the right one is a different question and difficult for others to judge I think without more detailed info. I'm not sure how everyone resigning would help though and who that would benefit (I assume you're referring to detached youth workers?)

 Hi Mike

It wasn't so much the information sharing aspect of this that I was picking up on as the monitoring. Information sharing is one thing; monitoring is another. IF this is about monitoring I would object because monitoring is a means of enforcing government policy at a granular level, when I think that youth workers should be free (once trained and appointed and in any event being supervised in some way)  to proceed according to their own judgement.

When I said 'resign' I was really thinking about anyone working with children or young people or disadvtanaged adults  who is required to fill in monitoring forms to prove that they have implemented government policy and done nothing else durring their contact time.

 Justin

Hi Justin - thats kind of what I was trying to get to - its difficult to know without knowing the details of what detached workers need to ask young people to provide in terms of information. Are the questions mentioned in the article actual questions that workers have to ask all young people they work with or only in certain situations? (and how do you go about asking them?!).

I agree very much with the principle of allowing skilled professionals to just get on with the job as free from constraints as possible. I don't agree though with a point I saw Mark Smith referred to in his session at the Detached Youth Workers Conference where he referred to having an ethos where the 'only evaluation is establishing a relationship' - relationships are of course crucial but I don't see that alone having much value in the context of a professional service and I guess its these sorts of tensions that lead to monitoring?