Analysis: Policy - Youth clubs - A radical approach to youth work

In the closing years of the 19th century and the opening of the 20th, you couldn't move for original thinking about how best to deliver youth work to young people. During this period, the Scouting and Guiding movements, church-based uniformed and non-uniformed groups, and the predecessor of UK Youth - the National Organisation of Girls Clubs - all came into existence.

Now we are in a similar situation with a range of visions of structures that can deliver activities to young people: Gordon Brown's vision of youth volunteering; David Cameron's Young Adult Trust (see Big Interview, p11); calls from 4Children for a programme of Sure Plus Centres that would bring together traditional youth services, health, out-of-school activities and advice services; and, of course, the suggestions put forward in the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR)'s recent review regarding compulsory youth work delivered through the extended schools agenda. The question is, what will catch the imagination of young people and meet their needs?