Youth Volunteering—The New Panacea

Abstract

Increased state support and funding for uniformed youth organisations—both those with a long youth work tradition and those connected to the armed forces and police; the creation and role of the Youth United Foundation and the Uniformed Youth Social Action Fund; the impacts and dilemmas of these developments. The establishment and development of Step Up To Serve, its operation and some of its impacts. The overall policy rationales for youth volunteering—in particular the emphases on: individual volunteers and the benefits for them rather than on collective campaigning and gains; and structured rather than more improvised routes into volunteer activity. The extent to which these notions of ‘sponsored’ youth volunteering provide a form of open access youth work.