Let's protect youth work's distinctiveness

The comment was something like that. And the twenty years is almost up. It was not a remark made by some radical trade unionist afflicted by ideological myopia nor by an aloof academic relishing the arms-length conceptual critique, but by a respected and indeed rather conventional member of Her Majesty's Inspectorate.

The death of youth work has frequently been forecast, only to rise again quite fast from the ashes. Or we discover it alive and kicking in unlikely corners of the policy world, still reasonably true to its principles, even if the higher echelons of management have rather different ideas. On the other hand, the death of a dedicated youth service in the statutory sector does appear to have finally come to pass, though we have also been there before, not least in the 1980s when there were deep anxieties about the relocation of youth work away from education usually into leisure but sometimes even marketing. Nevertheless, youth work practice was often sustained and even had a new lease of life on account of greater political attention and resource allocation.