Services for young people

Memorandum submitted by Clubs for Young People

Executive Summary

Introduction

Clubs for Young People helps young people to achieve their potential through social and personal development opportunities. We provide support to our network of members, as well as deliver a national programme of initiatives. Our network comprises over 3000 voluntary youth clubs, youth groups and projects across the UK, helping close to half a million young people each year. We have been working with young people and youth clubs for over 80 years.

Our network consists of city and county organisations who provide locally tailored support to youth clubs and projects on a daily basis, community based member youth clubs and projects (who work with young people directly), and our national office, which as well as providing national representation, advocacy and resources, offers specialist capacity-building.

Executive Summary

Open access youth provision, as well as offering a preventative approach to more targeted support, can effectively reach some of the most disadvantaged and difficult to reach young people as it offers young people a level playing field, which does not stigmatise. Greater emphasis should be placed on a broader partnership approach that enables effective and appropriate signposting both to and from open access services.

To deliver on the philosophy of the Big Society there must be greater investment in volunteering. This investment includes funding, but also the development of appropriate infrastructure and accreditation, so that it becomes more valued and recognised. Open access services within the voluntary sector have had huge successes in engaging young people in volunteering, which needs to be harnessed.

All young people need opportunities to develop and learn outside of formal education, but for many young people this will become even more important in the current economic climate. We know what young people want; it is about making sure it is available and of high quality. Young people being involved in decision making about services is vital to the success of that service, but also important in young people seeing the difference they can make to the local community. The positive more recent developments in young people’s participation need to be strengthened through resources and support to ensure that quality youth participation is widespread, and part of organisational culture.

Changes in how youth services are delivered need to ensure that those with real knowledge about local need are not forced out of delivering services due to size and capacity. New structures need to facilitate real partnership working, so that local knowledge and expertise about young people is utilised. Government has a role in brokering relationships so that resources are used effectively, and real community development is achieved.

Commissioners need to improve how they commission, and not focus on targets but on outcomes; those delivering services need support and guidance to ensure that they are able to respond to this.

Training and development of the workforce is a high priority in order to deliver on the changing way in which services are to be delivered, and the new Big Society philosophy. One of the key areas will be ensuring that youth services are able to effectively demonstrate evidence of outcomes, in a consistent and comparative way – this is an area which needs investment and development, particularly within the voluntary sector, which get results, but need to effectively show how. Some standardisation of measures would be helpful.

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

1.1 Our clubs and projects work with those young people who would be considered the audience for a targeted approach but we do this through open access provision. We recognise that there are limited resources, and work will be focussed on those young people who need it most, but we believe this is possible through the provision of open access youth clubs and projects. We have seen the success of this approach during our 80 years of working in local communities, with our clubs working with some of the most difficult to reach young people. Our boxing and football programmes are a good example of open access services bringing young people together, taking part in something that is there for all young people in the community. It is not just for those young people that are seen as ‘hard to reach’.

1.2 A universal approach is also key to prevention, so that it diminishes the need for a more ‘targeted’ approach, acting as a sign-poster to specialist support as and when young people need it. Our youth clubs and projects deliver early intervention work with vulnerable and disadvantaged young people through an open access approach. Our reach also means that we are more easily able to engage particular disadvantaged groups with specific needs such as young people caught up in offending behaviour and those at risk of disengagement from education.

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

2.1 Within our network of clubs and projects there are many examples of young people volunteering, so any development in this area must learn from the work that happens in these clubs already, particularly how to engage with some of the most difficult to reach young people. There are young people already delivering on the priorities, with a whole army of young people who are waiting in the wings who are the future of ensuring the Big Society becomes a reality.

2.2 However, volunteering must be adequately resourced, with a solid infrastructure in place. Volunteering for young people should have formal standardised accreditation processes with progression, so that as well as seeing the value to the wider community, the personal gains are palpable too. Greater recognition and profile of volunteering will also help to establish it as a rite of passage in a young person’s life, which becomes part of their culture that they take into adulthood.

2.3 Importantly, within universal services young people are supported to see volunteering as part of their role within youth club provision, either through young leader training or Duke of Edinburgh. It is sold as part of the programme. Our involvement in the National Citizen Service will allow us to build on our volunteering strengths through structured community projects.

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

3.1 As our clubs and projects are strongly focused on open access provision, there is a wide range of young people that use our services. These include young people who have specific support needs, such as those young people not in education, training or employment, to those young people, who although do not have ‘targeted’ needs, use our services to learn and develop through activities and spend time with their peers in an informal setting, supported by quality youth workers. Many of the young people who use our services are also from local income families, due to the historical development of youth clubs in deprived towns and cities.

3.2 We know from our report Somewhere to Belong (2009) that young people want a quality club or centre to go to, with relevant and interesting activities and good staff and volunteers. We strongly believe in the provision of high quality facilities for young people – whether these are new myplace initiatives or clubs run in a community setting. We know from the Make Space Review (2007) that young people want something to do outside of school - somewhere to go and belong. There is nothing new in young people bemoaning the fact they have nothing to do. Young people, in many ways, have greater choice than ever before. However, there are greater restrictions placed on young people by parents due to concerns around safety and crime, as well as fewer open spaces for young people and more traffic. This makes having a local community base to call their own even more important.

