Bill was a founder member of the Federation back in the 1980s and undertook various roles including Treasurer. He served in some capacity, including from 2002 as Life President, throughout our entire history. In many ways, he was ‘The Fed’.
In our organisation’s early years, Bill described himself as an ‘Elected Representative’ as he focused on “keeping in touch with everybody”. Certainly he taught us about the importance of communication, not just with young people, both within the detached youth work community – our Community of Practice, and without, with local people, other services and (of increasing importance as time went on) funders. In reflecting on his life in youth work for a podcast made by the Fed in 2019, Bill described this as “almost a full-time job”, a job he did willingly on top of his (other) full-time job in youth work in Liverpool for many years.
Bill was good at the practicalities too; he convinced a local youth organisation to provide office space for the Fed and that the benefits they’d get of being close to the Fed warranted the space being given for free: Bill was an exemplar of that old trope about youth workers: ‘don’t ask about resources – you are the resource’.
Later Bill helped the Fed move our operations to the offices of the National Youth Agency in Leicester, again convincing the NYA not to levy a fee. He established the same culture when, at his suggestion, the Fed established Regional Groups; in the North-west meetings circulated from one youth work venue to another always on the basis of who would provide a place to meet for free.
In today’s ‘resource poor’ context, these talents are needed more than ever; for Bill though the key point was to identify allies of youth work, whom he always maintained existed in great numbers. Doubtless this is true today; Bill would say ‘start from the attitude these supporters exist, then get out there and find them’. It was at the heart of his theory of communication.
Bill’s knowledge, skills and attitudes – he’d be the first say – were a product of the culture of youth work that first ‘targeted’ him as a potential ally in the mid 1950s. The story Bill told of his own “evolution in youth work” started with an invitation to a birthday near where he lived, on a new estate that had replaced the slums of Dingle he’d known as a child. At the party he started chatting with “someone a bit different” who, by the end of the evening, had convinced Bill to visit a one-night-a-week youth club at the local church. Again, Liverpudlian thrift was in evidence, “the coffee bar was a plank of wood laid across two beer kegs”.
Arguably this is where Bill’s evolution as a detached youth worker began. He had an intuitive sense that this “big, dusty old building” was a space young people felt at home in, and that youth workers had to both establish such ‘places’ (just as geographers differentiate between ‘space’ and ‘place’ – where the latter implies young people feel a sense of ownership). This chimes with detached work where we seek out young people’s ‘places’, wherever they may be.
In these early days, Bill’s evolutionary narrative (“one thing led to another”) meant embarking on a series of youth work training courses at Liverpool Youth Service’s training centre and when located at a holiday camp on the banks of the River Dee – where he did his Introduction to Youth Work course and gained certificates in Part-time Youth Work and Youth Leadership.
As with the slums, the church at which Bill worked as a youth worker was knocked down, but the Presbyterian committee responsible for youth work had seen enough of Bill’s good work to know it needed to continue; they could see he’d a capacity to engage productively with young people, many of whom who were associated with local gangs. The committee pledged investment in a space in a local pub, a space Bill described as “just a cellar”, once again demonstrating his intuition for turning any space into a place for young people. The committee’s enthusiasm for Bill’s working never waned and, two years, later a new, purpose-built centre was created, “a massive, superb place”. In the meantime Bill had completed his professional training, which led to an interview for full-time leader at the new club. He was a shoe-in. The centre was extremely popular, especially its disco, which attracted many of the young people on the cusp of criminality with whom Bill had developed relationships with over the years: “All the gangs used to come, and we got into them (Bill’s favoured vernacular for ‘intervention’); it was brilliant (Bill’s catchphrase)”.
Bill sought pastures new, always wanting to test himself. After 10 years as a part-time youth worker and four as a youth club leader, he joined the detached youth work team on a full-time basis, a role he held for six years. By now his concern had shifted again, to what he could do to support up-and-coming youth workers. This led to fully 24 years as a full time youth work manager with responsibility for training and development. This included the in-depth management and training of staff from three detached youth work projects across Liverpool. Bill also represented the voluntary sector on Liverpool City Council’s Community Education sub-committee, a role he described as ‘challenging’. His geniality and persuasive talents resulted in Bill gaining the respect of the committee members, “well, most of them anyway!” as he put it.
