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While increased levels of government and private support have facilitated the introduction in a number of rural communities of a variety of school-community linkages, research suggests that leadership plays a central role in ensuring the sustainability of such linkages. Research notes that active relationships, which involve interactions that cross role boundaries, such as interactions between the school institution and the business institutions, have the greatest potential for sustainable community development. The product of these interactions is social capital, which can influence the social, civic or economic well-being of a community. [A] study was conducted in the Augusta Margaret River Shire in south-western Western Australia, and included the town of Margaret River plus a number of smaller communities, including Augusta. The way in which the senior high school continues to work with the community to foster youth participation in all aspects of community life, is the subject of this paper.

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Efforts to monitor and improve young people’s school-to-work transitions have not generated a discernable change in patterns of social inclusion among young people. Educational approaches that promote social inclusion need to take account of the changing social and economic realities with which all young Australians engage, and address important aspects of young people’s lives such as identity and wellbeing. Despite attempts to respond to the changes in young people’s learning needs, there is a disjuncture between educational policies that continue to frame education within an industrial model and the requirements that young people themselves have for the capacity to be good navigators through new economies, to live well, and to engage with complexity and diversity.

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In light of the recent election of the Rudd Labor government, and the highlighting of social inclusion as a ministerial portfolio and policy direction, this paper considers the relationship between ‘youth participation’ and social inclusion. It argues that the neoliberal social and economic policies of the Howard era resulted in social exclusion for many young people and also limited their capacity to participate. It also asks whether social inclusion is the pathway to creating capacity for young people to participate. Drawing on both the UK experience and the policies of the Rudd government, it flags potential problems with a social inclusion agenda in terms of its ability to increase young people’s capacity for inclusion.

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Like the Loch Ness monster, the subject of youth work professionalism raises its head now and then. The author outlines the arguments for and against the development of a youth work professional identity in the hope that this will stimulate debate about the future of youth work in Australia. The issue of ethics raises a related question about whether an ethical rationale exists for professionalising youth work, and whether such a rationale ought to be the primary reason for professionalisation.

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Adults who act as gatekeepers for young people may have the same barriers to help-seeking for mental health issues as young people. This study investigated the personal help-seeking practices of 47 Australian youth workers prior to and after a training workshop on youth mental health issues. Pre-post workshop evaluation revealed some increases in behaviour, intentions and problem solving capacity but no changes in belief-based barriers, intentions to seek help for suicidal thoughts, or referral skills. The relationships between help-seeking variables and referral skills were explored to investigate the impact that personal help-seeking may have on professional practice.

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Anonymous self-report health and wellbeing surveys were completed by alternative education (AE) students in the Auckland and Northland regions of New Zealand, and 11 semi-structured interviews were conducted with the key informants about their perceptions of health issues for AE students. Both groups reported concerning health-risk behaviours among AE students, including drug and alcohol abuse, depressive symptoms and dangerous driving. Health services have consistently failed to engage AE students in effective primary and preventative care that includes their whanau/family. Significant changes to the current New Zealand health system are required to provide appropriate and effective health care for students attending AE facilities.

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The rewriting of a first-year university sociology course provided the opportunity to introduce the use of digital narratives into the classroom. This technological change in course delivery led the authors to consider the ramifications of the ‘digital native’ debate in teaching university-level youth studies. The focus of this article is students’ responses to and uptake of the process of applying digital technologies in the production of a higher-order digital project.

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For the past 20 years, youth services in England have increasingly articulated their work in terms of curriculum, yet youth work academics have consistently maintained that a youth work curriculum is anathema. This paper argues that youth work necessarily has a curriculum; however, it is not the formal school curriculum, not is it explicitly focused on either the efficient transmission of knowledge or the successful achievement of pre-specified outcomes, rather it is based on the 'process' of learning. The explicit articulation of the process of youth work through a curriculum promotes and sustains its unique practice against the external threats of unfavourable government policy. While the curriculum debate is unique to the English youth services, it may offer important lessons for the articulation of youth work in other settings.

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The escalating policy emphasis on civic participation is designed to increase the participation of young people within their communities. Young people have the will to participate but, in low socioeconomic contexts, their participation remains both contested and compromised. This is particularly evident in relation to the role of schools in low socioeconomic areas. These schools are charged with fostering young people’s civic participation, yet the way in which they enact this mandate is subject to numerous tensions between policy and practice. This article examines these tensions and their implications for the participation of the most marginalised young people. It also outlines a research agenda with the potential to reveal more about this situation and inform future policy and practice.

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Australia 21, a non-profit research company, and the Australian Youth Research Centre carried out a cross-disciplinary project to better understand the points of convergence and divergence in the commentaries and evidence on young people's wellbeing. The results suggest a need for a greater focus in both research and policy on the 'big picture' of the broad social changes reshaping life today - total health and wellbeing, not just ill health; the whole population of youth, not only the marginalised and at-risk; and the social and cultural resources that are as important to wellbeing as material and economic resources.

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