To cement youth work into place, youth workers’ predecessors said that there must be a clear set of professional values and methods of working, that these must be transparent and recognised and should form the basis of all training for youth workers. They said that youth work should be located within a publicly funded youth service working in partnership with the voluntary sector. They believed that the voluntary sector should be politically independent and able to promote the needs of young people. And, if there was a recognised qualification and professional values, they naturally thought there must be national terms and conditions.

Youth work cannot be properly valued if every employer pays identically committed, skilled and trained youth workers differently and is not required to employ people with the right value base. This puts the market in charge of the value of the work and not the other way around. The Youth Service must be fully funded. It must be recognised that youth work provides space for young people and seeks to enlighten, educate, develop and emancipate. All activities are tools to this end. Therefore workers must be professionally autonomous; their relationship building must be measured by the quality of their work experienced by young people. Professionally autonomous workers, publicly accountable, must also account for each other and support each other. Anything that defends these positions contributes to the defence of youth work. We must look at recent events with this in mind.