The unveiling of the government's legislative priorities offered both reasons to be optimistic and pessimistic over the prospects for children and young people over the coming parliament.
Necessity is the mother of invention, so the saying goes. It is a maxim that could be applied to most of the services for children and young people today - being able to do more with less is a key requirement for any chief executive, middle manager or frontline practitioner.
The finding from the Cabinet Office survey that total funding for council youth services fell by 22.3 per cent in the two years up to April 2014 will not come as a huge surprise to many in youth work.
The 10 per cent rise in house prices in England reported last week was widely seen as another sign that the economy is recovering from the deepest recession in living memory. Good news for home owners certainly, but soaring property prices are making it harder for young people to not just get on the housing ladder, but branch out into independent living generally.
After a slow start, Labour seems to be finding its feet in opposition. But with a general election a little over a year away, time is running out for the party to produce a coherent policy vision for children, young people and families.
The admission by minister for civil society Nick Hurd that he is still unsure where council-led youth work fits into the government's future vision for the sector is not the most surprising of revelations.
After many months of casual neglect inside the Department for Education, the government last week revealed the Cabinet Office would take responsibility for youth policy.
It is just over a month since the murder of Woolwich soldier Lee Rigby shocked the country, and then triggered a spate of reprisals. In typically strident-sounding fashion, the government set up a "taskforce" - the crisis-management response tool of choice for politicians these days.
Youth work and schools make strange bedfellows. The very essence of youth work as voluntary and non-formal is certainly at odds with the formal, compulsory nature of school.
Seventeen-year-old Paris Brown quit as the country's first youth crime commissioner in Kent just days after her appointment for posting offensive tweets in her younger days. Her posts were stupid and naïve at the very least, but how many people's adolescence, past and present, are completely free of stupidity?
Foster carers are responsible for three out of every four looked-after children in the country, and yet their vital role in providing that nurture and support gets barely any attention.