The purpose of this paper is to identify how youth work can provide young people with long-term life skills that will be useful to them to carry on their journey throughout life. Examples will include those drawn from practice and theory in order to provide a reflection of the importance and abundance of life skills that young people gain from their voluntary participation in youth work. Such theories will include Tuckman’s group work theory, development of young people’s lives through the means of informal and non-formal learning as well as experimental learning to name a few.

Harrison and Wise (2005, p.17) explain youth work and it’s purpose to “facilitate and support young people’s growth through dependance to independence, by encouraging their personal and social development and enabling them to have a voice, influence and place in their communities and society”. In order for young people to feel active in the community and to socially develop, ideally, they would be in a comfortable environment that they feel safe in and can relax. The Youth work in Wales: Principles and purposes (2018. p.2) supports this statement by explaining “youth work in Wales is based primarily on a voluntary relationship between young people and youth workers. The Youth Service is a universal entitlement, open to all young people within the specified age range 11-25”.

There are an abundance of opportunities that are available to young people in today’s society that enables them to access a wide range of activities whether that be via youth clubs, youth groups, youth services such as outreach, and specialist projects that are targeted to help young people back in to education training or employment. The National Youth Work Strategy for Wales (2014) suggests that “all young people deserve to have a range of activities available to them which support their development needs by providing them with a safe place to relax and have fun”. 

Activities should be engaging and provided through the use of informal, non-formal and formal education. Work of high quality can play a vital role to set a benchmark and instil ambition in to young people in order to promote them to achieve their full potential. Jeffs and Smith (2010, p. 90) explain that “Activities are tools. They provide a key setting to enable the educational process of youth work to take place. They act as a catalyst to initiate and hasten young people’s development and learning”. From experience of working with young people engaging in opportunities provided through the youth service, it is evident that young people can often be less enthusiastic to engage if they are unsure of their surroundings. It is believed that if they feel safe in their environment, their willingness to seize learning opportunities rises. This empowers them to make their own decisions and it is a youth workers responsibility to reinforce the promotion of ambition. Ingram and Harris (2001 p.25) suggest that if a person feels unsafe, it can become hard to learn and that “a friendly atmosphere is one where there are many ‘put ups’ and few ‘put-downs’. Put-ups motivate people and make them feel good: put-downs de-motivate people and make them feel bad”.

Representatives of the voluntary and local authority youth work sectors in Wales (2018) highlight that “youth work provides non-formal, informal and structured educational opportunities and experiences which challenge both the institutions and young people themselves to enhance their personal, social and political development”. Experiences in working with young people on a targeted project introduces youth workers running the project opportunities to educate young people in both a non-formal and formal way, each individual’s needs may be different from the next. 
Combs, Prosser and Ahamed ((1973) Cited in  Smith (2001) define non-formal education as “any organised educational activity outside the established formal system – whether operating separately or as an important feature of some broader activity – that is intended to serve identifiable learning clienteles and learning objectives”. Activities that sit within the non-formal bracket, optimal for youth work techniques assist in the development of the young person include planned activities or sessions such as learning how to ride a bike, baking a cake or devising a gym plan in order to improve their health and well-being. This promotes the young person to engage in opportunities that have been devised putting the young person first using a person centred approach.
The National Youth Work Strategy for Wales (WG, 2014, p.6) state “informal and non-formal education in support of young people’s wider learning and development lie at the heart of the youth work. These opportunities should reflect the needs of young people and demonstrates an inclusive approach”. This supports the opportunity for wider learning which is supported by the five pillars of youth work which encourages young people to be educative, expressive, empowering, participative and educative (WG, 2014).
Youth workers have a vital impact on a young persons development throughout some of the most important years of their life, transition from childhood to adulthood, dependance to independence, Smith (2001) shares that “youth work has come to be characterized by a belief that workers should not only be approachable and friendly; but also that they should have faith in people; and be trying, themselves, to live good lives”. This puts emphasis on the importance of young people having youth workers that are reliable, trustworthy and genuine. “Good youth work provides all young people with opportunities, can support them through significant developments in their lives, assists them to understand their rights and encourages them to develop knowledge and skills”. Youth Work in Wales Review Group (2018).
Youth and community work is carried out and young people can gain an array of skills through the participation of youth work. Those that attend youth club have a safe place to go and through the provision can gain skills that they can carry through to their adult life. Youth workers offering activities in youth clubs to those from the age of eleven will promote learning via informal conversations for example, discussions around sex education or getting fitter, non-formally through planned activities and formally through the delivery of qualifications following a framework. These sessions can be delivered both on a one to one basis or within group sessions, both proving advantageous for young people based on their individual needs.
Tuckman (1965, cited in Handy, 1995, p.123) suggest that there are five stages of group work which include: forming, storming, norming, performing and more recently, adjourning. Through this process, young people can attain a number of life skills, for example, while on a planned group exercise to improve team building skills such as building a raft to get from one side of the lake to another, they will have to develop their communication skills, listening skills and display decision making skills in order to complete the task. Evidence of practice suggests that a group environment can assist in helping a young person flourish and rise to the challenge of communicating effectively. Effective communication is ‘being able to express ourselves, both verbally and non-verbally in appropriate cultures and situations. Being able to express opinions and desires, needs and fears. Also, asking for help when we need” (Murthy, 2016, p.58).

