Services for young people

Action for Children is committed to seeing all young people fulfil their potential [2] . We empower children to overcome the obstacles in their lives that hold them back. We tailor our work to local circumstances, in partnership with children and young people, families, communities and local organisations.

Our services work with young people to intervene early in the development of a problem or early once a problem has been identified. We aim to prevent repetition of the problem or prevent further problems in order to break cycles of deprivation and behaviour in our young people - the adults and parents of tomorrow.

2.1 Our services:

· Enable young people to become active citizens in their own communities

· Support young people to stay in or enter education, employment or training

· Work with young people who are disabled [3] , homeless, leaving care, have caring responsibilities, and who are at risk of, or who have, offended

· Help young people during transition to adulthood

To do this, we;

· deliver both innovative and established evidence-based services that engage young people who find other services alienating;

· involve young people in the design, delivery and evaluation of our services;

· through working in partnership, draw on knowledge and expertise from across the public and voluntary sector.

2.2 We seek to open up opportunities, overcome barriers and build resilience. Our services take a holistic approach addressing wider problems including engagement in education, employment and training. We meet the needs of a young person based not just upon their age but on the stage that they are at in their development. [4]

3. The relationship between universal and targeted services for young people

3.1 Universal and Targeted services must work hand in hand

Our services work to prevent young people’s needs from escalating and seek to engage with the wider community to foster cohesion and responsibility. There must be a balance of local targeted and universal services working together to effectively deliver an early intervention response. It is important not to regard targeted programmes in isolation.

3.2 Universal and Targeted services working across a continuum of need:

Most young people will make the transition to adulthood with help and support from family and friends. But some young people struggle to make sense of the physical and environmental changes they face. Challenges will vary according to the age of a young person and may include changes to family structure, school and friendship networks, leaving school, residential care or entering the employment market. This can be especially difficult for those in marginalised, vulnerable or unstable situations. There must be a continuum of services that support young people – a universal base with targeted interventions delivered in a timely way. By working across this continuum we are able to identify problems earlier and intervene more effectively. We know universal services are most effective at picking up on needs early, enabling early action as soon as problems have been identified.

3.3 The importance of re routing young people into universal provision when the period of targeted support is completed.

Most targeted and intensive interventions have a drop off in effectiveness once the intervention has ended. Instead of leaving vulnerable young people stranded once programmes have ended, it is more effective to re-route these young people into universal services. Young people and their families will experience period flashpoints (especially at key transition stages) when it is important that they have access to approachable services early – before emerging problems escalate.

3.4 Universal services – reaching the most vulnerable

Our evidence [1] suggests that universal services are non-stigmatising making them more accessible and having greater reach to the most vulnerable cohorts of young people. Once these young people have come into the universal setting; targeted support can be pursued.

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

4.1 Importance of volunteering

Many young people use volunteering as an opportunity to broaden their horizons, test out future career paths and expand their social opportunities. Volunteering is a positive and rewarding experience that most young people benefit from through their school life or other extra curricular activities. It is important that all young people have this opportunity, can be a part of their local communities and the Big Society. Volunteering can also give a young person the experiences and skills to move them closer to the labour market.

Adults volunteering to mentor young people in our communities can have a dramatic impact on the lives of these young people and also foster intergenerational relationships. Our service, in partnership with Chance UK, outlines this further:

4.2 Action for Children and Chance UK in Liverpool – improving Outcomes

The Chance UK / Action for Children targeted mentoring programme for children in Liverpool and surrounding area receives referrals from schools. The project’s commissioners in Knowsley view the partnership and service as a model of excellence.

The Goldsmiths, London University, report (2009) into the impact of Chance UK’s early intervention mentoring programme found that mentoring reduced behavioural difficulties for 98% of children, with 51% no longer classed as having a behavioural difficulty.

In addition the researchers identified the following improvements:

Behaviour at school:

· 64% better anger management

· 62% more self control

· 55% more able to cope with reprimand

Social skills:

· 59% increased confidence

· 45% better at sharing and turn-taking

Academic attainment:

· 82% more interested/questioning

· 73% improved concentration

· 55% more willing to take risks as a learner

4.3 National Citizen Service

We welcome the National Citizen Service’s objective to enable young people to learn about social responsibility, its commitment to involve a balanced social and geographical mix of young people and understand that it is consistent with the core purpose of youth work. However, we are concerned that this programme may not ‘reach’ the most vulnerable young people in our communities such as, young carers, young offenders, care leavers and disabled young people. It is these groups of young people who would benefit the most from this service. The Government must be clear that this scheme will not replace the valuable work done by local youth services across the country.

