Interview: Paul Oginsky, government adviser for the National Citizen Service

Since the election, he has been given the official title of government adviser for its flagship youth programme National Citizen Service (NCS), although he continues to advise on all matters of youth policy.

Twelve consortia will test out the NCS programme with 11,000 16-year-olds this summer. Oginsky believes NCS is an opportunity for youth organisations "to galvanise the whole country behind youth".

"There's been a disconnect between youth and community," he says. "We talk about youth and community as if they're two different things."

The government wants every 16-year-old in England to take part eventually. But with an estimated 620,000 young people eligible each year, running costs could reach £700m to £800m a year. So how can the costs be justified? "If there wasn't an NCS, the same cuts would still be there," says Oginsky. "This is money that isn't from the education budget but was brought through the Cabinet Office."

Smaller youth clubs and advice and counselling services have been hit particularly hard by public spending cuts. But Oginsky insists that the government "cares about them very much" and that is why it is keen to "encourage contestability at a local level".

But the youth sector, he adds, has done itself no favours by failing to work together. "The sector hasn't flourished as much as it should because it has been quite disparate at times," he says. "It needs to prove its impact."

Oginsky is evangelical about personal social development, where participants on programmes reflect on what they have learned and are helped to identify their values. He has run a personal social development consultancy since leaving the youth charity Weston Spirit in 2005 and talks repeatedly about the need for youth organisations to incorporate personal social development into their programmes. So does he really have the knowledge to advise on broader youth policy? "I started a youth charity with (Falklands War veteran) Simon Weston with an idea on a beer mat and grew Weston Spirit into a multi-million pound charity," he says. "I've known what it is like to run a charity with a piece of string and 25 pence, right up to running a multi-million pound organisation."

And while neither he nor children's minister Tim Loughton are part of Cameron's inner circle, Oginsky says that doesn't mean they lack political clout. Indeed, he helped convince the Prime Minister not to make NCS compulsory, he says.

The unions hold him and Loughton largely responsible for the widespread cuts facing youth services, but he says: "I haven't got the power to decimate the youth service. If any youth service is being decimated, it is down to the local authority.

"If youth work is being closed down, then youth workers aren't communicating how effective and beneficial youth work is to their local authority."

PAUL OGINSKY: CV

• Oginsky was brought up in Huyton on Merseyside and left school without any qualifications
• He trained as a community sports leader and was offered a position as a researcher on a study into motivating the long-term unemployed
• In 1987, 23-year-old Oginsky co-founded the youth charity Weston Spirit with Falklands war veteran Simon Weston. He left in 2005 to set up Personal Development Point, a personal social development organisation
• In 2006, David Cameron made him his youth policy adviser and asked him to set up the Young Adult Trust, a forerunner to the National Citizen Service