The New Labour Years: A History of the Youth Service in England Volume 3: 1997-2007
£14.95
Bernard Davies (March 2008) 194pp
Product Description
Bernard Davies’ magisterial history of the youth service is brought bang up to date with the publication of The New Labour Years.
Coming nine years after the first two volumes of A History of the Youth Service in England set a benchmark for historical analysis of the development of youth work, this new publication picks the story up from the election of the first Blair Government and sweeps forward to the arrival of Gordon Brown and his announcement of Aiming High, the Government’s ten year strategy for youth.
The account covers a period when, says Davies, “youth” has often been demonised and in which those demons have come to dictate policy. Over the same period, he charts the way the Youth Service has increasingly been subsumed into wider integrated services.
This book offers the first major historical account of events such as the birth and development of Connexions and the arrival of the powerful policy drivers of Transforming Youth Work, Every Child Matters and Youth Matters. But it also maintains a strong focus on the practice of youth work itself, looking at how political pressures have shaped and sometimes constrained and distorted the way this distinctive approach has been organised and carried out.
Davies’ comprehensive approach also takes in specific developments over the past decade in the voluntary and community sectors and in the vital field of training and qualifications.
With its approach of “chronology with attitude” and Davies’ unrivalled breadth of vision in the field of work with young people, this piece of contemporary history is a vitally relevant intervention in a still unfolding story.
Also available as downloads from The National Youth Agency website are:
From Voluntaryism to Welfare state: A History of the Youth Service in England Volume 1: 1939-1979
and
From Thatcherism to New Labour: A History of the Youth Service in England Volume 2: 1979-1999
