My friend Bill Cox, who has died aged 83, was a youth worker and founder member of the Federation for Detached Youth Work. He worked for more than 50 years in the field, a commitment for which he was appointed MBE in 2014.
“Detached” youth work supports young people in their own environments, such as on the street, in parks and in shopping centres. In 1974, after a period of volunteering and training, Bill became a detached youth worker with the Merseyside Youth Association (MYA).
In the 1980s he was a senior field worker at the MYA and thereafter he took responsibility for training those working in the voluntary youth sector across the county. Even after retiring in 2004 Bill continued to support many youth organisations and charities, including the Federation for Detached Youth Work, which he co-founded in 1996, and of which he was made life president in 2002. I joined the board of trustees in 2000 and worked with Bill until 2022, when he took a back seat due to ill health.
Born in Dingle, Liverpool, during the second world war, to Elsie (nee Ambage), a bookkeeper, and William Cox, a tank driver in Europe and later a British Rail lorry driver, Bill was the eldest of four children. He attended Dingle Vale secondary modern school then Everard Avenue technical school.
In the 1950s he started work as an apprentice silk screen printer. He also began volunteering at the Queens Road youth club, a so-called “cellar club” where he also formed a band, the Tropics. With Bill as lead singer, the Tropics played in a variety of venues including the Cavern, and produced an EP in the Percy Phillips recording studio in Kensington, Liverpool. Later he became the lead singer of the Plazzy Bags, who also acted as a backing group for the monthly “Singers’ night” at Frames hotel in Liverpool.
In 1968 Bill undertook a leadership course at Liverpool Youth Service’s training centre, then in 1970 gained a diploma in youth work at the National College for the Training of Youth Leaders in Leicester, and became the first full-time youth leader of the Rock Church Centre in Liverpool. He continued his professional training at Manchester Polytechnic, gaining a certificate in advanced youth and community studies in 1979.
Bill married Shirley Taylor in 1964. They had two sons, Billy and Tim. The marriage ended in divorce. In 1978, he married Jude Wild, a youth worker, who in 1982 documented their work in a book called Street Mates.
Jude survives him, as do Billy and Tim, four grandchildren, Daisy, William, Ellie and Carys, and his siblings, Bryan, Linda and Ann.
