Children and Youth Services Review 33 (2011) 534540

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Children and Youth Services Review

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Strengthening youth citizenship and social inclusion practice The Australian

case: Towards rights based and inclusive practice in services for marginalized
young people
Michael Wearing
Social Work Program, The School of Social Sciences and International Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Morven Brown Building Rm G35, University of New South Wales,
UNSW SYDNEY, NSW, 2052, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Available online 2 June 2010 This article provides a framework for understanding disadvantaged young people from a youth citizenship
perspective that includes social inclusion principles and a rights based approach to service delivery. This
Keywords: paper will argue that a rights based and inclusive practice approach can help to enable the self-condence,
Inclusive practice resilience and capacities of marginal youth in efforts to counter social exclusion. A social inclusion strategy
Intersectionality that is derived from the European Union helps frame inclusive practice and is explicitly linked to an
Homeless youth
emerging national human rights and inclusive agenda for marginalized youth in Australia. Elements of
Aboriginal youth
inclusive service practice include youth participation in services, issues of access and equity, service
responsiveness, joined-up services and user-led accountability. These elements provide a basis for bringing a
citizenship framework into services, and for professional learning and education in work with marginal
youth. A framework is suggested that seeks to recognise and respond to highly disadvantaged youth that
includes the marginalizing intersections of gender, racial and disability identities. Brief excerpts of
secondary qualitative data on two highly vulnerable youth populationshomeless youth and Aboriginal
youthare used to highlight the need for a citizenship approach that listens and responds to these vulnerable
young people in both research and practice.
Crown Copyright 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The central concern of this article is to emphasize the utility of a
subjectivist and maximising rights approach to young people in the
context of recent national social inclusion and human rights agenda.
This approach can engage with intersections of disadvantage and
strengthen the rights of marginal young people. I will focus on a
framework for practice and give some examples of how inclusive
practice can assist understanding of the rights of young people to
services. Australia's national inclusion agenda can learn from the
social inclusion strategy for vulnerable groups of the European Union
(EU, 2009). The EU's threefold strategy for vulnerable groups consists
of: increased access to mainstream services and integration, the
enforcement of legislation to overcome discrimination and the
development of targeted approaches for specic needs. The EU takes
a broad approach to youth disadvantage involving unequal opportu-
nities and the risk of social exclusion through structural lack of access,
manageability and relevance to goods and services including social
welfare services and to individual lack of resources (Walther & Pohl,
Tel.: + 61 2 9385 1880; fax: + 61 2 9662 8991.
E-mail address: M.Wearing@UNSW.EDU.AU.
2005). The ve success factors for social inclusion include: funding for
quality services and a high level workforce; coordination that balances
exible delivery between the involvement of government, youth
services and other services and young people themselves as service
users; access to inclusive and active labour market policy that reaches
the intended target groups; reexivity includes policy stakeholders
and young people themselves in richer service evaluation integrated
with everyday practice and higher levels of trust in provideruser
relationships; and nally empowerment or the motivation of young
people to engage with services and the labour market.
The approach to youth citizenship taken here will also rely upon
intersectional analysis to understand marginal youth disadvantage.
The marginalization of these disadvantaged groupings of youth in
Australia occurs in the context of broader social exclusion processes.
Child and youth poverty in Australia and the USA remains a driving
factor in creating risk, violence and abuse in these societies. When
compared to others in the OECD, both countries have relatively high
levels of poverty and income inequality (Creig, Lewins, & White,
2003). Lindsey (2009) argues that social inequalities of income and
wealth have created levels of child and youth poverty that mean those
social categories hardest hit by social inequality such as single parents
lack economic opportunities and adequate child tax credits to slow or
cut the rates of child poverty and decrease inequality. Such disparities

0190-7409/$ see front matter. Crown Copyright 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2010.05.012
 M. Wearing / Children and Youth Services Review 33 (2011) 534540
have a direct and negative impact on the lives of vulnerable and
marginal young people. The social categories homeless and Aboriginal
youth discussed here are two groupings with multiple forms or
intersectional identities of disadvantage where gender, ethnicity,
social class, disabilities, and sexuality can intersect and challenge the
efforts of inclusive service practice (Daley, Solomon, Newman, &
Mishna, 2008).
