Cardiff Youth Service offer a range of exciting and diverse placements for students attending Youth & Community Work courses from Level 2 through to Level 7. All placements are structured around the National Occupational Standards and meet the requirements of the relevant course.
Placement opportunities are offered across all Youth Service Teams. A carousel-style placement is encouraged to enable students the opportunity to gain experience in a variety of youth work settings, using different types of youth work delivery with diverse groups of young people.
Every placement is bespoke to the individual student, and support is provided in the form of mentoring and supervision for the duration of the placement. This supportive and nurturing environment encourages critical analysis, reflection and personal development of every student.
Within each placement, students will experience the day-to-day challenges of becoming an effective youth worker in a community setting. They will gain an understanding of the operational logistics of managing a provision, including a youth centre, an inclusive provision or a specialist youth work team. Each student will experience working within a staff team and delivering a dynamic programme of activities to young people, with the aim to engage young people in positive activities that promote life skills, healthy relationships and personal expression and development within their community/provision. Students are encouraged to use a person-centred approach to allow young people to explore their individual barriers to engagement and/or progression.
Current activity is restricted to online engagement, street-based youth work/local wellbeing walks, planned 1-1 sessions and the development of small controlled group delivery within the community. Teams are now developing exciting and innovative projects/sessions to engage young people in new ways e.g. online youth clubs and social media.
Students will be expected to commit to working set evenings every week. This will ensure consistency in the support for young people. For students at a higher level, there is the opportunity to be involved in the development/creation of projects with young people, as well as to evaluate group/individual progress with a view to informing future practice.