The European tradition of social pedagogy has, over the last 10 years, been gaining prominence in discourses around welfare in the UK. Initially this was the result of research into the efficacy of social pedagogy in residential services in Europe as compared with the relatively poor outcomes achieved for young people in similar services in the UK. More recently attention has focused on the way youth services could be reoriented if they were to adopt a social pedagogic approach. This paper considers these later developments and looks at how youth work in the UK could be re-energised by the insertion of a social pedagogic framework into the activities of youth workers. It argues for a perspective which moves beyond an individual focus on the young person to one which utilises an approach which recognises structural as well as individual perspectives. The paper suggests that to achieve this we need to draw on notions of the 'Common Third' and underlying commitments to inclusion and creativity