After more than half a century in youth work, Bill retired in September 2004, but not from the Federation for Detached Youth Work which, despite ill health in recent years, he continued to support actively alongside a variety of youth projects in Liverpool.
If this commentary is a form of recognition, it is modest compared to the MBE Bill was awarded in 2014 for services to young people and youth work.
In his inimitable style, and having recovered from the shock and surprise of being nominated, he initially said “I’m not going down there, I don’t want it”. But the lobbying he received, from grandchildren to youth workers and others, made him change his mind; they had made it clear to him “they would be made up” if he accepted the honour. “The fact that I had been nominated by Frankie Huskinson, a young lad I worked with years ago who had grown up and had his own children, brilliant” sealed the deal. That was Bill, always thinking about what would make others happy and what would lead to the greatest recognition of youth work in general. This he described as the “icing on the cake” of a long, long career in youth work, particularly as he had also received thank-you notes from representatives of Liverpool City Council.
In the last few years when he couldn’t get to conference he always sent his apologies and a message of regret that he couldn’t participate, especially in the ‘Starting Out in Detached Youth Work’ workshop that he convened on several occasions, a workshop in which countless new and novice detached workers learnt as much by osmosis that they were now part of a community that, as he said, understood that many “Young people need a great deal of support in these times and detached youth workers are vital within their communities in their role of contacting and being alongside young people as professional friends.”
In that 2019 podcast, Bill summed up his life in youth work as an “entangled” history of chance encounters, beginning at that birthday party, but continuing ever after.
Then Chair, Chris Charles, suggested this might sum up the role of a detached worker, of being ‘that chance’ that many young people benefit from, that chance to be present, and able, to ‘catch those moments’ when young people are most in need of support. Bill whole-heartedly agreed. Certainly, his life suggested so.
It was clear to all us in the Fed that he was proud of his successes, proud of the work we had done. And that it was, and is, important to be proud of the work that we do.
It is without doubt that this ‘rubbed off’ on all who knew and came into contact with Bill. He often said “Youth work is not so much a job as a way of life”. This rubbed off on us too.
One thing he said exploded in my mind when I read Howard Gardner et al’s book Good Work, whose sub-title is ‘When Excellence and Ethics Meet’. This could have been modelled on Bill, who said “You have to use all the skills and experience you’ve got to make the best response to young people and, understandably, if you get a good response from young people you feel good about it.” And that it was “important to feel you were worth something”. Behind this, as Gardner argues, Bill knew that ‘preparation’ was all-important and this was “hard work but very fruitful”. By preparation he meant training but also, and essentially, “all the hard work with young people, sowing the seeds for good work to happen.” A testament to Good Work if ever there was one.
In recent years Bill was unable to attend conference due to ill health. His beloved wife Jude, another passionate advocate for youth work, communicated his apologies (he was never a lover of technology, preferring handwriting and seeing people face-to-face). Jude told us that for her and Bill it was rather like the TV programme ‘The Repair Shop’:
“We need people to maintain skills and expertise in detached youth work, reaching out to young people as human beings, not as targets for the latest Government initiative.”
The Fed shares Bill and Jude’s sentiments that “sadly, the professional youth service has been eroded, as has the value of professional training in youth work”. Bill and Jude were concerned that “the development of personal, social and political education with young people was being replaced by ‘alternative’ policing and control.” Jude reminded us then of what Bill often said, that we need to “keep walking alongside young people and to share all our experiences with them and each other.”
We hear you, Bill and Jude and, in terms of the future of ‘the Fed’, we will commit to that. Thank-you.
Streaming details for the service of WILLIAM VICTOR COX at 11.20 (GMT) on Monday 23rd December at Anfield Chapel run by Peter Coyne are as below.
Watching live and on-demand
website - https://watch.obitus.com/
username - voze1763
password - 488358
This recording will be available until the end of the Monday 20 January.
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