Differences in policy reflect alternative perspectives on how young people's interests are best served. Only England has a Connexions Service. Many of those outside England doubt if the self-styled 'UK Youth Parliament' can genuinely represent young voices across the whole nation.
But there continue to be large areas of common ground; a shared concern to express the outcomes of youth work more clearly in order to strengthen both professional practice and win policy support; an anxiety about new funding reaching the front-line in a sustainable form; a fear about the burgeoning policy interest in services for children displacing work with older adolescents and young adults; the shared need to address, through youth work, an agenda of equality and social justice and what, in England, is described softly as 'community cohesion' or, in Scotland and Northern Ireland, more directly as 'sectarianism'. And, overarching all of these, are those youth policy matters which still reside at the United Kingdom level - the continued exclusion of young adults from the benefits of the minimum wage, the right to vote not being available to 18 years. How good then, that the UK Youth Work Alliance is there to keep an eye on these things and to learn from each other.
Now it hopes to extend its range (and change its title!) to bring in fully colleagues from the Irish Republic - and learn what they are achieving with their new Irish Youth Work Act.
