The Role of the National Youth Agency

The NYA sought to implement its self-defined role as ‘the lead expert and national body for youth work’ in this period by setting out a Strategic Plan, a ‘ten-year vision’ and a Roadmap to a National Youth Strategy—initiatives which illustrated how ‘youth work’ was able to address both young people’s personal needs and their wider societal challenges. In addition to its key role in developing and approving training routes into youth work (considered in detail in Chap. 8 ), other NYA proposals and interventions focused on safeguarding in youth work, the commissioning of youth work provision, developing a national youth work curriculum, clarifying local authorities’ statutory guidance and on the sector’s financial pressures. The Agency also carried out youth sector censuses and responded to the impacts on young people of the pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis and county lines exploitation.