Vivekanand and Phil (2015) explain that  “Life skills are behaviours that enable individuals to adapt and deal effectively with the demands and challenges of life”. Young people will experience a variety of challenges and the relationship that they build with youth workers can help develop their skills in order to be able to face the challenges and demands put upon them on their journey through life. Jeffs and Smith (2010, p.63) express that “relationships are, and always have been, at the heart of youth work”, this is an example of how youth workers can influence young people on how to develop interpersonal skills.  
In order to develop healthy relationships it is important that we empathise with others.  Vivekanand and Phil (2015) define empathy as “ability to imagine what life is like for another person. Without empathy, our communication with others will amount to one-way traffic.” Young people can learn to empathise through activity based learning at youth clubs both through informal and non-formal conversations that are carried out. Emphasis of developing empathy is encouraged in schools and can be a useful life skill to promote, especially in schools via school based youth work sessions. Carl Rogers’ person centred approach and the interpersonal relationship in the facilitation of learning suggests that “the qualities that facilitate learning are realness in the facilitator of learning, prizing, acceptance and trust and empathetic understanding” (Smith, 2004).
When delivering targeted programmes with an aim to assist in providing opportunities to enter in to education, training or employment, the promotion of decision making is crucial in order to assist in the young person feeling empowered to make decisions in order to progress. Vivekanand and Phil (2015) states decision making “helps us to deal constructively with decisions about our lives. This can have consequences for health”. They also reiterate that decision making “can teach people how to actively make decisions about their actions in relation to healthy assessment of different options and, what effects these different decisions are likely to have”. This can also link closely with critical thinking which is defined by Murthy (2016, p.58) as is the ability to analyse information and experiences in an objective manner. Examples of this in youth work include such that involve young people in assessing their options that are available to them. Such examples include decisions on whether to enter education, training or employment or remain NEET and how to go about doing so.

In practice, youth workers come across a range of situations and issues that young people face. From observations it appears that many young people benefit from developing self awareness. This could lead to young people making more informed decisions, allows them to develop their sense of self and increases their confidence in their own decision making. Similarly, problem solving is a life skill that each person will require to use at some point in their life, such skill “enables us to deal with problems in our lives” (Murthy, 2016), these can include common problems such as issues with tenancy, facing problems at work or financial worries.
Youth Work National Occupational standards explain that values of youth work are to “facilitate the personal, social and educational development of young people”. An action in order to achieve this is to “promote young people’s self awareness, confidence and participation”. Throughout youth clubs and offers of programmes and detached youth work, resilience is promoted in almost every form of youth work. The ability to bounce back from situations that may have knocked an individual down and to develop the ability to see good in set backs, using it as a form of feedback to move forward is a skill that is one that a young person can develop through the engagement of youth work.