Since its first publication in 1999, The Art of Youth Work has become a standard text for both youth work practitioners and students, appearing on the reading list for qualifying courses at both national and local level.

In its first edition, it argued that your work is centrally concerned with making relationships with young people, which support them in creating themselves and the values of meaning that shape their lives and guide their actions in the world.

That essential message remains the same in this second edition. However, given the changes for youth work and the Youth Service since 1999, this edition of The Art of Youth Work has been thoroughly revised and updated to examine the implications for youth work purpose, principles and practice in the context of the broader social and political agenda for young people.

Providing a clear theory of you work that explains the distinctiveness of the phenomenon known as 'youth work', and offering a framework for making sound judgements about practice and the training and development of youth workers, this book is about good youth work and the philosophy and practice that underpins it.

As such, it is centrally concerned with two questions. 'What is youth work?' 'What do youth workers do?' It answers these in terms of an understanding of the purpose of youth work as opposed to the forms that it takes (e.g. centre-based, outreach, detached work), the methods it adopts (e.g. discussion groups, projects, outdoor activities) or the groups of young people with whom youth workers work.

You will find here a rich reaffirmation of youth work, at its best, as a powerful educative and developmental process.