The recent Federal inquiry into a bill of rights indicates that legal,
civil and political rights, and social and economic rights that include
child and youth rights are limited in Australia and need expansion
in national policy agendas (HREOC, 2009). Australia is the only
liberal democracy without national human rights legislation. The
lack of a national rights framework and legislation is an indicator of
some major barriers to full citizenship for young people and the
protection of their rights especially for disadvantaged groups
(HREOC, 2005). Sociologists have argued that childhood (up to
12 years) and youth hood (12 to 25 years) are social and cultural
constructions that are not necessarily conned to strict age
categories (Corsaro, 2003). As in the UK, Australia confers criminal
responsibility at 810 years, school leaving age and age of consent
at 16 years, and the right to vote and drink alcohol at 18 years. This
represents the gradual and fragmented way in which youth identity
rights and citizenship are conferred (Thomson et al., 2004 p214).
Against this fragmentation, I will argue that a maximising,
humanistic and subjective view on youth citizenship helps to take
account of beliefs and values, and the unique biographies lived out
within local cultures. Such a view is seen as a necessary pre-
requisite understanding for inclusive practice (White & Wyn, 2005,
p89). The concept of youth citizenship in this sense offers a strategic
way of understanding how some legal and welfare rights are often
confusing and limiting when bestowed on young people on the path
to adulthood.
With the emergence of the post World War Two welfare state the
concept and discourse of social citizenship included basic material
rights of social wellbeing known as social rights by virtue of being a
citizen and not necessarily as a function of a person's market capacity
i.e. the right to work, the right to a decent standard of living, the right
to child care, the right to an education, public transport, and so on. In
this extended traditional view these social rights are sustained by
social services and the welfare state otherwise known as social and
economic rights or welfare rights (Sen, 2004). In the revised
subjectivist model citizens are active agents in making claims for
their rights, and their self-recognition and self-respect (Morris, 2009).
This model acknowledges young peoples' agency in establishing their
rights and social inclusivity in the community and services. Youth
cultures are primarily local in this regard and have specic social
class-based and socio-cultural resources, subjectivities, resilience and
capacities at their disposal.
2. The emerging social inclusion agenda
State Governments and now the Federal Government are working
towards a social inclusion agenda for children and youth especially
those most in need on the margins of Australian society. The federal
Social Inclusion Board's Aspirational Principles highlight the estab-
lishment of a voice and participation for the disadvantaged, building
partnerships, joined-up services, tailoring services to individual and
local needs, and planning in an evidenced based way for sustainabil-
ity. Many of these measures centre on core social welfare areas such as
housing, education, health and mental health for marginalized young
people. Social inclusion measures for these groups include transition
policies from school to work, joined-up multicultural services, and
school retention until nal year high school (Sedgewick, 2008). If this
model is applied to child and youth poverty for example the
vulnerabilities of deprivation and social exclusion are highlighted
across the life cycle and in the biographies of young people. Service
535
providers can design inclusive programs and practices that put into
place appropriate and effective service delivery based on such
principles.
The Youth Action and Policy Association of New South Wales
(YAPA) as a peak welfare group in the area has developed inclusive
models of youth services that could guide service providers. These
models can be incorporated as principles in program delivery that
address scenarios where individuals feel the need for privacy and
safety, and also socio-cultural inclusivity. Strategies and practices are
used within such organizations for the participation of young people
as clients, advocacy allies, volunteers and even as paid workers that
allows for diversity of religious, cultural and lifestyle factors (Hughes
& Wearing, 2007). This organisational inclusiveness also needs to
minimise or eliminate situations of harassment and other exclusion-
ary behaviour for such people. These are not only model policies for
direct practice in youth services but can also be designed and
implemented in other forms and settings such as anti-violence, anti-
harassment and anti-bullying programs in schools, non-prot
organizations and church groups (Daley et al., 2008).
Fig. 1 outlines different dimensions and types of practice for social
inclusion. This is partly based on Robinson's (2003) model developed
in relation to homeless people with mental health disorders and can
be applied to other marginal groups. The ow of gaining user rights in
Fig. 1 follows a logic that requires formal social support interventions
though service participation and inclusive practice. Robinson's
framework suggests that the social elements of inclusive principles
includes familial and other social supports such as those through
family members and friends, the labour market, neighbourhood, local
service organizations, and association such as sporting groups.
Economic elements include resources such as wages, savings, assets,
social security, and benets from the market economy. Institutional
elements include youth justice, youth health, criminal justice and
justice education. Territorial elements include issues of demography
(migration) and accessibility such as transport, communications, and
access to services in deprived areas. Symbolic elements include
identity issues, self-esteem, social visibility, basic abilities, interests
and motivations, and future prospects. The key types of inclusion that
social services can provide are related to the social and symbolic
resources. Social service organizations help to provide the capacities
and symbolic means to live in this economy. Material assistance and
in-kind benets to clients, their families and communities are also
provided by such services. Welfare resources such as these can
counteract or at least work against the material inequalities of a
market economy.