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

5.1 Which young people access services?

Action for Children youth services tend to work with ‘the hardest to reach’ young people, including young offenders, care leavers, young carers, young people with mental health or substance misuse problems, teenage parents, homeless young people, those not in education, employment or training and disabled young people.

Evidence underpins our knowledge that the young people who access our youth services often face great challenges and transitions between the ages of 6 to 25 years. Our ‘Backing the Future [2] ’, ‘Growing Up [3] ’ and ‘Stuck in the Middle [4] ’ reports highlight the problems, situations and barriers they have to deal with [5] . These issues are not only in their personal and family relationships but in managing their emotional wellbeing as they move towards adulthood.

5.2 What young people want from those services?

When we asked young people if they could pick one thing to make a big difference to their life they said [6] :

1. Doing well at school or getting a good job (20%)

2. Getting the right benefits, or having more money (15%)

3. Finding a good place to live where I feel safe (13%)

4. Eating well or getting more exercise (11%)

5. Having someone I can trust to help me (11%)

6. Being able to take care of myself and be more independent (9%)

7. Getting more help and encouragement from people around me (6%)

8. Keeping away from crime (3%)

9. Getting on better with other people (3%)

Our services work with young people to make that difference in their lives and provide them with the advice, support and practical skills they need to move on successfully into adulthood.

5.3 The role of young people in shaping provision

A recommendation from our ‘Backing the Future’ report, which we produced with the New Economic Foundation (nef), was to embed a co-production approach as a way of involving young people in service design and delivery.

Co-production emphasises doing things with the involvement of young people as opposed to doing things to, or for them without their input. This recommends a ‘strengths-based’ approach which recognises the strengths; skills; knowledge and experience that young people can bring to the table.

Evidence has proven this approach will lead to a range of benefits including:

· Increased young person well being

· Improved services

· Improved community relations

Co-production provides young people with the opportunity to ‘be the change’. This means young people are a part of their own solution and have an active role in their own lives, making decisions, voting and becoming active citizens.

We aim to build on our existing participation work in the design and delivery of our services to embed co-production in our services.

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

6.1 Role of the voluntary sector

The voluntary sector has a number of roles in providing services to young people, including:

· Being innovative

· Having the ability to respond to emerging needs and identifying those needs

· Being independent – so we can develop our relationships with young people and their families

· Being community focused

· Acting as brokers between the different statutory agencies

· Co-ordinating multi-disciplinary working across agencies.

6.2 Services across different agencies must work together

Services need to be joined up across agencies and sectors, especially in light of the cuts to services. The most vulnerable young people must not be ‘lost’ as services that at one point overlapped and complemented each other are removed meaning there is a greater chance to fall between the gaps.

7. Training and workforce development needs of the sector

7.1 People working with young people need appropriate training to be able

to identify and support those at risk of leaving education, employment or training. Voluntary sector organisations often work with the most vulnerable young people and it is vital that the workforce has the skills, knowledge and confidence to help young people stay in employment, education or training.

8. 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

8.1 Impact of spending cuts

We are concerned that the reduction in local government funding will leave local authorities with no option but to cut frontline services, leading to front-loaded spending cuts on non-statutory youth services based on hurried, rather than evidence-based, decisions. This is likely to leave a gap in provision in this area as well as resulting in higher costs in the long term.

We are concerned that the cumulative effect of the withdrawal of Education Maintenance Allowance support, the Child Trust Fund, welfare reform and the removal of the cap on university tuition fees, as well as a reduction in funding for youth services locally, will make it more difficult for vulnerable young people to access opportunities in education and employment. The short-term cost savings delivered by cutting youth services and associated financial mechanisms of support will lead to higher costs in the long term.

8.2 How available resources can best be maximised

The government has said that the most vulnerable should be protected from spending cuts but we are concerned that tough funding decisions being handed down to local government will lead to a loss of services for young people and our next generation of adults and parents.

