Voluntary vs state youth work

When I took a course in Youth and Community Studies, one of the first ways that pupils pigeonholed each other was to identify who came from the state sector and who came from the voluntary sector. A few days into the course there was much confessing of assumptions and misunderstandings from both sides. People admitted to many broken preconceptions. I’d had my own. I’d felt that state youth work was dry, bureaucratic and unadventurous. Some people in state youth work confessed to fears that youth workers in the voluntary sector were untrained enthusiasts or religious fanatics.