Strengthening youth citizenship and social inclusion practice — The Australian case: Towards rights based and inclusive practice in services for marginalized young people Michael Wearing ⁎ Social Work Program, The School of Social Sciences and International Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Morven Brown Building Rm G35, University of New South Wales, UNSW SYDNEY, NSW, 2052, Australia abstract article info Available online 2 June 2010 Keywords: Inclusive practice Intersectionality Homeless youth Aboriginal youth This article provides a framework for understanding disadvantaged young people from a youth citizenship perspective that includes social inclusion principles and a rights based approach to service delivery. This paper will argue that a rights based and inclusive practice approach can help to enable the self-confidence, resilience and capacities of marginal youth in efforts to counter social exclusion. A social inclusion strategy that is derived from the European Union helps frame inclusive practice and is explicitly linked to an emerging national human rights and inclusive agenda for marginalized youth in Australia. Elements of inclusive service practice include youth participation in services, issues of access and equity, service responsiveness, joined-up services and user-led accountability. These elements provide a basis for bringing a citizenship framework into services, and for professional learning and education in work with marginal youth. A framework is suggested that seeks to recognise and respond to highly disadvantaged youth that includes the marginalizing ‘intersections’ of gender, racial and disability identities. Brief excerpts of secondary qualitative data on two highly vulnerable youth populations–homeless youth and Aboriginal youth–are used to highlight the need for a citizenship approach that listens and responds to these vulnerable young people in both research and practice. Crown Copyright © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The central concern of this article is to emphasize the utility of ‘a subjectivist and maximising rights approach’ to young people in the context of recent national social inclusion and human rights agenda. This approach can engage with intersections of disadvantage and strengthen the rights of marginal young people. I will focus on a framework for practice and give some examples of how inclusive practice can assist understanding of the rights of young people to services. Australia's national inclusion agenda can learn from the social inclusion strategy for vulnerable groups of the European Union (EU, 2009). The EU's threefold strategy for vulnerable groups consists of: increased access to mainstream services and integration, the enforcement of legislation to overcome discrimination and the development of targeted approaches for specific needs. The EU takes a broad approach to youth disadvantage involving ‘unequal opportu- nities’ and the risk of social exclusion through structural lack of access, manageability and relevance to goods and services including social welfare services and to individual lack of resources (Walther & Pohl, 2005). The five success factors for social inclusion include: funding for quality services and a high level workforce; coordination that balances flexible delivery between the involvement of government, youth services and other services and young people themselves as service users; access to inclusive and active labour market policy that reaches the intended target groups; reflexivity includes policy stakeholders and young people themselves in richer service evaluation integrated with everyday practice and higher levels of trust in provider–user relationships; and finally empowerment or the motivation of young people to engage with services and the labour market. The approach to youth citizenship taken here will also rely upon intersectional analysis to understand marginal youth disadvantage. The marginalization of these disadvantaged groupings of youth in Australia occurs in the context of broader social exclusion processes. Child and youth poverty in Australia and the USA remains a driving factor in creating risk, violence and abuse in these societies. When compared to others in the OECD, both countries have relatively high levels of poverty and income inequality (Creig, Lewins, & White, 2003). Lindsey (2009) argues that social inequalities of income and wealth have created levels of child and youth poverty that mean those social categories hardest hit by social inequality such as single parents lack economic opportunities and adequate child tax credits to slow or cut the rates of child poverty and decrease inequality. Such disparities Children and Youth Services Review 33 (2011) 534–540 ⁎ Tel.: +61 2 9385 1880; fax: +61 2 9662 8991. E-mail address: M.Wearing@UNSW.EDU.AU. 0190-7409/$ – see front matter. Crown Copyright © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2010.05.012 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Children and Youth Services Review journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/childyouth