Our solution is to adapt local government funding arrangements to incentivise early intervention through a statutory framework to break the cycles of deprivation and neglect in the UK . Early intervention approaches for young people should be put on the same footing as crisis intervention services so that problems can be dealt with before they escalate and become more costly to the individual and to the state in both social and financial terms.

We see this statutory framework working with the following objectives:-

A. Local Authority early intervention accountabilities

B. Establishing long-term contracts for children’s and youth services

C. Funding arrangements to promote and facilitate early intervention

A) Local authorities held accountable to new early intervention outcomes framework

• The government must review the statutory framework for children’s and youth services to ensure early intervention is on a par with child protection and children in care

• The government must hold local authorities accountable for delivering the following outcomes for young people:

– Improved emotional wellbeing (preventing neglect)

– Good health

– Attainment and education

B) Establishing long-term contracts for children’s services

• Local authorities must offer long-term service contracts to ensure:

– cost effectiveness

– retention of staff

– local/community service impact

– delivery of payment by results

• Contracts must operate a payment by results model to incorporate front loaded payment for delivery and bonuses for results achieved which are reinvested.

C) New funding arrangements to promote and facilitate early intervention

• Government departments that will make savings from early intervention approaches must be required to re-invest savings in early intervention services

• Levers for co-investment in early intervention (i.e. place-based budgets) must be prioritised and rolled out nationally

8.3 Early Intervention Grant

The new Early Intervention Grant is welcome but we are concerned about how the government plans to ensure that youth services do not lose out to other areas of spending through this grant as these services are not seen to provide early intervention. Early intervention relates to being early in a child’s life, but also early in the development of a problem and early once a problem has been identified.

8.4 Is payment by results desirable and achievable?

Any system in which funding is directly linked to the results delivered will have to be highly sophisticated and transparent to function effectively. There will be many ‘results’ that are difficult to measure in the systematic way that ‘payment by results’ contracts might require. Impacts such as reducing offending behaviour can only meaningfully be measurable after a long period of time. Unless a sophisticated system is adopted, which looks at reach, medium indicators of success and longer term measures, the reform will cause problems as most voluntary sector organisations are only issued with contracts on a short-term basis.

The commissioning process must incorporate some element of Social Return on Investment (SROI). We want to see the payment by impact framework developed to support those elements which make the greatest difference. A stable professional relationship based on trust is what makes the difference in delivering successful public services. To help those most in need, intensive, services need to provide personalised family support based on sustained relationships with highly trusted, skilled workers.

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

The economic climate will inevitably mean reductions in spending on local services and there is already evidence to show that spending on youth services will be adversely affected [7] .

Statutory frameworks currently incentivise crisis intervention services which are generally more costly and less effective than intervening early to tackle problems before they emerge.

Intervening at an early stage can prevent young people from becoming trapped in the revolving prison door or getting caught up in the same cycles of deprivation and neglect that have trapped previous generations.  Making savings in the wrong places now will only cost the public purse further down the line when problems spiral and become intractable. Our solution to this problem is outlined in 8.2

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

It is important to assess the value of a service in terms of the impact it makes on young people, communities and society – using tools such as SROI analyses. The primary determinant of a service's effectiveness is the positive impact it makes on the service-user – the outcome it achieves. Such tools add to this approach by looking at primary outcomes and the value of the service to users, families, communities and the state. Importantly they consider value rather than unit cost.

10.1 Action for Children approach

Action for Children’s has adopted an ‘Outcomes Framework’ which is implemented and monitored across our services.

From 1 July 2009, services were required to apply our outcomes indicators to all young people receiving support. There was an expectation that additional indicators would be selected to meet the individual needs and priorities of the children and families using our services.

Our Outcomes Framework is based upon the systematic application of the baseline and an impact approach to determine the effectiveness of interventions. In producing a service plan, staff use the outcome indicators to establish a baseline against which progress is measured at the point of subsequent reviews.

It is important that services embrace a learning culture where staff work together as a team to gain a shared understanding of and an enthusiasm for developing evidence based practice. Strong leadership and good supervision contributes to this learning culture. Our staff welcome training opportunities that focus on assessment, analysis and target driven service planning.

December 2010