It’s not often you get consensus when you ask questions at a team away day. In fact, that’s exactly what you don’t want: it’s the opportunity to dig into different ideas and ways of working that don’t always have time to surface during the day-to-day. It’s one part of the job that makes me really smile: to see a room full of youth work specialists and our wider business team sparking off each other with new thoughts and ways to improve, getting a sense of what’s already working well and what could work better, hearing the buzz in the room as people get a chance to talk with colleagues in a very different way.
We took some team time together recently to work on some key questions to help us agree our big goals and priorities together. Among them was a sense-check on our values and ways of working: The Hive way of doing things. These five ways of working are shared across the whole Onside network and are at the heart of our approach to youth work:
They’re all critical elements of a successful team. But when we put all of them up on the walls in different places in the room, and asked everyone to move to the value with which they connected most strongly, it was beautiful to see every single member of our team walk over to ‘Young people first’.
Unsurprising, perhaps, given what we do here at The Hive: but still a very special moment to see that the motivation for every single member of this team, whatever their role and whether they work on session, in the kitchen, on our facilities, finance or support services, is that young people lead our work and are our reason to be here.
That’s powerful. Many organisations have to invest a lot of time to achieve that kind of clarity!
Reflecting a bit more widely, I suspect that if you repeated that same exercise out in our community, it’s very possible you might get the same response. We know from the wider Hive family of supporters, funders, donors, patrons, corporate partners and champions that our community is really invested in the evidence that if we invest in young people and in quality youth work now – making sure they’ve got fantastic places to go, things to do and trusted people to talk to when they need it – we’ll help to build the healthier, happier families; the skilled workforce; the stronger community; and the more resilient individuals of Wirral’s future.
And at a time of lots of thinking about the future, youth work is a key part of the puzzle: given the complexity of the challenges young people face today; the particular pressures weighing down on young people living in poverty; young people who’ve had adverse childhood experiences or who have additional needs which impact every single part of their lives, it’s more important than ever to maximise reach for the expertise of local youth workers who really understand them as individuals, and the use of spaces dedicated to young people.
It’s why The Hive Youth Zone is among the signatories of the Children at the Table campaign, which brings together evidence and data from organisations right across the country – highlighting the need for the voices of young people to be front and centre of government plans. It was fantastic to see one of our young ambassadors, George, joining a special session with the campaign in parliament last month, taking part in a Q&A and amplifying the voices of Wirral’s young people in that process.
If we put young people first – both here at The Hive and more widely – the rest, as they, will follow. By doing so, we will deliver what we do with excellence, ambition, collaboration and respect.
Click below to read more evidence from The Hive and from other OnSide Youth Zones on why youth work is so important – and why that value of ‘young people first’ is the one we’re proud to call our priority.
Jayne Wilson is The Hive’s CEO.
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