Counsellings in the field of Professional Open Youth Work Erasmus Project

Project Title

Counsellings in the field of Professional Open Youth Work

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Quality Assurance; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; Access for disadvantaged

Project Summary

Open youth work in German-speaking countries has become very professional over the past decade. In addition to a leisure and adventure pedagogy orientation, the field has increasingly developed in the direction of social pedagogy and social work with young people.
With the increasing professionalization of the field of action and the higher qualification of the professionals, the topic of counselling in open youth work has gained greatly in importance. The demand and need for advice on the part of the young beneficiaries of the Open Youth Work (OJA) is increasing and expertise is expected from system partners and public funding bodies. Nevertheless, there are hardly any professional concepts on the types and requirements for counselling or empirical findings on counselling practices in open and low-threshold settings. There is neither a clear definition, demarcation of terms, role clarity nor quality criteria.
The project connects to the quality debates within the framework of the EU youth strategy and fulfils important demands for innovation and quality-assured youth work.
The EU Youth Strategy calls for quality-assured youth work in its focus area “empowerment”. Open youth work should deal with its competencies, framework conditions and qualifications and has to professionalize itself in terms of the right of young people to quality youth work. The European Youth Work Agenda, which is to be adopted at the end of 2020, aims to develop a European framework for improving the quality and innovation of youth work.
The planned strategic partnership between bOJA, ​​the nationwide network of open youth work in Austria, the AGJF – Arbeitsgemeinschaft Jugendfreizeitstätten, Baden-Württemberg eV and the FH Campus Wien aims to further professionalize open youth work by researching an increasingly important field of activity in order to identify perspectives for further development based on its outcome.
The project comprises three phases: In the first, the current consulting practices in OJA are systematically analysed in the form of practical case studies. Quality factors and features of these practices are identified, discussed publicly with specialists and are described in detail for the first time. In phase two, OJA practitioners in Austria and Germany implement innovative counselling practices based on the findings from phase one under professional supervision and scientific evaluation. Phase three is dedicated to the strategic discussion and positioning of the counselling practices within the OJA and the field of social work. Quality criteria are defined and widely discussed, interfaces to other fields of action are discussed and advisory skills are defined in exchange with training providers.
The project is scheduled for a period of 2.5 years.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 249705 Eur

Project Coordinator

BUNDESWEITES NETZWERK OFFENE JUGENDARBEIT & Country: AT

Project Partners

• Arbeitsgemeinschaft Jugendfreizeitstätten Baden-Württemberg e.V.
• FH-CAMPUS WIEN – VEREIN ZUR FORDERUNG DES FACHHOCHSCHUL-, ENTWICKLUNGS- UND FORSCHUNGSZENTRUMS IM SUDEN WIENS