Reflections of a Youth Worker: Throwing a Young Person in a Lake
By: Daniel John Carter
Tags: Youth Development, Professional Development, Youth, Education, Reflections

Context: A reflection from a series I did for my studies several years ago, reviewed and published to encourage reflection on both a small and large scale within youth work. No real names or organisations have been revealed. The reflections all follow David Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle as a method for reflective practice.

On a youth exchange in what is now North Macedonia, I was the coordinator of the entire exchange as well as male group leader for the young people from North Macedonia and Wales. There was one young person from North Macedonia of whom I had worked with before on a youth exchange in Wales and had built up a good, fun working relationship. The young person was in their early teens old and quite small for his age.

I will name him Bobbi for now, Bobbi liked to try and annoy me, have me chase him, sometimes pick him up and spin him around, etc. Sometimes our interaction was quite physical, but it never dawned on me as a problem because it was a ‘play’ style of a working relationship, social norms for youth workers in North Macedonia were and still are quite different and I was regularly working alongside his older sister who was also a youth worker.

However, one day on the youth exchange the usual situation happened where Bobbi was trying to annoy me and pushing for a reaction. Bobbi was just in sandals, shorts and a t-shirt so I decided to act in kind. I chased after him, picked him up and ran to the beach where at the edge of the lake I threw him into the water. However, I slipped and fell into the water with him which caused him to scrape his arm slightly. Everybody laughed, including his sister and both of us were fine and Bobbi was happy as usual. However even if there were no issues, I was personally feeling bad and worried. Asking myself questions like “did I cross the line here?” or “does this comply with our health and safety policy?” and “am I a good youth worker?” I was completely unsure of myself and my professional nature working with young people.

Being coordinator as well as group leader for two countries on the youth exchange was a lot to take on and even though it was not by choice, it was still not the wisest of decisions. It was good to be working with young people whom I had worked with before and this helped build an excellent rapport and relationship.

The relationship was that of which I’ve seen a lot of between youth workers and the younger spectrum of youth; playful, ‘childish’, etc. Although sometimes I wondered if the interaction was too physical by the Code of Occupational Ethics for Youth Provision in Wales, the fact of the matter was it was tame by local standards of educators interacting with young people. The one thing that has always worried me about such policy development has been that we may become a nation of paranoid educators with the most basic of relationships with young people.

In my mind, I went through a mini risk assessment in my head before throwing Bobbi in the water. Firstly, I noticed the boy had nothing expensive on him such as a mobile phone and secondly, it was a hot day, and the water was warm. Finally, I knew the boy could swim, that the water was deep enough and that the bedding of the lake was soft sand. I fell in after him because he grabbed the back of my neck which I was not expecting and caught me by surprise, this meant as we fell, my weight pushed him slightly more towards to rock we fell off and he slightly scraped his arm. It was a relief to see he was ok and that everybody (including himself) found it funny and amusing. However, it did have a strong effect on me questioning my judgement. When answering said questions in my head I did feel maybe I had been too lax and crossed the line, that what had happened did not adhere to health and safety policy.

Being coordinator as well as group leader for two countries was a lot of extra work, but that did not have an impact on the situation that occurred. It is always good to work with young people you have worked with before; however, can this make one over-confident?

The relationship was one of which was developed more in a ‘play’ setting than a ‘youth work’ setting, at least by Welsh standards. Someone in my position regularly has to ask themselves as a Welsh youth worker who regularly works in North Macedonia with Macedonians as well as other countries, whose standards do I adhere to? Do I need to follow European standards or create international standards? Do we need to create separate codes and standards for individual organisations themselves?

As a youth worker with a background in outdoor pursuits, I am regularly weighing up the risk-benefit balance of an outdoor interaction. I am happy with my preliminary risk assessment on the matter as it means I was thinking carefully about my interaction with the young person. I was not what some would call ‘gung ho’ and I was undergoing ‘reflection-in-action’.

Reflection-in-action is where:

“The practitioner allows himself to experience surprise, puzzlement, or confusion in a situation which he finds uncertain or unique. He reflects on the phenomena before him, and on the prior understandings which have been implicit in his behaviour. He carries out an experiment which serves to generate both a new understanding of the phenomena and a change in the situation” — Donald Schön.

Falling in after was not what I expected as well as for the young person to be slightly injured. The fact that everyone including the young person was happy and enjoyed the situation was of no relief for me. It had me questioning myself, what happened and my professional ability. This time I was engaged in ‘reflection-on-action’:

“The practitioner allows himself to experience surprise, puzzlement, or confusion in a situation which he finds uncertain or unique. He reflects on the phenomenon before him, and on the prior understandings which have been implicit in his behaviour” — Donald Schön.



So upon reflection, I have found myself in a place where I feel I need to look for and develop on a set of youth work provision standards on an international level, at least a basic set. The line of work I am involved in is relatively new and the differences in youth work between the cultures I engage with is large. A balance of feeling professional, integrated and without compromise on the quality of my work needs to be created.

Photo by bantersnaps on Unsplash

I do not believe that working with young people you have worked with before can make you over-confident; it only helps improve the quality of the work.

Understanding of professional standards at an international level is over paramount importance, more comparison between Welsh, North Macedonian, European and International Standards needs to be made.

My background in certain areas if of a huge benefit to my work, however, I do need to watch to see if it allows me to take risks that are not needed at certain times. Understanding my reflective process if excellent for my development, nonetheless, I need to improve on my reflection-in-action.