Is there a youth club in your neighbourhood? Chances are, if it hasn't closed down, it's in a prefab or dingy hall in urgent need of repair and is only open one night a week. And, unless it gets its funding from one of the youth justice programmes such as Splash aimed at diverting those at risk of offending, the kinds of activities on offer for young people are those that can be provided on a shoestring.

The flipside of this story of neglect and underfunding is that by and large youth service managers and workers have been left to their own devices to set their priorities and work in the way they have seen fit. Unusually in the public sector, youth workers for years escaped the strictures of targets and performance indicators that have become part of the scenery of public service provision.

But that is now set to change. Two years ago, the government realised that a "modernised" youth service could help it meet some of its objectives and help divert young people from the attractions of drugs, unemployment and early pregnancy. So, 10 months later education secretary Charles Clarke published Transforming Youth Work.

Key elements include new targets for the number of young people to be engaged in youth provision and a requirement for services to be targeted at vulnerable groups. Controversially, there is a new target for 60 per cent of young people participating to obtain some form of accredited outcome for their learning.

Accreditation involves gaining a youth achievement award such as the Duke of Edinburgh scheme or Asdan Challenge. Norman Saggers, a detached youth worker in north London explains: "Young people set their own targets with the help of a youth worker. They work towards them over two or three months and get a certificate at the end of it. It's about raising self-esteem and achieving agreed targets."

The kinds of activities which can be accredited range from participating in a group discussion about drugs and health to spending a weekend doing outdoor activities or participating in community work. Accreditation can be used both for out-of-school hours activities and during school time for young people who have been excluded or dropped out of school.

The government is also tightening up the inspection framework for youth services and have threatened to intervene in services judged to be failing. In December Ofsted announced that every youth service was to be inspected on a four yearly cycle.

The plans have provoked a fierce debate between on the one side the modernisers who see them as bringing new professionalism, status and resources, and on the other the traditionalists who believe the changes threaten the very essence of good youth work.

Tom Wylie, chief executive of the National Youth Agency (NYA) is firmly in the modernisers' camp. Wylie believes that the service was in need of reform and that Transforming Youth Work reflected changes already happening in the field. "There is a strand of thinking that it is enough to hang round a pool table and engage in convivial conversation," he says. "That's not my view. Too much provision has been low intensity recreation. Targets are now sharper plus there's a much clearer standardisation of provision. All of that is improving youth work provision."

Tony Jeffs, lecturer in youth and community work at the University of Durham, is unapologetically traditional. He says: "The good thing [about Transforming Youth Work] is that it reasserted the idea that the youth service is important and that there are serious gaps in provision. The bad thing is that it takes such a narrow view. I don't think it will help people work in a creative way."

Mark Smith, who lectures in youth work at the YMCA College in London, believes the outcome measures are unhelpful. He says: "You can measure the output, but you can't honestly measure the impact on an individual young person. It would need really massive social research to get at that."

Smith is concerned that the emphasis on accredited learning risks alienating the young people the government is seeking to reach. He explains: "It's not about what young people want. It's about delivering government policy. For organisations receiving significant government money, [the targets] are a very significant constraint on what they can do. A lot of young people don't want to be engaged in accredited activities. The more vulnerable the young people are, the less likely they are to want to be involved if they feel it means being told what to do by adults."

It's hard to deny that short-term outcomes fit awkwardly with a service that has always taken a long-term view of young people's development. At its core youth work is about building relationships with young people to create opportunities for personal development. How can short-term objectives really address the longer term goals of personal and social change?

Malcolm Payne, professor of youth policy at De Montford University is conducting an evaluation of youth work for the Department for Education and Skills. He says: "The jury is still out on the targets. The danger of increasing the proportion of youth work that is accredited is that youth workers may be more likely to engage with young people who are easier to work with."

However, Payne also thinks that good youth workers can find ways of ensuring young people's learning is accredited. "A young person can get a taste for being recognised. If an adult is saying that something they have done is valuable, and they've been excluded from school, for example, that's enormously important."

Norman Saggers is not finding that the requirement for more of young people's learning to be accredited is preventing him from working with the most vulnerable groups. "It comes down to how workers sell it to young people," he says. "You can do [the accreditation] on anything - climbing, horse riding, whatever they're interested in. They'll do it because they enjoy it and if they get a certificate at the end of it that's even better.

