The National Youth Agency: Comment - Youth work as art

I recently had a strange dream. The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) had released a report called Supporting Excellence in Youth Work: From Measurement to Judgement - and a senior minister had greeted it with the words: "It is time to trust our youth workers. The move from measurement to judgment which (the report) suggests is a vital one". In his foreword, the report's author boldly asserted: "The driver must be not the achievement of simplistic targets". He then went on to define "risk-taking" as "about experimentation and pushing boundaries in ways which... practitioners themselves may not be sure will work. It demands courage, curiosity and desire, and a degree of spontaneity." This, he said, required "a new, more flexible, more trusting environment where innovation, risk-taking and excellence are better rewarded".