Though hardly marked by coherence, New Labour's social policy has been underpinned by a critical view of the welfare state. Services have been judged cumbersome and fragmented, management inefficient, actual provision determined too much by providers' priorities rather than, as Tony Blair himself put it, "around the user".
To achieve the desired reforms, New Labour has embarked on (repeated) surges of organisational restructuring. For youth work, change has been driven, in part, by policy statements such as Transforming Youth Work and Resourcing Excellent Youth Services, which have focused on the service itself.
Because a key overall aim has been to 'join up' services, the greatest impact has come through 'modernising' other provision. This led to the creation of Connexions to smooth the school-to-work transition and, when this was deemed a failure, the move to fully integrate children's services through the proposals laid out in Every Child Matters and its offspring Youth Matters.
Other Labour aims for improving welfare state delivery have also been applied to the youth service. In the expectation that public services would operate more like private businesses, youth services were set targets for things such as reach, contact and outcomes. Following the drive to introduce market principles and extend consumer choice, an attempt was made to put money in young people's pockets through an opportunity card, then to commission more services to voluntary and private-sector providers.
This one-shape-fits-all approach to public services has not served the youth service or youth work well. Council-run youth services are being replaced by integrated youth support and development teams. Youth work as a distinctive informal practice is being collapsed into 'positive activities' structured according to adult preconceptions.
The question now is how, given the present policies, can workers go on liberating youth work's huge potential for contributing to young people's stimulation, development and fun?
- Bernard Davies is a freelance consultant and trainer. Volume 3 of his History of the Youth Service in England, The New Labour Years, is available from The National Youth Agency. www.nya.org.uk.