"We're working with looked-after kids, kids at risk of exclusion or crime. If you're going to run a course - say on drugs and personal, social and health education - there's an attendance requirement that's hard to meet. A lot of work has to go into it but you can produce accredited stuff that the kids can do."

Despite the extra work, Saggers believes that the changes arising from the Transforming Youth Work agenda are mostly positive. He says: "It's certainly changing the way youth work is delivered. It does mean more paperwork and form-filling. That means less time for face-to-face stuff. But it requires a more professional approach to the work."

He is less impressed by what he sees as a devaluing of traditional generic work. "There's a lot of pressure not to do open door stuff - just drop in and play pool. My view is that you need the traditional work so you can build up relationships to talk them into doing a course. Getting young people to do things they haven't done before can take a lot of persuasion."

Payne is also concerned that generic youth work should not be lost. He says: "Youth workers need to have a general presence in the community. If they only work with marginalised youth they could end up being seen by young people as social workers. It fundamentally changes who they are."

Everyone - including the government - agrees that a genuine transformation of youth work requires extra spending. But so far, aside from a miserly £33m for development work and management training, there is little sign that the government is willing to dig into its pockets. It thinks local authorities should give greater priority to youth work within their already overstretched budgets. Many are spending less than half the recommended £100 a year per teenager - way below their standard spending assessment for youth provision.

Wendy Bailey, a youth work manager in London, finds that resources and recruitment are major problems. She says: "We're expected to meet the targets but we're grossly understaffed. There is a national shortage of youth and community workers and the government needs to look at creative ways of enabling unqualified staff to get qualified."

Poor pay and conditions are also an issue. Youth workers are increasingly taking jobs as personal advisers for Connexions. They are also attracted by learning mentor positions in schools or roles in the teenage pregnancy service where their skills are in demand and there isn't the same requirement to work evenings and weekends.

Jeffs says youth clubs are still closing because of a lack of funding. "Everything is a mish-mash of short-term time-limited money. People are perpetually chasing funding." He refers to a study he has been working on for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, into detached outreach work - precisely the kind of work most likely to engage hard-to-reach youth that the government applauds. "We did a national survey and picked out 35 of the most innovative projects and monitored them for 18 months. Almost a fifth of them closed. There were all sorts of reasons but almost all were about funding."

Jeffs adds: "You don't build up a good youth centre or detached youth service in three years. The lack of long-term funding means people don't invest in projects. If you look at organisations in the voluntary youth sector such as the YMCA and the clubs movements that have been around for 100 years there's a sense of permanence that is totally lacking in the public sector."

With anxieties growing about young people hanging round the streets with nothing to do, or getting obese through too much TV and computer games, now seems like a good time to think again about how much priority we give to the youth services.

Key elements of the government's reforms    

1. Standards and performance indicators for youth work provision.

The government has set new targets for youth work provision in England, including that:   

• The service should aim to reach 25 per cent of 13-19 year olds. 
• Of the 25 per cent reached, 60 per cent should undergo personal and social development which results in an accredited outcome. 
• The proportion of young people reached should include a locally agreed target for those not in education, employment or training (Neet), or who are at risk of teenage pregnancy, drugs, alcohol or substance abuse or offending. 
• 70 per cent of young people participating should express satisfaction with the service.   

Performance indicators for the youth service now include:   

• Spending per young person in 13-19 age range. 
• Spending per young person in priority groups. 
• Number of personal and social development opportunities and activities lasting between 10 and 30 hours and with a recorded outcome. 
• Number of personal and social development opportunities offered to young people lasting from 30 to 60 hours and leading to an accredited outcome.

2. Youth work curriculum   

The government has not laid down a national curriculum for youth work. The guidance on curriculum design acknowledges that youth work needs to engage with young people's interests as well as with social issues like health and crime. Each local authority and national voluntary youth organisation is expected to devise its own curriculum, based on the following elements  

• Learning outcomes derived from themes or topics based on needs. 
• Ways of teaching and learning to achieve these outcomes. 
• Performance criteria for assessing whether these outcomes have been achieved.

3. The new inspecting regime for the youth service   

• The number of Ofsted inspections is being increased to a four yearly cycle, with "more robust" follow-up, and full re-inspections after two years for services giving cause for concern. 
•  The government has said that the education secretary will use existing powers to intervene if a local authority is judged to be failing to provide strategic leadership for the youth service or ensure "high quality provision"