CWVYS is very sorry to learn of the sad news concerning the passing of Alan Higgins OBE OStJ in November 2024.

Alan was, among many other things, a CWVYS Vice-President for several years and spoke passionately at CWVYS’s 70th anniversary celebrations at the Senedd in 2017. We will cherish our working with him over the years, his commitment to improving the lives of young people in our communities was admirable.

We would like to share the words of our Vice President Prof Howard Williamson CVO CBE FRSA FHEA as he remembers Alan;

Alan Higgins Remembered                                                                                              

For many who knew him, they will remember a middle-aged man in a grey suit, with a tight mop of grey hair. A man who was always both affable and slightly aloof, driving a posh car and occasionally wielding his red pen in his left hand with the authority of a traditional school teacher.

I knew him in that way, too, but much more besides. Alan Higgins OBE (Other Buggers’ Efforts, he used to quip), OSt.J (which often required explanation – Order of St. John – though he didn’t use it much), had a dry sense of humour, a genuine interest in the views, work and contribution of others, and an absolutely commitment to the recognition and quality development of youth work, long before that became almost a broken record mantra throughout Europe.

I first met Alan in the late 1970s. Not long afterwards he was crafting and drafting the Welsh equivalent of the Thompson Report (Experience and Participation), which he discussed at length with me. Alan, the HMI (Her Majesty’s Inspectorate, later Estyn) for the youth service in Wales, wrote HMI Education Survey 13, published in 1984. By that time, he had also supported my appointment, through something called the DES Experimental Project Scheme, to evaluate the Ely Youth and Community Project. I had lived in Ely during the 1970s and returned there for that job. The publication from that project, Strategies for Intervention, is sometimes considered to be the precursor to the landmark Welsh Government youth policy Extending Entitlement. Alan’s hand (or red pen) was evidently behind the latter.

Years later, when I myself had acquired some level of recognition through youth work, the annual Christmas card from Alan always had a lengthy handwritten note singing my praises. I think he saw me as something of his protégé. He had tested me, perhaps been checking me out, when he was preparing Survey 13 and, by 1985 (International Youth Year) was recommending me to chair a new HIV/substance prevention youth participation project, Youthlink Wales. A teenage Sharon Lovell was, alongside Alan, one of the people on the management committee!

I suspect – I don’t know for sure – that Alan also recommended me to chair the Wales Youth Work Partnership later in the 1980s and then to become the Vice-Chair of the Wales Youth Agency in 1992, which I served throughout its existence. And Alan was always there, either independently or in his HMI role. Indeed, regardless of his formal position in any group or event, he was always seen to be the HMI, producing though not demanding deference and distance, one remove from the cut and thrust of youth work policy and practice in Wales, but always both overseeing and watching over what was going on. He was involved in so many ways. CWVYS will remember him as a long-standing Vice-President.

Alan was quite worried about retirement. I told him that, yes, he would lose his status but not the respect with which he was held in the field. He continued to turn up to events – in an elder statesman role. I would go to see him and chew the cud, having lunch at The Captain’s Wife in Sully, when he was always keen to catch up with youth work developments in Wales. He moved proudly into his 80s, still involved in community events in Penarth. Then he lost his beloved wife Margaret and he had a stroke. My last attempt at a conversation with him was when he himself could hardly speak. But he tried all the same and his courtesy and curiosity still shone through. He passed away on November 14th last year. That is also my son’s birthday and, for that reason, I will certainly remember Alan forever. I am deeply indebted to him for the support and motivation he gave to me and such a tribute no doubt resonates with many others who knew him, too.