In the context of European youth policies, Youth Work experiences have taken on a central and increasingly better defined dimension in recent years. Faced with the difficulties of arriving at univocal and shared definitions in the various European countries, which differ in history, culture, legislation and organizational aspects, the idea is gaining ground that these differences represent an asset rather than an obstacle to knowledge and implementation . From comparison and exchange, stimuli can therefore arise for an increasingly broader debate and for the transmission of knowledge, with the aim of deepening skills in the various fields of possible application of Youth Work.
Download the European report on the skills of youth workers and the needs of young people
In the Project Youth Worker Promoting Mental Health (YouProMe), in particular, the objective is to focus on the potential of Youth Work in the field of young people's mental health. Youth distress is a topic with many facets: from various problems linked to contextual, socio-economic and cultural situations, to those that originate more specifically from the onset of a psychiatric pathology. Often these problems converge in the single individual and their addition constitutes a challenge for the agencies that society delegates to deal with them: schools and social and health services. Mental distress has its origins and development in youth. Late or partial interventions in this field risk, as is known, producing negative consequences for the rest of life. On the other hand, educational and socio-health institutions show their limits in the face of this mandate, as their field of action often remains confined within the spatial and relational perimeters of their institutional structures, remaining far from natural places for young people to live, where problems manifest themselves and produce their effects; but also where resources, opportunities, strengths can be grasped, recognized and supported, and where emotional and social skills can consolidate and constitute a barrier to the risk of isolation and drop-out.
This is a field, therefore, in which the role of the youth worker can be crucial, in collaboration with other agencies such as schools and mental health services.
The YOUPROME project it therefore combines the interest in Youth Work and the field of mental health with the primary objective of deepening the skills and methods of intervention of this figure so as to better identify its specific identity and the necessary "tool bag". As the first output of the project, a research report was published which represents the first of a series of tools/tools that the project makes available to Youth Workers who intend to support young people who experience hardship.
