Briefing: Structured clubs bring better outcomes

So this is the "youth clubs are bad for you" research? Stop right there. The crucial message that we should be able to focus on, and one that res-earchers themselves appear happy to back, is that bad youth clubs are bad and good youth clubs are better - so let's invest to make all youth clubs as good as possible.

So they are not bad for you then? You are thinking like a newspaper headline writer. Look, the story here is that a 2005 research report looked into the adult outcomes of a cohort of some 17,000 born in 1970 and who attended youth clubs in the mid-1980s. It was picked up by the press who seemed to land on a simplistic, blanket message that youth clubs somehow cause bad outcomes - such as educational failure, a propensity to smoke and likelihood of getting pregnant. Youth work advocates obviously got a bit defensive - pointing out among other things that the data was 20 years old and, of course, youth clubs are much better now.