Community safety and detached and outreach youth work

New Labour has launched ambitious anti‐exclusion and crime control strategies which target young people and require detached and outreach workers to ‘deliver the goods’. New funding streams have spawned new projects which have recruited new, non‐traditional, workers. This article, which draws upon the preliminary findings of a study of contemporary detached and outreach work in the UK funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, explores the contribution of this work to community safety and some of the barriers it faces.