A new paper from the University of Sydney highlights the potential for positive psychology and coaching to enhance youth services and help evidence their effectiveness in increasing wellbeing in young people.
Have you got kids? Nephews or nieces? Or do you work with young people? Just close your eyes right now and take a minute to think about the young people in your life and what you want for them in the world….
Now, did anyone think of anxiety, isolation, inferiority, disadvantage, failure, boredom, unemployment, a life of crime, substance abuse, fear or violence? No, Of course not.
I am sure that you all thought of words like love, happiness, strength, courage, growth, opportunity, achievement and success.
You will want the young people in your life to experience well-being which the World Health Organisation defines as the presence of “a state in which the individual realises his or her own abilities, can cope with normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully and is able to make a contribution to his or her own community”.
Even more than that you will want them to flourish and be their optimal best and live a life full of pleasure, engagement and meaning.
However there is still a long way to go.
1 in 3 young people experience moderate to high levels of psychological distress and the reality is that in Western society and in Australia in particular, many vulnerable young people still face significant barriers to achieving optimal life chances and gaps in inequality are actually rising.
A recent UNICEF report ‘
The Children Left Behind’ cites Australia as struggling amongst the 27 wealthiest (OECD) nations to address the needs of the 10% of children and young people who are most at risk with alarmingly low rankings for youth suicide, young people in jobless families and investment in early years education.
There remains a raft of multiple risk factors faced by young people that determine they are much more likely to lack resilience, suffer from self-harm, cause harm to others or to get involved in anti-social and offending behaviours with often devastating consequences for their future life chances.
These risks include being from an Indigenous or ethnic minority community; having low socio-economic status; suffering parental loss, neglect or abuse; being homeless or in out-of-home care; experiencing problems at or being excluded from school; being unemployed; having anti-social attitudes and difficulties in controlling emotions and behaviours; possessing low self worth and belief; identifying with negative peer networks and role models.
In the absence of many of the protective factors in life that most of us take for granted (like family, friends, school, work, community) youth services have historically stepped in to provide time, space, support, encouragement and opportunity for the most marginalised, excluded, troubled and vulnerable young people in our society.
But as highlighted in my post
‘Celebration, Commitment or Cuts?’ youth services continue to struggle for adequate funding and in the UK particularly, are themselves at serious risk experiencing huge budget cuts as the government and local councils review public sector spending.
Just this week the Chairman of the UK Education Select Committee Inquiry on Services for Young People ‘blasted’ youth sector leaders for the lack of evidence in making a strong case for funding youth work, describing as an ‘extraordinary failure’ that the sector cannot explain or demonstrate the difference it makes.
By co-incidence next week sees the publication of a paper that argues that the application of positive psychology and coaching methodologies within youth work settings could help to provide an evidence-base that demonstrates the impact of youth work on increasing levels of well-being, resilience, hope and goal striving in young people.
The paper has been authored by myself in conjunction with Dr. Suzy Green and Dr. Tony Grant from the University of Sydney Coaching Psychology Unit. Entitled ‘
Flourishing Youth Provision – The potential role of positive psychology and coaching in enhancing youth services’ the paper aims to highlight how research from these fields can be applied to add value to the youth work curriculum, support the professional development of the youth workforce and potentially provide a rigorous scientific foundation upon which to justify continued government and social investment in youth work programs.
Youth services are needed now as much as ever and we hope that this paper will help them, and the young people they work with, to flourish.
Clive Leach is an evidence-based coach and facilitator based in Sydney. As a former head of youth services in the UK he has a particular interest in promoting the use of positive psychology and coaching within youth and community contexts. He spoke at the 2nd Australian Positive Psychology & Well-being Conference on ‘Flourishing Youth Provision’. Clive offers coaching within the Australian Public Service and corporate sector. He also designs and delivers workshops on engagement, well-being & resilience, and coaching skills in Australia, Asia and the UK. He welcomes opportunities to speak on any of these topics. He can be contacted at: coach@cliveleach.com or please visit: www.cliveleach.com
foggy
February 9, 2011 at 5:24 pm
encouraging youth
Youth is the time when an individual prepares to leave school and hom e to face the real world.often at this time the first mistakes of life are made.the effects may last a lifetime.youth servis to impart training for cultivating resiliency is imperative.youth must be given lots of time.to train youth to go after their goals would be a worthwhile investment for any training team!
DeanPrimitive
June 28, 2012 at 3:57 am
Increasing Internal Work with Young People
Hi Clive,
I’m so glad that I tracked you down! It was great to see you at the YAPA Conference in 2011 – I thought your session was great!
As an accredited coach, I find the reflective skills and tools that we use are invaluable in allowing young people to really excel in life (i.e. not just limp through hard times when they hit), and I think that positive psychology has a pretty massive place in youth work (although currently unacknowledged more widely).
I have written a model looking at the ‘tools’ of youth work, and what the various modes of work aim for. I have also addressed why I believe this ‘inner life’ of our young people is worthy of attention from youth workers if they want to see real, lasting positive change.
The blog post is titled A Fresh Way of Looking at Youth Work and can be found at http://www.primitivecommunities.com.au/blog.html I would really value your thoughts/comments!
Thanks for all of your great work!
Dean
foggy
January 22, 2013 at 4:06 pm
Positive Psychology
Recently psychology used to try to answer our queries-what’ s wrong with youth;but now it has started showing us what is right and positive about our youth And is succeeding in making us feel guilty about ignoring the ways and opportunities prescribed to promote youth strengths and positive points in their persona.
As it is a new way of looking at things,I would like to know such a wide term as life satisfaction would be applicable to youths esp. as regards their work or studies and be currently measured with a scale.Has this been done?Did the results help in approach and therapy to find out and remedy any youth’ s grossly neglected areas.Any youth classes formed to dole out to them funds and helplines to address the matter easily.