"Britain was the leader of open access universal youth work and youth services, the charity sector developed into a life-transforming statutory service across the country.  Under the last few governments this service has been undermined, target driven, under resourced and now destroyed in large swaths of the UK, youth work is no more.  When I started working at the National Youth Agency in the early 2000's we had hundreds of staff, produced standards and publications for all aspects of youth work - a base which is unthinkable today, and what of the young people that we used to serve?  They have been left to hang on street-corners, we see an explosion of knife crime, and young people's prospects are worse than they have ever been.  Mental health, physical activity, connection to local communities, all gone.  This was not by accident, councils (who funded much of the local youth work) had their budgets slashed and all they needed to ensure is that there was some sort of youth activity, that could be one day a week of a local cadet force for 30 kids, no open access youth work, no preventative outreach or detached youth work, no requirement to monitor the quality or suitability of the provision and most importantly nowhere to go, nothing to do and no one to speak to for young people in our cities and towns up and down the land.