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#BERA_Youthwork

Online event – pre-registration essential

A market-oriented rationality underpins the growing emphasis on outcomes, impact measurement and ‘value for money’ in youth services (de St Croix, McGimpsey and Owens, 2019). This webinar brings together four studies from scholars in the UK, Ireland and USA, employing theoretical, discourse analytical and empirical resources to discuss how evaluation and impact measurement act as and through policy to reconfigure youth work practice.

The central themes of the webinar will be introduced by a paper from Tania de St Croix (Kings College London) exploring the neoliberal policy discourse of youth impact, circulated by influential actors in transnational networks. This will be followed by papers on:

• ‘Value for Money’ (Sinead McMahon, Limerick Institute of Technology) setting out reforms of youth work in Ireland through economic evaluation that narrowed the value of youth to quantified unit cost calculations
• Race and the Politics of Community-based Youth Work (Bianca Baldridge, University of Madison Wisconsin) explores the use of standardized measures of success in afterschool programmes that support Black youth in the USA. The paper argues these measures undermine efforts to expose youth of colour to identity work and critical reflection on the worlds they navigate.
• The everyday and the remarkable (Louise Doherty, Kings College London) argues accountability mechanisms fail to promote the impact emerging from ‘everyday’ youth work practice
• Messy play in clean numbers (Deirdre Duffy, Manchester Metropolitan University) explores possibilities for reclaiming evaluation by using theories of critical numeracy to subvert, play with, and make numbers messy.
  

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