By David Crimmens, Fiona Factor, Tony Jeffs, John Pitts, Carole Pugh, Jean Spence and Penelope Turner. Providing a range of guidance and support for 13 to 19 year olds to help smooth the transition to adult life is the aim the Government’s Connexions strategy. Getting the socially excluded into education, training or work is central to the success of the strategy. The authors explore how street based youth work relates to Connextions. They identify the tensions in the links and suggest where action is needed.

A national Anti-Bullying Alliance of more than 50 expert organisations has been launched to act as a national agency to work with teachers, schools and local education authorities to promote anti-bullying best practice across all schools. Anti-bullying experts will be based in every region of the country to provide practical help, advice and support in tackling all forms of bullying in schools. The experts will draw on recent regional conferences involving head teachers, teachers and pupils which explored the latest anti-bullying techniques and shared best practice.The Alliance will develop innovative, practical approaches to tackling bullying, which as well as physical or emotional assault also includes the modern menace of bullying by text messaging, email and Internet chat.

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The casualties of change management failure in public services are typically families seeking support from an absent parent and claimants of tax credits. In the past year these failures have brought cases of distress and financial hardship to the desk of the Parliamentary Ombudsman. In her Annual Report for 2003-4, Ann Abraham highlights the cost of failure in human terms. She sets out the weaknesses in change management processes and calls for a significant changes of mindset in government bodies.Her major criticisms are aimed at large scale changes in government services, underpinned by significant IT projects. The weaknesses she identifies are too little preparation time, not enough planning and no piloting. She is particularly concerned that change management plans to not include robust arrangements to ensure that redress is available when things go wrong.

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