The begining

Monday the 3rd of November marks the start of National Youth Work Week 2014.

My Name is Charlotte and I am a Youth Worker.
I decided to do this blog because not many people fully understand what youth work really is, how varied it can be, and what it means in real terms for young people and their communities.
So here is a bit about my journey so far...

I have always been interested in working with children and first thought about going into child psychology. This was driven a lot by my experiences of being bullied as a child. I first met youth workers around the age of 10 by getting involved in summer schemes at our local youth centre. at 14 a followed my mum's footsteps to become a volunteer with the guide association as a young leader at rainbows. If I'm honest I found brownies far too annoying which is why to this day I help at Rainbows, Guides and Senior Section only!

I attended my first youth club session at 12 with my boyfriend. We went for a swim and just chilled out, I don't even remember meeting any adults there but I'm sure we were well supervised. As I got older I was asked to help out with a summer scheme that was short staffed which was for young people in a deprived area. At 18 years old it became clear to me the benefits of having something like this going off. Some of the children were on free school meals so when summer came, they got hungry!

I then went of to university to study psychology and when finding myself short of cash happened to come across my very first job as a Youth Worker at 19. I loved it!! It was a busy centre, so busy they had to chunk up the young people into year groups and we regularly had over 100 attending per night.

On my first night working at this centre a young person revealed that she was concerned about her brother and worried that he might be on drugs. still being a teenager myself I quickly learnt how different everyone can be. I always felt able to talk to my parents about pretty much everything but not everyone was in that boat! Some people had issues at home, some would have been in so much trouble if they shared with their parents what the told me! I was shocked my how much help and support young people needed and also by how much I could give. and to be honest I just fell in love with youth work from there!

13 years later and I am lucky enough to have a full-time job managing two centres, 18 members of staff and work with hundreds of amazing young people!!

...So Why do this blog?
I felt now was a good time to share the love and show people what we really do as Youth Workers out there in the world!!

Please follow and I hope you enjoy my adventures over the coming week!!