We can add to this framework the UK model of social integration
provided by Beirens, Hughes, Hek, and Spicer (2007), 2201) that
focuses on three elements: social bonds or connections within a
community dened by identifying with and belonging to say a
particular ethnic, national or religious group; social links such as
engagement with institutions, agencies and services, and; social
bridges dened by the two way relationship with other identity
groups to promote social cohesion. I suggest that these social
connections are as important to marginal youth as they are to other
age and cultural groups. However, these elements may not always
work in unison to gain stability and inclusion for highly vulnerable
youth. This combined inclusionintegration model is a strong
institutional approach to welfare as it includes the means to social
wellbeing in employment, housing, education and health as well as
facilitators of social and cultural recognitions such as language and
cultural knowledge and safety and stability.
Limits to this rights based model hinge on how far it can extend
welfare rights into what Sen (2004) calls the reach of public reason
or how far such discourse nds legitimacy and active agency in the
public sphere. By extending a rights based approach to working
with the life-worlds and subjective biographies/experiences of
young people an initial step is made in challenging institutional
536 M. Wearing / Children and Youth Services Review 33 (2011) 534540

Fig. 1. Social inclusion as a service framework: strategies, principles and rights. (Source: adapted from Robinson, 2003; Manning, 2004; HREOC, 2005, 2009).

practices of discrimination and cultural barriers for disadvantaged
youth. Nonetheless, examples of the extension of the discourse of
citizenship into the public sphere indicate that policy rhetoric has
not necessarily translated into change initiatives embedded in
practice. This criticism has been levelled at the policy agenda for
equal gender rights in the E U. Critics have argued that these policies
have not transformed traditional gender roles or gender inequalities
in Europe (Meier & Lombardo, 2008). Such examples heed a
warning in the Australian context that talk of rights does not
necessarily mean that policy initiatives and their practice will
encourage social inclusion.
3. Voicing marginality and framing inclusive practice
Inclusive practices can be developed in the education of service
workers and professionals in consultation with young people. This
section will provide some examples for skill development in inclusive
practice based in the experiences of youth. These are practice skills
that help to promote say service integration across areas or
specically as part of inclusive services such as between the police
and youth mental health services or schools and child welfare
agencies, and skills that assist in the political and/or social positions
of young people such as advocacy, lobbying and community
 M. Wearing / Children and Youth Services Review 33 (2011) 534540
development to help argue for government and other material
resources. Secondary qualitative data is used to illustrate the voices
or lived experience of two signicant marginal groupings and their
use of serviceshomeless youth and Aboriginal youth. The selective
use of qualitative research as a knowledge base for a subjective
inclusive practice could enhance the success factors around evalua-
tion and reexivity mentioned in the EU's denitions of inclusion
policy (Walther & Pohl, 2005). The aim of this section is to show how a
rights based and social inclusion framework can be applied in practice.
In 2006 2.7 M or 14% of the total Australians population were aged
1524 years. Recent estimates indicate that:
32.444 or 0.16% of the population was dened as homeless youth
aged 1224 and two thirds were 18 or younger though this has
decreased signicantly since 2001 (CoA, 2008, 2),
about 111,000 or 18% of the total Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander populations are young people (ABS, 2006, p2).
These groupings of young people are most at risk of marginality
due to their low social status and deprived material circumstances in
Australia.
4. Homeless youth
Homelessness is dened by several authors as a lack of belonging
rather than rooessness or nowhere to sleep (Robinson, 2003).
National youth homelessness in Australia is a signicant social
problem and recent strategies have assisted some of these youth to
nd a sustainable place to live (CoA, 2008). Nonetheless many young
people are vulnerable to homelessness especially in the transition
years towards the end of their schooling. One of the most vulnerable
populations of homeless youth is those living with mental illness. In
Robinson's (2003): 14) study of homeless people with mental
disorders in Sydney and Melbourne she found that in a survey of
165 participants many had had children before 21 years (half of the
40% of the sample who had children) and that their family of origin
was a site of aggression, extreme violence, incest and sexual abuse
which contributed to/caused mental disorder. Only 23% of the sample
was living in independent accommodation with support while the
others were living on the streets, in squats or cars (18%), boarding
houses (12%) and in supported accommodation (hostels, 40%).
