This has caused me to reflect on what I believe to be the overarching agenda, and challenge, for contemporary social life: what is the relationship between young people and the various communities within which they live?
In turn, three key words emerged as particularly significant - and, no, "respect" was not one of them. These words - safety, engagement and justice - have the potential to bridge the youth/community divide, but they have rather different connotations for each side.
In the case of safety, communities are certainly anxious about protection.
But equally we should be concerned about maximising a sense of security for young people. In terms of engagement, there is a lot of rhetoric about community involvement, as we exhort a sense of civic responsibility among ordinary people. For young people, however, we should be thinking about attachment and how we ensure the provision of services to meet their needs.
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