Amazon.com description: Product Description: Youth work can include both buildings-based generic youth work in communities and short term projects targeted on disaffected' young people, sometimes with both operating together, sometimes with one being promoted at the expense of the other. Sue Robertson sets out a case for preserving and developing youth club work. Drawing on her own experience and on an extensive range of references, she documents the history of club work, explains why it is so valuable for young people and sets out a powerful case for preserving and developing it. Youth clubs is a reflective and at times personal account, celebrating 'the daily grind and joy of it'. It demonstrates that the idea that 'the community should provide a place for young people to meet that is safe and warm, where they can associate, try out new activities and learn new skills, relate to adults, obtain advice and information, and run things for themselves' remains a good one. Youth clubs offers: guidance on managing and working in clubs to help achieve all of these objectives...above all, those expressed by young people themselves; ideas and information to 'make a case' for the enduring relevance and potential of youth clubs...and for their increased support; help for workers who want to validate their youth club practice - for managers, funders, councillors, young people, neighbours, parents - who seek to access research-based supportive arguments for their practice. Its comprehensive coverage will help readers to make links between the many things that crop up when youth clubs are discussed. It also delineates relationships between theories of adolescence and of working with young people on the one hand, and good youth club practice on the other, and looks at current policy issues of social exclusion and social capital and the relevance of youth clubs in addressing these concerns. The book's focus is on general, mixed clubs, open to any young person, and will be relevant to anyone who works in, manages or has an interest in clubs large or small, whether they are run by government or by voluntary organisations; and especially to students of youth and community work who will have the chance to get involved in developing work in youth clubs in the future.