Youth work : challenging the soft cop syndrome

What is youth work going to look like in the near future? This paper begins with the premise that there are fundamental structural continuities that make the basic challenges for youth work in the next decade much the same as those of the last several decades. Specifically, the core tasks of youth work and the key targets of youth work, and political conflicts over these, are as contentious today as they were in the 1960s. Yet historical changes and conjunctural circumstances mean that the tensions within youth service provision present themselves in a new guise, with unique and original problems for youth workers to confront in the new millennium.