3.3 Young people’s participation is vital to achieving the outcomes the service aims to deliver. Although there are some fantastic examples of effective young people’s participation, this is still patchy, both for the voluntary and statutory sector. Youth clubs are in a key position to ensure that a broad spectrum of young people can participate in decision-making locally but youth workers and volunteers at the clubs need to be adequately resourced to make this happen in a sustained way. Participation needs some capacity building to offer a long-term approach to engage young people, seeing a change in culture from a one-off event, to a way of working.

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

4.1 There is potential conflict in the Government’s own localism philosophy against the reality of developments in contracts and outsourcing from the statutory sector. The ethos of the Big Society is to empower local people and communities, with a lesser role for the state. However, although the state may have less of a role, it is possible that larger voluntary organisations, without the local knowledge and expertise, become the key players at the expense of smaller organisations. This would fail to deliver on the principle of the Big Society. The national and local structure for delivery will be key in ensuring there is a balance and true partnership work. Partnership with the community is very important in maintaining a local and relevant service which is in tune with local needs.

4.2 One idea muted by the Coalition Government was local youth federations. Without these needing to be overly bureaucratic, it would help to ensure that those involved in young people services would be represented locally and a point of contact for Government and national organisations, when service delivery opportunities developed. This structure would need more detailed consideration, but would help with local communication, partnership work, and ensuring that local need is the primary consideration.

4.3 The youth sector needs to better represent itself with consistent messages and become more united it is representation of young people’s needs and sector priorities. There is a role for the Government in brokering relationships between the private and voluntary sectors which would be welcome.

5. The training and workforce development needs of the sector

5.1 In order to achieve a fully functional, competent and confident workforce to deliver on quality services for young people, significant investment is needed within the voluntary sector. We need to ensure that community leaders and volunteers are equipped with the tools they need to ensure young people make the most of their lives. This would involve a complex and long term approach involving sustained behaviour change initiatives.

5.2 Community leaders need to be competent and confident in the management and sustainability of community facilities and the recruitment, retention and training of volunteers. By ensuring leaders have these skills we are creating a workforce that young people and volunteers alike can aspire to be part of.

5.3 From a youth club perspective there are a number of issues which are important. Governance training and support is vital to ensure there is a strong infrastructure in place to sustain voluntary clubs, and other youth related projects which will help to deliver on new government philosophies around how and by whom services may be delivered.

5.4 There needs to be significant investment to ensure all clubs (whether they are a small hut or a multi million pound facility) are resourced, confident and informed in delivering safe and effective services. An important part of this is monitoring and evaluation of services. If we are expecting volunteers and part-time staff to contribute to this process then we need to be in a position to support this through training and resources across the sector, presenting consistent and comparable evidence of outcomes. Clubs for Young People acknowledges that it will become increasingly important to demonstrate a return on any social investment and to engage with the Big Society Bank.

6. 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

6.1 The true scale of the impact is not yet known, however, a good starting point is to ensure that the impact of cuts on young people is fully understood before they are made. It would be short-sighted to make cuts now for the sake of immediate savings, with a need to re-generate these services in the future at more expense.

6.2 As resources will be tight, it is not helpful to waste these resources on unnecessary competition between organisations. Initiatives should be established that incentivise organisations to work together collaboratively longer term.

6.3 Payment by results would mean payment in arrears, which many smaller voluntary sector organisations would not have the funding to support. This would therefore favour larger organisations, going against the principles of the Big Society. This could potentially generate a system of larger organisations sub-contracting smaller organisations, to enable smaller organisations to participate, without taking a financial hit. This would need careful consideration.

6.4 Aspects of youth work will be difficult to measure, such as the developing relationships between young people and youth workers over time, and how this helps the young person. However, we can learn from initiatives such as Positive Futures, which has some good examples of outcome measurements in this area, and others.

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

7.1 Over the last few years commissioning has been about chasing targets, and not about the outcomes for those using services. Commissioners need to improve their understanding and use of outcomes measures; those delivering services need support and guidance to ensure that they are able to respond to this. This will be particularly challenging for the voluntary sector, which get the results, but need to be better able to demonstrate this.

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

8.1 As stated in the previous answer, the value and effectiveness of services cannot simply be about outputs, particularly when working with young people’s social and personal development. It is not meaningful for 50 ‘disengaged’ young people to have attended a football programme, without looking at what each young person gained from that experience. Nor is it meaningful to showcase the experience of one or two positive case studies, when 48 other young people did not share that positive experience.

8.2 Equally, previously unrealistic targets has meant those delivering services have concentrated on those young people who they believe will achieve the target, rather than supporting young people who need that extra help.

8.3 Services that are contracted out or new national initiatives that are set up must look at and be able to assess the overall experience for the young person. This should, however, be proportionate to the service, and realistic. Certain contracts have been prohibitive to the voluntary sector, particularly smaller based community projects, due to the administration of data collection and monitoring information required –there is simply not the capacity or resources to do this unless affordable and simple monitoring and evaluation systems are established.

Recommendations

· The role of open access services is recognised to be an effective tool in the engagement and delivery of targeted services

· Collaborative working within the youth sector should be positively encouraged and resourced

· Outcomes monitoring and evaluation systems are standardised

· Government brokers relationships with the private sector

· Organisations actively working in partnership with other sectors is encouraged

· Investment continues to be made in high quality facilities for young people

· Investment is made in the development of a professional workforce across the youth sector

December 2010