Services for young people

Memorandum submitted by Kirklees Young People’s Service

1. Kirklees Young People’s Service

1.1. Kirklees Young People’s Service (YPS) is part of the Kirklees Children and Young People Service. YPS is located within the Localities group of services that, with schools, make up Kirklees Children and Young People Service (ChYPS).

1.2. YPS aim to provide young people with quality leisure opportunities outside of school time and engage young people with personal and social development.

1.3. YPS is working towards a seven area structure congruent with the overall Locality Strategy of Kirklees Council. The structure of YPS management and administration is organised to provide both locality operational management and cross - borough curriculum development.

2. The relationship between universal and targeted services for young people;

2.1. YPS delivers both universal and targeted services that complement each other well. An example is Soccer City; a Friday night football project. At Soccer City we engage young people with a universal open access model, but we also have in-house targeted services that young people can be referred into. Also by nature of being delivered on a Friday night in an area with identified anti-social behaviour it is delivered as a universal service to young people who would be deemed as being at risk.

2.2. There are two principle models of delivery where the relationship between universal and targeted services is hugely important. One is the use of commissioned programmes of personal development such as work with young parents, looked after children and alternative education provision within schools, which lead to those young people’s subsequent engagement in universal services. The second is direct referrals to targeted workers working one to one with young people in order to increase their access to universal provision.

2.3. We believe that targeted and universal services are often depicted as opposites to one another and we would argue that youth services should revert to a more fluid and flexible vision of provision. All our universal provision is fluid enough to incorporate targeted support.

2.4. Through the wide range of leisure services: youth clubs, mobile unit and detached provision, sports and recreation, play and junior provision we seek to offer these services universally and encourage young people from a wide range of backgrounds to engage. However we also recognise that there are marginalised groups in our community who need support and/or targeted provision to widen access and often our universal priorities will be placed in targeted areas to enable this.

3. How services for young people can meet the Government’s priorities for Volunteering, including the role of National Citizen Service;

3.1. We would argue that one of the aims of a good youth service is to develop young people as leaders in their communities. We believe young people can contribute to the social transformation in communities through their own personal and social development. We support the development of adults as volunteers in communities for various reasons including their engagement with young people as local role models.

3.2. We are concerned that there is a decline in national volunteering. This is seen in both youth work and sports and recreation. Packham (2007) discusses a downward trend in voluntarism that has continued since the 1960s/70s. There is therefore a concern that despite a commitment to volunteering that there is not a volunteering culture in our nation that can substitute for any part of a professional and paid youth service.

3.3. We believe however more emphasis can be given to supporting young people into volunteering and community leadership roles. It requires a professional youth service to support this activity.

3.4. We have a variety of examples where young people participate in their community as young leaders. Kirklees Youth Council (KYC) is a good example of youth volunteering. Thirty-two young people (aged 11-19 years) are elected to represent their peers whilst other young people volunteer their time to be involved in campaigning groups seeking to make change to local issues. An excellent example of this is when young people campaigned against the use of mosquito devices in Kirklees resulting in the ban of them in public spaces. As a further result of this, Mosquito devices are to be reviewed nationally by government.

4. Which young people access services, what they want from those services and their role in shaping provision;

4.1. There is a perception that universal services engage all young people. It is not wrong to recognise priorities are identified to engage the most disaffected and/or most vulnerable. Nationally we discuss engaging the most disaffected, but we believe the definition of disaffected needs reviewing. For YPS this is not exclusively a financial term. It is also about young people’s access to provision and is affected by a range of barriers including: social, cultural and geographical. Access should seek to be widened through identifying barriers and reducing these, often this will mean low cost provision in targeted/priority areas or targeted programmes for vulnerable groups. A good example is the Yorkshire Mixtures which is targeted provision delivered universally for young Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgenders in Kirklees. We recognise this is not ideal and young people should universally be able to access mainstream provision, but sadly it is not the case and therefore we provide provision they feel comfortable and safe within.

4.2. We also recognise there is a danger that services can be shaped by those with good articulation and communication skills. And so we strive to involve groups less able to voice their opinions. There is a need to listen and act on the views of those able, but this needs to be combined with strong support to those less able in order to shape good opinions.

4.3. All provision seeks to enable participation (voice and influence) and develop youth forums and decision making structures. We seek to enable these groups to engage with elected members and other decision makers directly and offer ideas about how services can better meet their needs. Sometimes this may mean that additional funding and/or other resources can be sought from decision makers.

5. The relative roles of the voluntary, community, statutory and private sectors in providing services for young people;

5.1. When working with young people we view the primary role of any sector involvement has to be to deliver services that are young person centred. Where services are profit and/or funding led there are difficulties in programmes being delivered to meet the outcomes.

5.2. We recognise the need to work to outcomes but this needs to be community led and therefore the above sectors work well with investors/funders who provide the means to enable the organisation to work with communities to develop and grow.

5.3. In order to increase young people’s access to provision, as discussed above, often services need to be affordable for the service user and therefore private sector organisations with profit led outcomes will struggle to develop this approach without the backing of financial investors.

5.4. We believe that all of the different sectors can work well together in addition to and support to a quality youth service. However we recognise that clear partnership agreements are needed along with good communication. This is a national need, and locally in Kirklees we have strived to develop quality Service Level Agreements in recent years to strengthen the provision for young people through complementary Youth Service provision with these other sectors.

6. The training and workforce development needs of the sector;  

6.1. Youth Work (Local Qualification), Sports and Recreation and Information, Advice and Guidance need individual and owned clear workforce development. Local and national drives to dilute these into a Children and Young People Workforce Development concerns us.

6.2. We recognise there are some elements that are the same in each of the above and other areas of the Children and Workforce Development. However we fear there are elements that are exclusive to each which are to be protected and must remain.

6.3. For example, workforce development in youth work has been through ongoing development programmes that enable people to be employed on a first rung (sessional youth work post) and then progress through the basic and foundations of youth work. To be engaged in a completely diluted Children and Workforce Development can be confusing and irrelevant and many will fail to complete or remain in the ‘first rung’ post.

6.4. It is essential also to recognise the path from young leaders to tomorrow’s workforce. More investment and training should be placed on developing young leaders.

7. The impact of public sector spending cuts on funding and commissioning of services, including how available resources can best be maximised, and whether payment by results is desirable and achievable;

7.1. Spending cuts and commissioning of services could result in reduction of efficiency and or more costly social difficulties in future. Youth Services are crucial in delivering provision that enables young people’s personal and social development, and they support and challenge groups to make positive contributions in their communities.

7.2. Efficiency savings can be made through better partnerships and better measurements of the work, but not through reduction in services.

7.3. Payment by results can work if there is a criteria/measurement that concentrates on quality and not quantity alone. It is important to measure numbers in our work with young people, but we need to discover and improve the ways in which we measure the quality.

8. How local government structures and statutory frameworks impact on service provision

8.1. In order to deliver quality provision clear structures and frameworks are crucial. Often changes are too lengthy, clear time frames need clarifying and people need to be informed. Often there are too many random changes; more consultation at grassroots is need.

9. How the value and effectiveness of services should be assessed.

9.1. In Kirklees we use a Quality Assurance process based on Peer Assessment. This has proven effective for staff and teams to review their delivery and to make improvements.

9.2. There is perhaps need nationally for a review of quality assurance standards and an improvement in training for all sectors. Returning to some of our earlier comments we need to ensure we are able to use Quality Assurance to ensure services are meeting the most vulnerable groups within our communities.

December 2010