Opinion: Unsung youth work hero deserves praise

Both of those roles were symptomatic of Alun's political career and ambition, as was his last position as minister for industry and the regions. But his heart lay in youth work. There are not so many former youth workers who achieve significant national political prominence and, although Alun didn't take the glory and usually didn't get credit, he brought to politics many ideas that were first forged as a practitioner in youth and community work.

Three in particular come to mind. I have little doubt that the statutory youth offending teams founded in youth justice reforms owe more than a little to Alun's work in the 1970s and 1980s when, quite atypically for the time, he brought together practitioners at the local level from agencies such as social services, probation, police, housing, adult education and the Church. I am also fairly convinced that the sound bite "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime", though always attributed to Tony Blair, probably derived from Alun's philosophy, for in those days not only was he a youth worker but a juvenile court magistrate, and sought to hold young people responsible as well as to respond to their needs. And I know Alun was a prominent champion of the social inclusion agenda and an advocate of the focus of the Social Exclusion Unit - school exclusion, homelessness, teenage pregnancy, "NEETs" and the Policy Action Team 12 report on young people - during its first few years.