EU Congress “Children and young people in disadvantaged neighbourhoods - new cohesion strategies”

Leipzig , 27 June 2007

Speech by Brith FÄLDT, Councillor, Pitea, Sweden, and member of the Council of Europe Congress of Local and Regional Authorities

Dear participants

Colleagues

Ladies and Gentlemen

When I prepared my speech I realised that the reasons why I became a politician, in many ways, stems from my own experiences related to youth issues. First from my early years as an engaged student in the late 1970s and later from my experiences as a professional - I am a social worker in school.

It stems from the appraised inequality and the approaches from older generations towards young people.

It stems from the frustration of constantly being considered as too young and that your opinions never have fitted in the established forums.

I joined politics when I was 22, and met basically the same approach towards young, as society in general has.

 Young politicians are described as the hope for the future and are welcomed as far as they don’t threaten the power balance in the party structure. They are – with other words - used as tokens.

The general approach to youth politics have been based on social prevention for decades. It is as if young people always are considered as a societal problem and that youth is a medical diagnosis.

It is only for the last, say 10 -15 years, that this approach has changed and that young people now also are considered as a possibility and that they actually can contribute in forming youth strategies for the future.

The outcome of this approach are numerous projects that are launched by new presidents, governments, and mayors. I’m not cynical, but to be honest - it certainly has a flavour of cheap tricks to get support from large and important groups of voters.

Politics, sometimes in favour of young people but sometimes also against them.

Focusing on young peoples problems in an election campaign usually means that new project money will appear in a near future.

Like scattered showers new money is delivered downwards the organisational structures without asking youth workers or other professionals, working with and close to young, whether they are needed or not. 

Now, what I wanted when I joined my Party 32 years ago was to change this. But when I look back, I cannot say I have been especially successful in this respect and I can see similarities with the work done by women on the gender issues, equal representation and related issues...

and there is nothing but to state... we have still quite a long way to go.

But now and then it is possible to take a couple of extra steps ahead that help you to keep up the work and energy.

One such occasion was in 2002 when I was appointed by the Congress in the Council of Europe to be the rapporteur of the revision of the European Charter on The Participation of Young People in Local and Regional Life.

For those of you who haven’t read it or maybe not have heard of it  I can say that it is a very interesting document. You are able to find it on the Council of Europe’s website – although you have to try a little.

Our task was to create a European Youth Charter that could meet the challenges of the 21st Century.

It is a strictly political document – and it is adopted by the Committee of Ministers (after quite some discussions).

What is important – as I see it – is that they adopted the thoughts behind and between the words. The idea of the rights of young people to be heard. And the idea to look at young people as citizens – not as a societal problem or a target group.

In the preamble we state that:

“However, for youth participation in local and regional life to be successful, lasting and meaningful requires more than the development or restructuring of political or organisational systems. Any policy or action designed to promote youth participation must ensure that the cultural environment is one of respect of young people and must also take into account the diverse needs, circumstances and aspirations of young people.”

We listed the youth perspective of 14 sectorial policies in Part 1 and pointed out the instruments for youth participation in Part 2 and mentions some institutional conditions for youth participation in Part 3.

But, as Europe is so diverse we did not give precise recommendations instead we wanted to open up for dialogue and co-management.

And we wanted to inspire and give ideas.

                           

Now,

 I would very brief say something about the strategic approach in Sweden.

Since 2006 the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs works with an Action Plan for preventive and supportive activities for young people in risk-environments and to develop drug free meeting places.

This Action Plan was outlined and based on a thorough evaluation of previous projects.

 

What was generally underlined in all evaluations of former projects was

1)    the importance of  long-time perspective because youth workers  are suffering from severe “projectosis” (=being tired of constant changes due to too many short term projects).

2)    Increased co-ordination can help local authorities to strengthen the preventive and supportive activities

3)    Inter-municipal co-ordination gives opportunities to pool resources and therefore possibilities to get better results.

4)    The need for follow up studies, thorough evaluations and co-operation with researchers.

The Action Plan for the present work is therefore designed to contain:

 

The two main expected long term effects of the Action Plan is to:

 

1) strengthen the preventive and supportive work in municipalities, NGOs and other stake holders and

of course

2) that the risk for young to be caught in social exclusion will be reduced.

But there is also a wish that:

The keyword is sustainability.

Another focus in the Action Plan is the support of local projects that emphasis on co-operation between different professions and professionals working in different fields and especially projects that have an inter-municipal focus.

