The youth service in England and Wales : report of the Committee appointed by the Minister of Education in Nov., 1958.

  • Great Britain. Ministry of Education.
Date:
1960
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The youth service in England and Wales : report of the Committee appointed by the Minister of Education in Nov., 1958. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/144 (page 4)
    CHAPTER 1 The Youth Service Yesterday and Today HISTORY 11. In 1939 the Board of Education called the Youth Service into being with the issue of a single circular. This could not have happened but for what had gone before. The voluntary organisations had been labouring in the cause of youth, some of them for well over half-a-century. Some of the local education authorities had been trying to help and co-ordinate the voluntary work in their areas through juvenile organisations committees. And in the 1930s the State itself had tried to promote social and physical training and recreation. What the Board did at the start of the war was to bring these three parties, State, education authority and voluntary organi- sation, into a working arrangement to which the term ‘“*‘ Youth Service ”’ has ever since been given. 12. In Circular 1486 the Board undertook “a direct responsibility for youth welfare”. ‘The President had set up a National Youth Committee, and local education authorities were called on to set up youth committees of their own. Key phrases in the circular were: “close association of local education authorities and voluntary bodies in full partnership in a common enterprise” .. . “ordered scheme of local provision” .. . ‘‘indicate the lines on which a real advance can be made under more favourable conditions” ... “new constructive outlets”. Later circulars made it clear that the Board regarded the Youth Service as a permanent part of education. So did the White Paper on Educational Reconstruction (1943), which gave a separate section to the Youth Service. The McNair Report (1944) encouraged the public to think of youth leadership as a profession, which ought to have proper conditions of training and service. The Youth Advisory Council (the successor to the National Youth Com- mittee) produced two reports (1943 and 1945) which were full of hope for the future of the Service. Finally the Education Act, 1944, not only made it a duty on authorities to do what they were already doing out of good-will, but offered in addition the county college, a mighty ally to the Youth Service. 13. With the sense that the Youth Service was here to stay, authorities and voluntary bodies responded vigorously. In spite of natural early diffi- culties of adjustment a creditable measure of co-operation was achieved. The Youth Service was much written about, and youth workers of the time speak of the interest and enthusiasm of the public. Universities and university colleges offered training courses for professional leaders, and as the war ended the Service seemed full of promise. 14. In 1945 the Ministry of Education made it plain that they did not intend for the present to put into effect the McNair recommendations about youth leaders. All the same the outlook still seemed bright enough to attract numbers of able men and women leaving the armed forces into the courses for professional leaders offered by universities and voluntary organisations. For two or three years longer the Service made some