Management – A part-timer youth worker's perspective.
Notes from the critical chatting gathering (London 6th June 2007)
Tania de St Croix
First, I'm still stubbornly
calling myself a part-time youth worker. I'm now officially an Assistant
Youth Support Worker for a couple of sessions a week and a Youth Support
Worker for another session. These new titles are meant to end the association
between the worst-paid youth work posts and part-time (female-dominated)
hours, but the new language hasn't changed the reality for most of us.
In the local authority where I work, the junior posts are all part-time
and filled mainly by women, the full-time posts are management (and
the top four positions all held by men), and all the black and ethnic
minority youth workers are part-time and on low hourly rates. And us
part-timers still do the bulk of the actual youth work, so I'm not keen
on this 'support worker' terminology either. This may be a slight digression,
but it seems relevant!
We part-timers have to deal
with a plethora of management. First, we have our line-managers, often
more than one because we usually work on a few projects. In twelve years
of paid youth and play work I've had twelve line-managers, usually two
or three at once. Then, we have senior managers, who may drop in to
visit, perhaps to check on us or on our managers (we're not usually
told). We often have pseudo-managers who are part-timers with more hours
('senior youth support workers' or 'co-ordinators' or 'deputy youth
workers' or whatever); we often see more of these than we do of our
actual managers. Then we have other people with positions of power in
our work life, such as tutors and assessors from universities and local
councillors. All these folk may be supportive or coercive and are often
a mixture; it's a hard job working out how best to deal with them all,
but us part-timers get plenty of practice!
It feels a bit unfair to
categorise my managers, because management is a lot about inter-personal
dynamics and I can only say how I experienced them. But of my twelve
line-managers, at least two were seriously depressed (one used my supervision
sessions to talk and cry about his problems), most have been seriously
stressed at times, and a couple have been laid-back to the extent that
us part-timers have done much of their work for them. One manager quite
early in my career was very confrontational; after I had left that job
I came into contact with her again and she told me that she'd been bullied
by her own manager, which rather explained her passive-aggressive behaviour.
Since then, I've always tried to remember that my managers are human
beings first and foremost. I've been lucky to have a few empowering
and supportive managers, and two in particular took intentional steps
to reduce the hierarchical aspects of management. One of these was in
a youth service and one in a small voluntary organisation, and both
used many of the principles of democratic management that Tony Taylor
just talked about. I can honestly say I loved working for them; well,
nearly all the time!
But when times are hard
or things get stressful, even the most democratic managers need to remember
that they are paid more than their junior or part-time colleagues, partly
because they are expected to deal with organisational stress. In the
absense of a level co-operative structure, the pay differential is a
material reality which managers need to recognise. Some of us may choose
to be part-timers and accept the poor pay and conditions partly because
we don't want to (or can't) deal with the bureacratic stress and responsibilities
that our managers face. Managers should share information and decisions
with those they manage, but should be aware that there may be times
when we don't want to know and don't want to share! Please, keep us
informed and keep asking us how involved we want to be, remember that
when you feel stressed we probably will too, and don't assume what works
for us this week is what will work several months later when the situation
has changed.
What alternatives do we
have to this norm of stressed managers and put-upon part-timers? I'd
like to try working as part of a genuine youth / community / play work
co-operative, but I'm not sure one currently exists; maybe one day I'll
try to get one going (anyone interested?!) In the meantime, my main
strategy is ignoring or refusing to recognise hierarchy. I answer primarily
to the young people and community members who I work for, and treat
my managers as human beings with different jobs to do. As fellow human
beings, they are equal to me, not superior, and if I disagree with them
I try to tell them and explain why. But ignoring hierarchy is not enough,
it's also important to address it, perhaps by creating alternative structures
of support from below, by making our own networks and creating space
to meet and organise.
There are, of course, disadvantages
to being a part-time or junior worker. We have lower pay and status,
we are often isolated from our peers and we have little opportunity
to interact with others in a similar position. Our low status is not
just inherent in our place in the hierarchy, but the way we are seen
in the current policy framework even by our potential allies. Recently,
a couple of well-meaning research papers have criticised part-time youth
workers' abilities, concluding not that we should be better trained
or supported but that we should be replaced by more full-timers. Some
of us don't want to work all the time, and anyway there are still a
lot of opportunities and advantages to being a part-time youth worker.
We part-timers get to do
more actual youth work and less bureaucratic stuff. We usually have
more day-to-day freedom; we might have a number of managers but we often
don't see a great deal of the senior ones, and our line-managers are
usually still doing a lot of face-to-face youth work (or at least remember
what it was like!) We have less invested in the maintainance of the
status quo, both materially and in terms of our identity. Because we
have less time to meet and talk together (a lot of part-timers have
other jobs or caring responsibilities), it is difficult for us to organise
ourselves. But although we vary as much as our managers do, it would
be patronising and inaccurate to assume that part-timers are unthoughtful
and uncritical about our work.
Comments welcomed, on the
blog or to tan_dsc@yahoo.co.uk