The 28 in-depth life histories (many in their early-mid twenties)
also conducted for the Robinson study involved several young people
who gave several reasons for being homeless. Ben a 20 year old
Brisbane youth related his mental health and homelessness to the
death of his father:
I've never dealt with my Dad dying and I think that's why, and
I've lost my two sisters as well, I can't get myself together
because I never actually dealt with bad things that happened in
my life. I've just turned to drugs and alcohol and the streets
(Robinson, 2003: p21).
Ben had high levels of self-harm, violent and suicidal behaviours.
He wanted services and the government to look into why he developed
such behaviour especially as he believed rationally or not that these
were a reaction to lack of access rights to his two-year-old boy:
The Government's really got to look after why people they say
oh yeah suicidal people, well who cares? They've got to look at
why people are like that yesterday if I wasn't here (youth drop
in centre) I probably would have harmed myself again That's
why I'm doing it because I can't see my son and that really hurts
You give up Too hard to nd a place to stay if you are under a
certain age (Robinson, 2003, p22).
This quote reveals the high level, multiple and complex needs that
young homeless people such as Ben have. Ben had started on this
537
spiral into deep poverty and homelessness at 11 years of age. He had
limited access to housing, mental health services and a case manager.
His problems with physical health needs and child access show how
his exclusion is partly created by geographic or territorial distance. In
Ben's case and those with similar life circumstances could be used
around his capacities to seek out help and engage with certain
workers depending on his perception of a match to the service.
Symbolic, territorial and social inclusions can then combine through
the matching of services to need.
Amongst the chaos and instability of living with a mental illness,
and without shelter and deprived material circumstances there was a
glimmer of hope amongst the study's participants. Tara a 23 year old
with multiple disorders including schizophrenia (Robinson, 2003
pp278) said: I want stability. I felt like it hasn't been normal for the
last couple of years, just moving and never liking it there. Issues such
as resilience and adequate housing are raised by this subjective plea
for stable housing and the right to shelter. The study argued for
supported and community integrated housing with rent adjustment
to their income to help prevent such iterative homelessness notably
for young people. One of the respondents put it this way: if you don't
have a safe place to go and services can't come to you if you don't
have a home base (Robinson, 2003: 40). Social inclusion requires
access to services within a sense of place that local geographic and
cultural communities can give to a young person's identity.
Inclusive practice that includes both the material and symbolic
means of social exclusion is necessary to ensure social connectedness
and cohesion for particular groups. Young people still at school (under
18 years) who live away from home can have some of the greatest
nancial difculties and need as well as signicant symbolic
exclusion:
You don't have parents to pay for excursions, you don't have
parents to buy books for you, you don't have parents there to buy
clothes, shoes.
All I really need is the basics, somewhere to stay, a meal and a
way to get through school. That's all I'd be happy with (Ball, 2007
p45).
This illustrates both the potential stigma of youth poverty and the
lived experience of material deprivation. The life-worlds of these
youth are difcult yet resilient and operate at the basic level of
survival and self-reliance because of their poverty (Samuels & Pryce,
2008). Youth work and youth programs can be designed with
inclusive objectives so as to generate self-respect and skill capacities
in young people. Inclusive practice here requires services with highly
developed engagement and interpersonal skill standards in order to
sustain longer term contact with homeless youth, their sub-groups
and communities. We can understand that the rights of these young
people such as the right to a decent standard of living are contravened
by such meager income provision. The income support benet, Youth
Allowance, is provided to low-income youth and is more than 10%
below the Australian poverty line. This deeply experienced poverty
means that the social bonds, links and bridges to formal and informal
social supports for homeless youth are fragmented. Street level
services can provide models and mentors for inclusive practice that
help to connect such youth to wider social networks and bonds.
5. Aboriginal youth
Aboriginal youth are the most social disadvantaged group of young
people in Australia and signicantly over-represented as users of
social welfare. Since White settlement in 1788 Aboriginal people as
the original owners of the land have suffered colonization, margin-
alization and dispossession, that today are reected in neo-colonial
policy interventions. It is essential to challenge neo-colonial and non-
indigenous knowledge about appropriate interventions for Aboriginal
538 M. Wearing / Children and Youth Services Review 33 (2011) 534540
communities and life-cycle groupings and this can in part be done
through decolonised indigenous knowledge that informs inclusive
practice. Aboriginal children and young people are over-represented
in the child protection system in Australia, juvenile justice and other
welfare areas such as social housing. For example, estimates are that
indigenous children and youth comprise 22% of OOHC but are only
3.6% of young people and children in Australia (Green & Baldry, 2009,
p29). The depth of this disadvantage and exclusion can also be
illustrated through opportunities that formal education provides in
gaining employment and related social benets: for example,
completing year 10 or 11 (of high school at ages 16 and 17 years)
increases an Aboriginal person's chance of employment by 40%
(Vinson, 2009, p3). Employment also decreases the risk of poverty
and associated negative impacts on crime, health and social status.
