The National Youth Agency - Bernard Davies

Bernard Davies

Bernard Davies - NYA profile

Bernard Davies

Bernard Davies has been providing consultancy to both voluntary and community sector and statutory agencies since 1993. This work has focused primarily on policies and services for young people and the delivery of youth work practice. It has included service reviews, programme and project evaluations, the development of local youth strategies and support for agencies implementing new structures and procedures - for example, for peer inspection and staff supervision.

This experience has called for a range of professional skills including:

consulting with young people (individually and in groups) and ensuring their voices are strongly reflected in planning, review and evaluation processes;
consulting with field, management and policy-making personnel;
facilitating consultative events involving young people and agency staff at all levels;
working with multi-agency forums;
devising and using tailor-made research and evaluation tools;
devising and implementing rigorous participative training programmes drawing on experiential learning methods;
critically analysing and then recommending on organisational policies, structures and processes;
analysing key national and local policy documents and relating these to priority policy and practice agendas;
drafting reports, briefs for policy-makers and managers and other planning documents.

Bernard's experience before 1993 included substantial involvement in the full- and part-time education of youth workers and other professionals, working as a manager in the Sheffield Youth Service and contributing to numerous local and national advisory, review, research and policy-making bodies. He has served on a number of voluntary and community sector management committees and is currently a trustee of of South Warwickshire YouthBank, the Muslim Youth Work Foundation and 42nd Street, a mental health resource for young people based in Manchester.

Throughout his career Bernard has drawn on this experience to research and write on youth issues, Youth Service development, youth work practice and other informal educational work with young people. His publications include; StreetCred? a critical study of 42nd Street (2000); Transforming Lives - NSF Good Practice (2004) (with Jan Docking); and Youth Work: A Manifesto for Our Times (2005). Bernard Davies is also the author of A History of the Youth Service in England covering the years 1939 to 2007. Volume 3, 'The New Labour Years' was published in April 2008 and is available from NYA. Volumes 1 and 2 are now out of print but are available free of charge as PDF files:

History of Youth Work - volume 1

History of Youth Work - volume 2