This book is a good ready-to-go manual for the new or busy coach looking for new ideas or reinforcement of practice enthusiasm. Whether it lives up to its promise of providing lasting solutions is something that only time and longitudinal research studies can tell.

This is a rigorous scholarly text dedicated to a very real social problem, and it does try to identify successful and unsuccessful community and state-wide attempts to prevent or reduce youth problems. It doesn’t pretend to be a self-help book or parenting manual, or indeed a profound philosophical or political analysis.

At a time when Complementary and Alternative Therapies have (again) been under fire from some university scientists for falsely claiming scientific status, and in an era of evidence-based psychotherapy, this book is a key text. It should have a place on all postgraduate counselling and psychotherapy courses, but I suspect it will not be so readily accommodated.