These are life changing objectives whereby homeless and Aboriginal
youth can start to break out of cycles of high-risk behaviours and their
negative impact.
Linking the rights of Aboriginal youth to international or even
national conventions and legislation is clearly a difcult problem if
these are not supported by both services and constitutional-legislative
commitments. The international conventions on indigenous people
include recognition of land, culture and inclusion. Service practice in
Australia can clearly contravene such rights. One clear example of this
contravention of rights and the implementation of neo-colonial policy
is the Northern Territory (NT) interventions implemented at the end
of the conservative Howard Government in 2007. These federal and
territory interventions included government takeovers of Aboriginal
town camps, lack of consultation, appropriate housing stock and
police powers over Aboriginal people. In this case remote and regional
Aboriginal communities were not consulted and did not participate in
the decision making around these interventions. Interventions that
under the Rudd Government include the imposition of a discrimina-
tory basics card to allocate material benets such as food and
prohibit alcohol rather than a cash benet that other Australian
citizens who are Centrelink beneciaries receive (ANTaR, 2009).
Paradoxically the impact of this intervention represents largely
exclusion practices that are in direct contradiction to the current
inclusion agenda of the federal Government.
Studies of those most at risk amongst Aboriginal youth relate to
homelessness. Allwood (2001, p3) found in her in-depth study of 19
Aboriginal Homeless youth in Adelaide that consistent themes came
out in the life stories of these youth. Two pathways into Aboriginal
youth instability and homelessness were identied by Allwood:
disruption of the parent/child or care-giving relationship at an early
age and/or through crises and conict in the early teenage years. All
related to poor or difcult interactions with services throughout their
childhood or as young people. Aboriginal youth homelessness
represents a specic case of social exclusion and disadvantage. This
Adelaide study found that those Aboriginal youth who participated
could all be dened as homeless despite some public arguments that
they are homeless because they are a highly mobile population. There
is a need in such work for interagency or joined up agency
collaboration between schools, health centres and youth centres for
such youth. Studies have shown that changing program curriculum to
include appropriate cultural, music and creative arts programs as well
as a focus on indigenous languages have had impressive results with
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth and with other youth in
terms of sexual health (Philip et al., 2006; Sutherland, 2003).
Several writers on social inclusion for Aboriginal youth have
emphasised the importance of school retention and education as
increasing the life chances and opportunities available to this group.
Sutherland (2003) for example recommended separate Aboriginal
Schools in cities as well as regional areas to encourage social
inclusion. This follows trends in other First Nation communities in
Canada and the USA where social inclusion strategies combine First
Nation schools with other culturally appropriate and sensitive
services. At the centre of these inclusive strategies and programs is
a pride in cultural identity. There is great capacity in the cultural arts
and elsewhere to uphold strong cultural and decolonised Aboriginal
youth identities as the young GreekAustralian/Aboriginal Hip Hop
artist known as Little G makes clear her sense of identication and
place:
I come from the clan of the Yorta Yorta nation, And I let people
know I'm a fascination This is my place, A race they'll have to
face (Stavrias, 2005, p47).
There are also many avenues for participation and expression of
identity that social services can link up with in programs and changing
practice with Aboriginal youth. Music, food, sport and other activities
can provide means to build cultural and social capitals in remote and
rural communities. Many youth services in Australia include such
innovative programs incorporating the views and decision making of
young people themselves. These innovations appear to have been
ignored in current Government thinking around inclusion and the
rights of Aboriginal youth especially in the NT interventions.
These two examples of marginal youth demonstrate the possibil-
ities for inclusive practice that can be framed within an understanding
of the everyday worlds of young people and their interaction with
services. Social inclusion practice with these young people needs to be
grounded in both structural and individual measures that are
encouraged by service cultures otherwise such youth are vulnerable
to being blamed and criminalized for their actions or the situations
they nd themselves in. Social justice and the rights of young people
require a contextual understanding unencumbered by the prejudicial
stereotypes or discriminatory practices of neo-colonialism in service
delivery.
