Civil Society Strategy avoids big youth issues

To package young people within a broad vision for civil society is a burning injustice to youth and an abdication of more general social responsibility for the young. Young people in their own right merit a more dedicated, cross-government policy response.

It is not as if there is a shortage of issues, or even ideas, permeating the youth sector. Throughout the year across Europe, youth policies and strategies have been debated, in the context of burgeoning mental health concerns, the rise of populism, the spread of fake news, and a lack of political and civic engagement.

The Civil Society Strategy does, of course, proclaim to address some such themes: "Civil society can also help us tackle a range of burning injustices and entrenched social challenges, such as poverty, obesity, mental ill-health, youth disengagement, reoffending, homelessness, isolation and loneliness, and the challenges of community integration."

There are glimpses within the strategy we should celebrate - a promise to review the guidance for local authority youth services, and a desire to strengthen social action by young people.

However, herein also lies the problem. Civil society alone cannot address the big issues that are too often blighting their lives, like precarious or no employment, access to affordable housing, and timely support for mental health. It is all very well for the strategy to register the "special role for young people" that meets their "demand for the opportunity to make a contribution". But they need the capacity, confidence and competence to make that contribution - and that will derive from strengthening the certainties of their pathways to adulthood. That cannot be provided by civil society alone.

The strategy talks about values that underpin and inform it: commitment, trust, respect and inclusion. For many young people, in relation to government, these are patently in very short supply; young people are more often probably asking not so much what they have done for their country, but what their country has done for them. In the past 10 years, not a lot. However much we commend young people's volunteering and social action in the civil sphere, it will not crack the protracted challenges facing young people in the broader areas of their lives: education, training, employment, health, housing and justice. This requires a comprehensive and co-ordinated policy response across government. It cannot be hidden away within or handed over to civil society.

Young people both cause and experience problems in a complex mix. The policy response must be equally calibrated. A youth strategy with a framework of universal provisions differentiated according to need is what is required. Only then can we hold policy to account and young people will know where they stand. Vague nods to improving social and civil engagement are not enough.

• Howard Williamson is professor of European youth policy at the University of South Wales