Harnessing the Power of Encouragement through Youth Work
Dr Dean Farquhar | AYAC | National Youth Engagement Lead
“You need to have encouragement... People want encouragement and that’s what they don’t always want to give you, but if we encourage each other - there’s nothing we cannot do. "
Tony Benn (2007)
“I liked that everyone was encouraged to speak up.”
AYAC Youth Participant (2025)
Youth work is a values-driven process fuelled by encouragement. By providing encouragement through their practice, youth workers build strong relationships with young people that support them claim their rights, build strong support networks and develop vital life skills. Yet, the distinctive ways that youth workers harness encouragement are often poorly understood by those outside the sector. If youth work is to play a more influential role in youth policy debates, its contribution to the lives of young people must be better understood. To enhance understanding of youth work, this article reflects on how some of the key points from the national definition of youth work assist youth workers to encourage young people.
A Live Document
In 2013, AYAC worked with key stakeholders in the youth sector to form a national definition of youth work. The definition aimed to provide a minimum set of principles that clearly differentiate youth work from other disciplines that work with young people. AYAC has always acknowledged that additional principles might guide youth workers’ approaches to their practice. The intention of the definition was never to be overly prescriptive and dogmatic in approach. Rather, its purpose was to provide a foundational statement around which practitioners could coalesce when explaining the merits of their work. Since publication, the definition has proved a live document, informing youth work theory and practice (AYAC, 2024). It is hoped that this short blog promotes further reflection on its enduring relevance.
The National Definition
Youth work is a practice that places young people and their interests first.
Youth work is a relational practice, where the youth worker operates alongside the young person in their context.
Youth work is an empowering practice that advocates for and facilitates a young person's independence, participation in society, connectedness and realisation of their rights.
Reflecting on the National Definition of Youth Work
The national definition sets out a youth-centred, relational and rights-focused vision of youth work practice. It outlines the primacy of working in partnership with young people to create safe spaces that are informed by the context of their everyday lives and equipped to meet their needs. By committing to youth work as a mode of empowerment, it seeks to embed forms of meaningful engagement that open up opportunities for young people to explore their identities, develop skills and participate fully social life. This has a series of implications for how youth workers encourage young people:
Placing young people and their interests first requires that youth workers initiate and maintain open channels of dialogue with them to uncover what they want to achieve. This means that the encouragement provided by youth workers is always directed towards provisional goals that are open to revision and may evolve over time to accommodate changes in the priorities of young people.
Emphasising the primacy of the relationship, youth work set out to achieve strong, respectful and trust-based relationships between youth workers and young people, as well as between young people forming a group. It does this by structuring the relationships between workers and young people to tip the balance of power in their favour whenever possible, while seeking to embed pro-social, supportive behaviour within groups. This means that youth workers are often concerned with encouraging the social dynamics within groups that allow individuals to feel socially connected and flourish.
Committing to rights-focused work means ensuring young people who may not have had access to knowledge about their rights are adequately informed and can make decisions that align with them and their own best interests. Youth workers have a responsibility to young people to encourage them identify and claim their rights.
Locating young people in their contexts can help deepen workers’ understanding of the challenges and structural barriers faced by young people and help to identify strengths and areas where additional support may be needed. This means that the encouragement provided by youth workers will vary from group to group, and young person to young person.
Acknowledging that youth work forms an informal learning process characterised by reciprocal respect between workers and young people, although only implicitly expressed in the national definition, is an increasingly valued aspect of youth work in Australia (see Corney, 2024). This is important as it signals how youth workers provide encouragement intentionally to achieve outcomes in partnership with young people.
In sum, youth workers can effectively harness the power of encouragement through their practice because they are able to draw on a distinctive practitioners’ ethos that fosters the cultivation of sets of relationships that allow young people to feel heard, understood and able to shape the terms of their engagement.