Davies (2010) suggests that how much room youth work practitioners have to manoeuvre can depend on whether the economy is doing well or badly, whether people in general or influential groups feel secure or threatened and whether young people are more respected than feared. When applying Davies’ idea to an Australian Indigenous youth policy context it perhaps is not surprising that the room left to manoeuvre for the program staff in this area might be quite limited. For example in recent years the Australian economy has been doing well whilst many other developed countries headed into recession as a consequence of the global financial crisis. This coincided with a formal acknowledgement that economic prosperity was not experienced by all Australians and particularly not by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders who were consistently identified through census data to be less financially well off as a group than non-Indigenous Australians.
At the same time there was the development of the CTG policy and indicators, along with an increase in funding streams directed towards the attainment of six specific indicators with set time lines for achieving them. Indeed, an interesting trend that can be observed by viewing government reports since the year the CTG policy targets were introduced is the change in tone and discourse presented in each of the annual reports (Closing the Gap Prime Minister’s Report 2013). Early reports view the current social indicators as quite bleak, and therefore strive to highlight the need for specific and targeted measures to address this inequality. Move forward to the year 2013 and the reports focus on achievements and outcomes as a consequence of the funding to date, and highlight the ongoing and on time progression towards those targets. It is not surprising then that a federal government funded program such as this one would have strict outcomes expected of its financial inputs. The fear here is that young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth will not meet their full potential as defined in an economic sense by mainstream Australia and therefore reflect negatively on the work of the policy makers and the government at large.
Bunyan and Ord (2012) suggest two major changes have occurred as a consequence of ‘key
148 sector management practices to the public sector and the introduction of competition, leading to the “marketisation” of services and an overall shift towards a model embedded in the “three E’s” of economy, efficiency and effectiveness’ (Farnham & Horton 1996 in Bunyan & Ord 2012, p. 21).
Neoliberalism is a:
theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well being can be best advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedom characterised by strong private property rights, free markets and free trade. Therefore the role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such activities.
(Harvey 2005, p. 2)
It is this institutional framework which remains in place regardless of which political party is currently in power (Bunyan & Ord 2012), working with the setting of targets and the identification and allocation of performance indicators predominately measured quantitatively.
This emphasis on measurement is a problem for youth workers who traditionally have seen their work as being primarily an improvised practice. Consequently it makes it difficult for them to take a critical stance towards their practice when constantly aware of the surveillance applied to
themselves and the young people they work with (de St Croix 2010). Making the situation even more frustrating is that focus on measurable targets has been argued to reflect little on the events taking place on the ground (Fraser 2008). To address these issues, Fuller and Ord (2012)
recommend that practitioners and managers alike should reflect on ‘the persuasive and pervasive discourse of efficiency and effectiveness which is being promoted, and ask how far contemporary accounts of leading and managing support the values and principles which underpin youth work’ (p. 45).
Lastly, with increased funding becoming available to youth work and youth programs and the move towards a business culture model of management, youth organisations and program staff are left needing to develop project management skills to be able to meet the requirements set out by funders (Hoggarth 2010; Millar 2010). In many instances in youth work, the skills associated with managing, delivering and reporting on a project are assumed within the funding model, with no acknowledgement or support resources, such as training or funding, to meet government’s ever increasing reliance and need for project management tracking tools and reporting. Similarly to the findings in Mosse’s (2005) work on development workers, this emphasis on measurement and the need to demonstrate efficiency and effectiveness as well as the skills associated with delivering
149 youth work services in the current policy setting lead to two types of youth workers, both of which were visible in the BECA program setting.
On the one hand there were those that were fluent in the skills and language required to both deliver and promote youth work programs. They were confident public speakers; they had some background in an education setting and could, therefore, develop sessions by turning their ideas into practice, or had the ability to replicate what they had seen elsewhere in their own settings. They were familiar with target-orientated program delivery and had the logistical skills to plan and
organise a program within set time frames and to a set schedule. They were fluent in the vernacular of reporting and had experience in working with funders, effectively utilising the language of
efficiency, effectiveness and therefore success. And they were skilled in the selective promotion of the impacts of their work and programs. In the eyes of both funders and their managers this is how successful youth work and youth workers should be.
The three youth workers on the BECA programhowever did not adopt this style of youth work even though it was the style they originally set out to emulate. They did not have the skills, the support or the time to develop these competencies. They had no background in education, which saw them struggling to turn ideas into planned activities. They had limited to no experience in public speaking, which saw them become nervous when delivering sessions. And they had never logistically planned anything like a residential camp. Consequently tasks which may have been undertaken more efficiently by more experienced youth workers took longer to complete. Sessions were not well thought out leading to unpolished presentations and in some cases the withdrawal of an activity due to a lack of confidence on the youth worker’s part. In their eyes as well as that of their managers, at times they were in a sense ‘failing’. This made it difficult to utilise the language of efficiency, effectiveness and success necessary in program reporting and led to a more critical reflection by the youth workers of the purpose and need for their work. In a way, the smooth presentations and finely tuned schedules of other youth workers and youth programs meant a glossing over of critical questions as they were seen, by themselves and others, as doing well. With these areas of the program failing for this group of youth workers, it left them exposed to contemplate the more pressing questions associated with their field of work and in particular the current context it operates in.
Mosse (2005), outlining the same process changes, but in a different context – aid policy – describes a similar change in the program he followed. He reflects that ‘implementation changed project
150 relations and brought new accountabilities. An organisational emphasis on activities, targets and spending resulted in a clarification of hierarchy. This was inevitable’ (Mosse 2005, p. 109). Indeed, the same dissident shift was being witnessed in the BECA program and the youth workers were becoming more aware with each camp of the effect this was having on their autonomy and identity as youth workers. Also they were seeing what they felt to be the most important concern of the program, the needs of the young people, fading into the background and mattering less and less. Indeed, the youth workers began to see that all camps were beginning to look the same, not only to each other but to other youth programs as well. Consequently this affected their learning, a
consequence observed in Mosse’s work where ‘fixed guidelines displaced people’s design and reduced learning’ (2005, p. 116).