In this paper an evaluation study of a public programme that financed a regional network of 157 youth centres in the South of Italy was presented. A theory-based evaluation model was adopted to explore the causal links between different kind of participation experiences. Evaluation questions focused on three main issues: the empowerment perception of the team during the management of the centres; the empowering effect of participation in the organization of the youth centre; and the decision making abilities of the young people involved. After an exploratory study, an on-line structured questionnaire has been administered to all the centres. New youth centres appear as striving to become sustainable enterprises. However, there is a common difficulty to integrate day to day management and sustainability strategies. This difficulty is lower when project leaders participated in the design of the centres together with other young people. Thus, results confirmed that participation in the design was an empowering experience. However, this study warns against some unwanted effects of the participation. For instance, participation processes was a form of decorative consultation for half of the cases. Therefore, empirical evidence suggests further research to focus on the creation of stable participation structures inside the centres to avoid the risk of participation processes without a real effect on decisions.

The validation of non-formal and informal learning has been part of the European Union political agenda since 2001. The paper presents the results of an action-research project about how the University can reconcile considerations of the strategic value of non-formal and informal knowledge in the perspective of lifelong learning. Specifically, the paper focuses on the Lifelong Learning Centre provided by the University of Bari (Italy) to migrant people and funded by the European Fund for the Integration of non-EU immigrants (EIF).. The paper analyses assumptions, approach, outputs and outcomes of the CAP centre conceived as a form of career guidance to help immigrants to actively shape their life course.

L’articolo propone un’analisi interpretativa delle note di ricerca prodotte durante un periodo di studio in Inghilterra. Obiettivo dello studio è stato analizzare le politiche pubbliche di youth work, con particolare attenzione a quelle che interessavano gli spazi giovanili (centre-based youth work). In Italia, come è noto, è da sempre mancata una regolamentazione pubblica della figura professionale specifica dell’educatore giovanile e degli spazi giovanili. Diversamente che in Italia, l’Inghilterra ha alle spalle una consolidata tradizione di gestione diretta dei centri giovanili da parte degli enti pubblici locali. A partire dal 1960, infatti, le raccomandazioni del rapporto Albermale sulla riforma dei Servizi Giovani avviarono un processo di crescente responsabilizzazione degli enti locali sia nella creazione di nuovi centri giovanili, sia nell’assunzione a tempo pieno di youth worker. In meno di dieci anni, lo Stato investì 28 milioni di sterline in 3.000 progetti di nuovi centri giovanili . Nello stesso periodo, inoltre, si inizia a regolamentare la specifica figura professionale dello youth worker sia in termini di codice deontologico, sia rispetto alle abilità e competenze da acquisire attraverso percorsi formativi riconosciuti dallo Stato (anche in ambito universitario). La ricerca svolta in Inghilterra si è articolata in 8 case study di centri giovanili, con un focus sui seguenti temi-chiave: la partecipazione dei giovani nelle decisioni sulla gestione del centro; il modo in cui si incoraggiavano i giovani a presentare idee ed essere direttamente responsabili di progetti; l’integrazione di finalità educative, evasive e di carriera nelle attività creative praticate e praticabili; l’offerta di risorse utilizzabili in modo autonomo dai giovani (es. spazi, attrezzature ecc.); le strategie adottate dal centro per diventare meno dipendenti dal sostegno pubblico (es. fundraising, sviluppo di servizi a pagamento ecc.). Gli studi di caso sono stati condotti attraverso interviste ai manager dei centri e sulla base dell’analisi documentale di documenti di programma e report sulle attività svolte.

The current formulation of European Union youth policy is not sufficient for a full understanding of what distinguishes youth work from other services or educational practice for young people. Youth work in Europe has a diverse range of fields, goals, and methods of intervention. Such diversification is considered one of the strengths of youth work, inasmuch as it is associated with its ability to adapt to the variety of problems it faces. Such flexibility is, however, likely to generate vagueness in terms of the knowledge of the special contribution expected from youth work and its execution. As a contribution to lead evaluation research to produce empirical evidence about the key-features of youth work, a theoretical framework is presented in this paper that help to identify the peculiar expected outcomes of youth work as well as those mechanisms able to generate them. Specifically, this paper focused on the ability of youth work to affect a more equal distribution of personal development opportunities for the young outside the formal education. For this purpose, sociological theories on non-formal education, educational inequalities and youth participation have been intertwined with psychological research on transition from adolescence to adulthood and with the theory of educational accompaniment in social pedagogy.

his chapter addresses the history of youth work and social work in Italy in the period from 1900 until today. In this historical reconstruction we highlight the alternating connections and disconnections between youth work and social work practices. In the early 20th century a state of separation existed between control-oriented social work and youth work that functioned within the education system for those from bourgeois families. Both practices would have had strong co-operation from the Fascist regime oriented towards the implementation of a totalitarian political and social system. After the Second World War, a new disconnection occurred between institutionalised social work based on the case management of youth problems on one side, and a more informal youth work practice featuring a community approach on the other. From the 1980s until today, finally, youth work and social work seem to be looking with increasing interest at a new potentiality of co-operation, that of empowering young people as a resource for society by helping them to face the personal, social and structural barriers that impede their potential. The analysis takes into account the different representations of young people throughout the evolution of the practice of youth work and social work in Italy in the time frame considered. The chapter also draws attention to the main drivers that motivated the development of the profession of social work recognised by the state, as well as the difficulties of the development of a professional and institutional foundation of youth work in the Italian context.

This study aimed at evaluating informal and non-formal learning in youth centres located in the South of Italy and funded by a regional policy called “Bollenti Spiriti”. Particularly, the evaluation purpose was to provide empirical evidence about how non-formal learning affect young people’s agency. The research involved all the young people attending all the non-formal education courses occurred in the youth centres between January and May 2011 (159 young people in 23 training courses of 10 youth centres). A single group design has been adopted and a self-administered paper questionnaire has been administered at the beginning of the training programmes, at the end and 6 months later. For the case studies included in this research, participation in non-formal and informal education seems associated with an agency improvement in half of the young participants. The research results also suggest that young people’s agency is associated with an autonomy supportive learning.