The main objective of youth work is to provide opportunities for young people to shape their own futures.

Youth work is a summary expression for activities with and for young people of a social, cultural, educational or political nature. Increasingly, youth work activities also include sports and services for young people. Youth work belongs to the domain of ‘out-of-school’ education, most commonly referred to as either non-formal or informal learning.

The general aims of youth work are the integration and inclusion of young people in society. It may also aim towards the personal and social emancipation of young people from dependency and exploitation.

Youth Work belongs both to the social welfare and to the educational systems. In some countries it is regulated by law and administered by state civil servants, in particular at local level. However, there exists an important relation between these professional and voluntary workers which is at times antagonistic, and at others, cooperative.

The definition of youth work is diverse. While it is recognised, promoted and financed by public authorities in many European countries, it has only a marginal status in others where it remains of an entirely voluntary nature. What is considered in one country to be the work of traditional ‘youth workers’ – be it professionals or volunteers – may be carried out by consultants in another, or by neighbourhoods and families in yet another country or, indeed, not at all in many places.

Today, the difficulty within state systems to adequately ensure global access to education and the labour market, means that youth work increasingly deals with unemployment, educational failure, marginalisation and social exclusion. Increasingly, youth work overlaps with the area of social services previously undertaken by the Welfare State. It, therefore, includes work on aspects such as education, employment, assistance and guidance, housing, mobility, criminal justice and health, as well as the more traditional areas of participation, youth politics, cultural activities, career guidance, leisure and sports.

Youth work often seeks to reach out to particular groups of young people such as disadvantaged youth in socially deprived neighbourhoods, or immigrant youth including refugees and asylum seekers. Youth work may at times be organised around a particular religious tradition.

Peter Lauritzen works at the Council of Europe’s Directorate of Youth and Sport as the Head of the Youth Unit.

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Will it exist in a corresponding line to their participation in voting at all sort of levels, local, national, European? Or is there a very different pattern of participation preparing itself; efficient, real but not reflected in voting procedures? What is the key to understand the power aspect of participation of young people in public policies?

Looking at this, a reflection on the changing nature of public policy in the youth field comes to mind – from government to governance, from purely state action to a negotiated co-production of public policies in co-operation with the civil society, i.e. non-profit organisations, including youth associations. The role of the state might become less and less visible in the future and what a country can mobilise in terms of voluntary energy can become crucial for fields such as social services, health care, ecology and education. All this has to do with being able to associate young people to public affairs and to do this with the clear intention to also give them roles and responsibility very early. Someone who can develop a computer company in the garage can also have his or her voice heard in the city council; who understands complex computer programmes at young age can also contribute to the teaching of mathematics and informatics at school and trendsetters in modern lifestyle sports can also say a lot about the organisation of urban space. Everybody in politics claims the participation of the young – in what exactly? In what they think young people should participate in? Or could they also engage in some risky co-operation project? It is true that youth participation is crucial to overcome apathy in the political process – but honest policy, close to the people, can do this job even better and if there is none or not enough of it, there is no need to spread moral panics about the young and their distance to public policies instead. Youth participation cannot be had cheaply any more; it has to come over as a real offer to share the power and it is time that this happens.

For the Council of Europe and the European Commission to work on the participation of young people in public affairs is part of their youth policy mandate, be it in the new policy following the publication of the White Paper on youth for the Commission or in the daily practice of co-management of funds and programmes between public youth authorities and NGOs in the Council of Europe.

But this is not enough; the institutional practice needs to communicate with research findings. This way the couple public authority – civil society enlarges into the triangle public authority – civil society – research community and intentions are confronted with evidence. It is for you to judge whether recent research enlarges the quality of the discourse on participation.