The practice architecture of youth work in Finland consists of socio-political condi-tions that legitimise youth work as a universal service provided by the public sector and supported by professional training at secondary and tertiary levels. In addition to this, there is a tradition of doing youth work, which is recognised as having a professional working culture. As has been stated, there is no uniformly accepted definition of youth work in Finland. Despite different views about the nature of youth work, some conceptions are shared.
Firstly, youth work is an age-specific activity – the way youth work relates to the target group is influenced by an understanding of what it means to be a young person in society. The significance of adolescence as a distinctive period in human development is recognised and the requirements of this phase in life are met by providing opportunities to engage in a peer group, have fun and be active and mature as a person and as a citizen. More recently, an awareness has developed that the traditional age group of young people from 13 to 20 should be expanded to include young adults having difficulties in making the transition to higher edu-cation and the labour market, and also younger children who could benefit from the activities of youth work.
Secondly, youth work is about creating activities for youth who engage in the process of youth work on a voluntary basis. Its voluntary nature is often thought to be an important feature of youth work: it helps to create a certain contact with young people that is not based on disciplinary power but on co-operation.
This element of youth work is one of the constitutive features of the ethos of Finnish youth work, which is also manifested for example in the ethical code of youth work.
Voluntarism influences both thinking and doing youth work.
Thirdly, youth work creates spaces where young people can co-operate and have fun with their peer group. Youth work is about facilitating group activities of the young. As has been described above, the sense of peer dynamics is at the heart of the professional know-how of youth work. This is based on a belief that the group activities of the young will most likely produce effective results, although one does not know the exact outcomes. However, work with vulnerable youth using individual methodologies will likely increase in the future.
Fourthly, the conception of youth work as education has been important in the history of Finnish youth policy. Recent theoretical and practical studies also emphasise this perspective; the discourse about youth work is thus influenced as well. This has also justified arguing for the autonomy of youth work in Finland, as an agent different from formal education or youth care.
Fifthly, youth work aims at promoting youth participation both within youth work and in society as a whole. This involves empowering youth and creating social struc-tures that help them express themselves. According to Williamson (2014), Finland is among the few countries in Europe that actually systematically bases youth work on seeing young people as a resource rather than a problem.
The mutually dependent saying, doing and relating of youth work as identified by Kemmis (2009) frame youth work practice in the Finnish context, used here to emphasise its voluntary nature, educational discourse and group work approach, which is less concerned about an individual young person at presumed risk. These five features of Finnish youth work provide relevant justifications for not becoming individual-centred or problem-oriented, even in the neo-liberal era.
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