Denmark

The Danish government does not have an overarching national youth policy in place. Instead, each sector has its own responsibilities regarding measures for youth and addresses these within its own relevant policies. As described in the Youth Policy Article (2008), this range of programmes and activities conducted cross-sectorally forms "the framework of our Danish youth policy." As such:

"the Danish youth policy is not an isolated, self-contained system within Danish legislation and policymaking. It is an integrated part of the general policies that support Denmark as an enlightened and open, democratic welfare society that is based on social coherence and strives to give everybody equal opportunities to obtain an education, a job and social security, thus creating the basis for the participation of young people in society."

There is no single authority responsible for youth in Denmark according to the EU Youth Wiki. Rather, the Danish approach is to tackle youth policy on a sectoral basis; for instance, by addressing youth and health, socially marginalised youth, youth and education, and other specific topics. Thus, different governmental authorities address different youth policy issues. For example, the Ministry of Children and Education, the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Culture all incorporate some aspects of youth policy into their work.

The Danish Youth Council (DUF) is an umbrella organisation for 80 children and youth organisations. DUF states that its core values are "participation, dialogue, volunteerism and influence", with a strong focus on the participation of youth in democracy. One of its main goals is to unite and develop youth organisations under these fundamental values. DUF also manages the distribution of allocation funds (surplus profit from Danish lottery tickets) for youth-oriented work, the majority of which is directly given to national youth organisations. Finally, DUFrepresents the interests of youth organisations by regularly speaking to politicians and consulting in policy-making processes at the local, national and EU level.

In Denmark, according to the EU Youth Wiki, youth work is not a formally recognised profession, and the term "youth work" is not widely used. Instead, it is more common to refer to "working with young people." Nevertheless, as stated in the EU Youth Wiki, the tradition of youth work in Denmark is more than 170 years old and remains strong despite the lack of a national framework or legislation. In practice, the majority of those who work directly with youth are volunteers or are paid on a part-time/per-session basis. Furthermore, the majority of national youth organisations are run entirely or almost entirely by volunteers. Because youth work is not a recognised profession, there are no minimum training or qualification standards to become a youth worker. However, the majority of youth workers have a background in education or social work.

It was not possible to locate budget figures at the time of writing. If you have this information, please contact us at: factsheet-updates@youthpolicy.org