We need some historical reminders, which anyone can easily find in Tony Jeffs' Young People and the Youth Service, a text revisited in Young People Now last year (YPN, 26 November-2 December 2003, p18). Jeffs points out that early youth work was about "rescue". Its counterpart today would be called "social inclusion". Later, in the inter-war years, youth work was dominated by concerns about character building, within which physical fitness was paramount.
Can we not detect parallels with contemporary concerns about health promotion?
And during the Second World War the two Government circulars that cemented a future for the youth service were concerned with health, given the lack of fitness among recruits to the military services, and with crime resulting from an absence of parental discipline because fathers were at war. If we look at many voluntary youth organisations, we see preoccupations with physical activity, skills, service and adventure: the four pillars of Outward Bound and the framework for The Duke of Edinburgh's Award.
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