The National Youth Agency: Detached work comes in from the cold

The move comes in the wake of the recently published Joseph Rowntree Foundation-funded study Reaching Socially Excluded Young People: A national study of street-based youth work. The study found that street-based youth work had grown significantly in recent years, and identified 564 projects in contact with 65,325 young people. While it found that the projects were successfully reaching and working with many of the most socially excluded young people, the majority of projects relied upon short-term funding. As a result, staff retention was a problem and smaller projects constantly faced the risk of folding.

Establishing a national office at The NYA demonstrates the federation's and The NYA's commitment to raising the profile of detached youth work and offering improved levels of support to managers and workers in taking service to and meeting the needs of young people who choose not to use building-based provision.