ABSTRACT
Traditionally, youth workers in the United States have not been viewed as professionals, and youth work has not been viewed as a profession. Rather, youth workers have operated on intuition and instinct or have had training in a related profession such as social work or education. In 1999, as part of the national movement towards professionalization of the field occurring in the U.S., two local youth serving agencies partnered with the Community College of Philadelphia (CCP) to develop a credit-bearing certificate in youth work. While developing the program, CCP faculty and local youth work professionals wrestled with difficult questions such as where to house the program, who the target audience was, how to entice youth workers to participate, how to get employers to recognize the new credential and how to create degree paths for those students who chose to go beyond the certificate. As the program evolved, answers to these questions slowly emerged. When the certificate program was launched, youth work was a nascent profession without an established knowledge base of its own. There were few books written specifically for youth workers and almost no instructional materials designed for use in college level youth work classes. Faculty teaching the first youth work courses had to create lessons using a variety of sources. In the ensuing years, hundreds of students have completed youth work courses at CCP including experienced youth workers looking to develop themselves professionally, mid-life career changers, and young adults seeking to enter the field of youth work. The certificate program has served as an entry point into the field and helped attract new talent to the profession. Here I review the successes, the challenges and the lessons learned from a decade of youth worker education in Philadelphia, a large city in the northeastern United States.