The reason is, that the sphere of activity for Swedish youth workers has changed over the years, to be broader and to include many other tasks - such as social field-work, drug- and crime prevention. But also tasks as civic education, culture, preventive health work and so on.

And the evaluations has specifically underlined the need to strengthen the co-operation between the different professions and their different spheres, especially those that have only a small part of their work that touch upon each others in this respect.

To the second aspect of the Action Plan; drug-free meeting places for young adults...

Today, many cities and municipalities in Sweden have a great number of drug-free meeting places for visitors under the age of 16. But very few have young adults as a target group.

The age group between 16 – 25 years has been identified as at risk for extensive consumption of alcohol and other drugs. There is a need – but also a demand - for open, drug-free meeting places.

Another focus in the Action Plan is the emphasis on improving the knowledge about youth policies; follow up studies, evaluation and research.

The National Board for Youth Affairs is under way to present a overview of research with national economical analysis of the effects of preventive and supportive project work - and to follow and measure the effects of  co-operation projects in action.

After one year, the National Board for Youth Affairs has presented a preliminary presentation of the achievements and impact of the Action Plan, so far.

They can see that the Action Plan has had a major impact in Swedish municipalities. More than half of all municipalities has been involved in the work carried out.

The National Board has developed contacts with new stake holders; such as representatives from social work, school, Police, co-ordinators for preventive work, NGOs, other authorities and public housing companies.

The first and most basic preliminary conclusion is that the situation for vulnerable young persons will benefit from higher competence and quality in the programmes designed by local authorities and organisations.

Special attention has been given to projects that

Regional programmes. All have started with a thorough analysis of both local and regional demands and a mapping of competencies and relevant professional groups existing in the region.

These mappings have, themselves, produced new methods that can help stake holders to take long term actions. Many new tools and methods has been the outcome, so far.

There is a quite strong tradition that we have methods to engage young in activities. But about involving young people into building strategies for preventive work the methods are developed in a lesser extent.

They can note that new methods have been tested. For example surveys, focus groups or similar, all with the intention to enhance the participation and to analyse the view of young people concerning preventive and supportive programs for young.

I wanted to have someone to comment of the Action Plan and on the philosophy behind Swedish youth policies today.

Therefore I made an interview with Hans Hansson, Head of Department for Culture and  Leisure-time Activities in the Municipality of Piteå.

Hans has worked for more than 25 years with youth work.

Piteå has a history of always being in the forefront in youth work and has been one of the Municipalities involved in the national projects. Hans says that is it worth a million to be one of them; to get access to information, consultation and networks, and to be able to give feed-back from “the floor”.

With his long experience he wants to send two general messages to politicians and colleagues:

1)    I am convinced that general policies – policies and programmes that have no specific target group - have better impact on young persons in vulnerable situations. And the fact is, that stigmatisation of target groups decreases if you use general policies.

2)    As there has been a focus of promoting young, in general, they will become more skilled and “demanding”. Adults also need to be trained at the same time. And especially in the respect to be prepared to meet these “new young” after training. Adults; teachers, head-masters are not simply used to meet skilled and “demanding” young. If they aren’t prepared, they tend to counter-strike towards the young – at least there is a risk for confrontation. Information and even training can be necessary to avoid this.

There is another thing, he says, with a more general youth-policy-approach we must also acknowledge more people/more professionals as youth workers - or at least as “semi-youth-workers”. People working in places where young people gather; cafe’s, sports-arenas, libraries, shopping-malls, schools, transport... And if we are aware of the necessity to give youth workers more training and better competence (which is our aim) then you can see were I’m heading at...

We have a huge task to do that, first of all, acknowledge them as the youth workers they are – and to make them realise that we actually see and recognise what they do in the respect of our view to youth policies. And we must let them know that we need them to become successful.

Hans is also quite critical how the national policies are set out. He says that “there is a lack of fantasy”.

 Using the terminology from sports...  We need more scouting and head-hunting. Scouting on where young people are, what they do, how they do it, what and how they think, which adults they interact with.... and we need to scout for talents...

But how do you scout from the government buildings? It seems that they scout back to remember their own experiences from the 1960-70s...

When I ask Hans to compare Swedish youth policies today, with the rest of Europe he says that it seems to be connected with “in the extent we declare our young as competent and of full-age”. We are, by far, ranked as no. 1 in that respect. That means that not all are fond of our way of working, but, as I see it, this is the only way to go. At least for us.

During these days in Leipzig it has been a pleasure and a joy to be here. I would once again like to thank you all for sharing your work, ideas and thoughts. It has been very interesting.

And thank you for listening.