How to resource youth work the ‘big society' way

There are always different ways of organising development and we should perhaps recall that our particular models of practice have only prevailed for the past 50 years or so.

Not so long ago, quite out of the blue, I received a parcel that contained the slightly quaint memoirs of James Thomas MBE. Now well into his 90s, he was, in the post-War years, a pioneer in the Boys’ Clubs movement.

His memories proved captivating, reflecting at times my own geographical mobility and my journey in youth work practice. When James responded to my letter of thanks for sending them, he wrote that it was as if we had walked down the same valley, though on different sides and 30 years apart.

James was born in Yorkshire. He came to an impoverished South Wales coalfield as a child and, through his father who was active in the reformist Settlement Movement, he established a network of useful contacts before going to university in Birmingham. There he lived in Quaker accommodation provided by the philanthropic Cadbury family and worked in munitions factories as part of the war effort.

James started out in youth work as assistant secretary to the Birmingham Federation of Boys Clubs. He renovated a narrow boat and used it for youth work “residentials” around the maze of canals in the Midlands. He was an early contact for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme.

Pioneering schemes

In the mid-1950s, James Thomas moved on to Gloucestershire, where he established a network of Boys’ Clubs and, fascinatingly, a mobile youth club consisting of a Land Rover, caravan, awning and gas lighting supported by Calor Gas.

This toured round Gloucestershire villages long before “mobile youth work” for rural areas became fairly standard practice. He organised youth camps at Symonds Yat, where the Biblins youth campsite now is.

Thirty years later, I took a similar path in terms of youth work practice. The critical difference, however, was that I had the benefit of local authority support and access to publicly-financed facilities.

Thomas did not, but resourced his youth work in other ways. Whether it was an angle iron for bunks on the narrow boat or equipment for newly-formed clubs in Gloucestershire, he managed to secure sponsorship, donations and assistance to plug his funding needs and gaps.

Through personal contact with the influential and the wealthy (not always the same), he was able to lay on events that raised funds both for his mainstream work and for more innovative youth work around, for example, orienteering (an idea imported from Norway) and involving young offenders from a local approved school. All that patronage supported both direct provision and development, until – during the 1960s – the local authority took over.

Now local authority youth services are cutting back. In previously challenging times, Thomas developed leisure time opportunities for young people through a combination of political advocacy, business patronage and local community support – a cocktail of possibility that simply does not seem to exist today.

It was, arguably, the “big society” in practice. It is a set of relationships that desperately needs to return.

Howard Williamson is professor of European youth policy at the University of Glamorgan