About

I write about the politics, practice, and professional development of youth work in England.

This site is for anyone who does youth work, studies it, teaches it, or manages it and still remembers what it’s actually for. Strudents trying to make sense of their assignments. Practitioners wondering why the gap between what they know for and what they’re asked to do keeps getting wider. Managers who still think critically about the systems they work in.

What you’ll find here

Policy analysis and political commentary. Reflections on everyday practice. Critical writing on professional development, apprenticeships, and the training system. Ideas from the thinkers who shaped how we understand this work. And occasionally just an opinion about something that needs saying.

What you won’t find

A balanced, both-sides approach to the erosion of youth services. Neutrality has never been the point. This site comes from a position that youth work is a rights-based, educational, and relational practice and that a lot of the policy, funding and management decisions made in the last fifteen/twenty (probably longer) years have been actively hostile to it.

What this site is for

Partly a resource, something students can point to when they need a reference* that speaks their language. Partly a record, a place to work through ideas in public. And partly because the youth work sector needs more people saying what they think out loud rather than hedging in meeting rooms.

*This is a blog, not a peer reviewed journal or textbook. I’ll include citations for the more serious stuff.