Bernard Davies is a qualified youth worker with practice experience dating back 60+ years in a range of open youth club and detached work settings. He has been a lecturer and tutor on qualifying courses for youth workers, teachers and social workers, and has published many articles, pamphlets and books, the most recent being Austerity, Youth Policy and the Deconstruction of the Youth Service in England (2019, Palgrave Macmillan).

1. Underpinning Ideology.- 2. The Condition of Young People.- 3. Funding Youth Work.- 4. Open Youth Work: The Practice Evolves.- 5. Redefining and Repurposing Youth Work.- 6. The Voluntary Sector: The 'Traditional'-And the New.- 7. The Role of the National Youth Agency.- 8. Training and Qualifications.- 9. The National Policy Contexts.

This book updates the policy and practice developments affecting youth services since the publication in 2019 of Austerity, Youth Policy and the Deconstruction of the Youth Service in England. It focuses on ¿open youth work¿ settings such as youth centres and detached and outreach projects within the wider ideological, political and financial UK policy contexts. It pays detailed attention to the pandemic and cost-of-living impacts on young people, including on their mental health, examining how wider youth-focused state and voluntary provision and the National Youth Agency are responding. It also examines established and new routes to training and qualifying for work with young people. The book offers a distinctive source of evidence on, and analysis of, important areas of youth provision and practice and the policy priorities shaping these, which since 2018 have continued to have limited academic attention.