6. Implications for service practice and education
In framing inclusive practice existing practice literature across
youth work and social work provides a useful guide. Existing service
arrangements and practice have remained non-inclusive of the
intersectional disadvantages experienced by many of these young
people. Insensitive attitudes of services to cultural differences are a
signicant component of non-inclusive services notably those that
engage with Aboriginal and with homeless youth. The extent to which
such non-inclusive practices are institutionalised is difcult to
measure or quantify though several efforts have been made (AHREOC,
2005). Nonetheless, given the depth of structural disadvantage and
the youth poverty rate in Australia there is a need for more inclusive
regimes in micro-service engagement with vulnerable groupings.
A holistic and three dimensional approach to rights can incorpo-
rate a subjective view on the experiences and biographies of youth
themselves (Ife, 2008). These three dimensions involve: rst gener-
ation rights civil and political rights supported by human rights
work eg advocacy and other campaign work; second generation
rights economic, social and cultural rights eg supported by
individual and group work programs, and organisational capacities;
and third generation rights collective rights such as economic
development, a cohesive society and environmental rights to clean air
and water eg community development and user participation in
programs. This rights based approach is linked to four inclusive
practice areas as outlined in Fig. 2 as suggestive of a mapping of the
skills and dispositions of workers in the area. Social work and youth
work in Western countries have tended to adopt the status quo of
liberal individualism and so prioritise the individualising and
legalistic components of rst and second generation rights at the
cost of the more collective and socially integrative rights of the third
generation. Fig. 2 offers a holistic or generic approach to practice that
can help counter this individualising of rights.
 M. Wearing / Children and Youth Services Review 33 (2011) 534540
Fig. 2. Inclusive practice skills and practice dispositions. (Sources: White & Wyn, 2005 in Gronda, 2009, pp1245).
Central to rst generation rights work in community development
is working out strategies to address issues and to challenge existing
social arrangements and developing advocacy practices on behalf of
young people. Strategies involve processes, activities and practices
that arise from specic aims and objectives and are underpinned by
values and principles. Issues of social justice, respect and mutual
cooperation remain central organising principles to challenge under-
lying issues for youth such as substance abuse, violence and social
alienation. Further services need to demonstrate effectiveness in
adopting broader forms of advocacy and activism on issues. Recent
campaigns in Australia on youth depression, youth anti-violence, and
drug and alcohol use provide useful examples for educators and
practitioners in how to run a successful campaign (YAPA, 2008).
There are several dimensions and levels of practice and education
for second generational rights that also require brief consideration.
Individual, group and organisational practices including family-
oriented practice such as family therapy are a core component of
youth and social work practice education. Skilled case work is
required, for example, in the area of cross cultural mental health
work. This is particularly relevant for work with intersectional racial
539
and gender disadvantages where such identity issues are raised by
language and cultural differences in interaction between worker and
young people (Briggs, 2004). Beyond the template of these more
conventional areas, critical rights based and inclusive practice
approaches provide a challenging second generation approach that
uses direct action and policy, program and research work. Such a
framework can give learning depth in social work and youth work
education on young people. Individual work can include counselling
and case management issues for young people depending on the
service. These micro skills require specic training and experience,
and can be acquired through careful reection and practice in the
area.
The third generation of rights based work would encompass
community development and social development practices (Ife, 2008,
4447). There are a broad range of actions that can be drawn upon to
deliver effective social activism and change with examples such as
health education and promotion on cancer issues, young women's
sexual health, combating child abuse and local politics around
recreation facilities for young people. Using social activism strategies
such as forming a community action group and developing a single
540 M. Wearing / Children and Youth Services Review 33 (2011) 534540
issue protest can initiate longer term community and social
development strategy around youth rights. At a societal level, there
is a further need here to educate professional and non-professional
service workers in social activism around multiple or intersectional
disadvantage in Australia.
The emerging Australian Government agendas of human rights
and social inclusion are currently in their infancy. These agendas
underpin the urgency for services to develop explicit frameworks on
inclusive practice for marginal and excluded young people. I have
suggested that the lived experience of these youth and their
heterogeneous identities need to be central to any strategic approach
to citizenship undertaken. In particular, caution should be exercised
that Westernised and adult-centric ideas for practice are not imposed
on vulnerable youth identities. The strengthening of youth citizenship
in programs and practice for disadvantaged youth needs to embrace
inclusive principles such as user-led, decolonized and culturally
appropriate services. Such services can also be underpinned by youth
participation where decision making on strategic planning, programs
and resources allocation can be a shared process between youth and
adults.
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