state sponsored youth work loses its way

Secularization and professionalization has cut links with the ideals and practices of the social and religious movements that gave birth to youth work. It has become a job rather than a calling.

Services failed to respond to the changing experiences of young people and to shifts in society as a whole.

State-sponsored youth services became cautious, bureaucratized and managerial. 

To sustain funding youth services and national agencies increasingly made a case for their activities around the needs of ‘problematic’ young people.