Services for young people

Memorandum submitted by Catch22 Community Youth Volunteering Programme

Catch22 is a local charity with a national reach. We work in over 150 towns and cities, with tens of thousands of young people every year – supporting young people with tough lives who are facing difficult situations. They may have had tough upbringings or are living in difficult neighbourhoods.

Our programmes help to develop their confidence and skills to grasp solutions that are right for them; from getting back into school or into training, choosing to stay out of crime, finding a safe place to live and helping them with the skills needed to live independently after leaving care or custody.

Introduction and Key Points

Catch22 welcomes the opportunity to respond to this inquiry. Catch22 is a young people’s charity which provides a variety of services to 37,000 young people every year across England and Wales. We have services that support young people with issues such as education and training, employment, housing, youth justice, early intervention and prevention, and drugs and alcohol. Our services vary from universal programmes for young people, such as Positive Futures or Youth Inclusion Programmes, to highly targeted specialised support services. We not only support young people as individuals, but also within the context of their family and community, for example through Family Intervention Projects or Community Space Challenge.

Catch22 has restricted its comments to those points on which we specialise.

The relationship between universal and targeted services for young people

Catch22 believes that both universal and targeted services have important elements for ensuring that young people are properly supported.

Universal services play a vital role in enabling young people to come together in an environment which they feel is comfortable and non-stigmatising, where they can spend time. However, some universal services have historically had a poor reputation, based on perceived inconsistencies in service delivery and the quality of the service being dependent on the quality of the staff.

Universal services are also an excellent forum for the identification of young people who might have higher support needs. Yet many universal services have traditionally missed the opportunity to identify young people who need more support and refer them on to the services they need as appropriate. This signposting role is a key.

Targeted services, in contrast, deliver a specialist service for young people with high support needs, for example, for those young people who need support with drug and alcohol issues, reducing reoffending, or to re-engage with education or training.

Catch22 Positive Futures operates through a framework of ‘Targeted Universalism’:

· Services are targeted in the 20 per cent most deprived communities, working in community centres and at the heart of difficult estates. Positive Futures projects also work closely with key local partners such as Youth Offending Teams, the Police, Social services and local schools who refer young people to the projects who they identify as ‘at risk’.

· Services are universally open to all those young people who want to take part, regardless of whether they are ‘at risk’. Services and projects are set up so that they are visible to everyone in the local community, for example by using outreach, in order to actively encourage this access.

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

Services for young people provide an excellent opportunity for people to get involved with volunteering. Catch22 has over 800 volunteers who are essential to the success of our work. Our volunteers deliver mentoring, administrative support, victim-offender mediation, and help with employment and training opportunities. In 2010, Catch22 achieved the Investing in Volunteers quality standard from Volunteering England which recognises our commitment to volunteering and our volunteers.

Enabling young people to get involved in volunteering is key, particularly for those young people who are perhaps less confident and less well supported by their families, including those who are less financially supported. There is a risk that some of these young people are getting left behind and are unable to access volunteering opportunities. It is important that they are supported and enabled to identify and take up volunteering opportunities, as well as being supported to help them maintain their placement. This is a key role of the Catch22 Community Youth Volunteering Programme (please see Appendix 1 for details of this service).

Catch22 has recently been named as one of the providers of the new National Citizen Service pilots. The strength of our involvement is Catch22’s experience of working with disadvantaged young people and within community partnerships to make citizenship truly inclusive for all young people. NCS will give Catch22 the opportunity to develop more opportunities for young people and adults to volunteer together in their communities in exciting and innovative ways, as well as offering many adult volunteers the chance to get involved in delivery key aspects of the programme in their local areas. Catch22 will deliver a programme that targets those who will benefit from it most. Leading one of the largest pilot consortia, with a national reach, will be an exciting challenge and we are looking forward to working with young people up and down the country to prepare them for the responsibilities that go with citizenship.

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

Catch22 specifically works with young people with tough lives who are facing difficult situations. They may have had tough upbringings or are living in difficult neighbourhoods. Our programmes help to develop their confidence and skills to grasp solutions that are right for them; from getting back into school or into training, choosing to stay out of crime, finding a safe place to live and helping them with the skills needed to live independently after leaving care or custody.

Our experience of working directly with young people means that we are extremely well placed to know what young people want from services and to ensure that they have a role in shaping provision.

Young people constantly tell us that one of the things they value most in a service is consistency of personnel, they want to be able to see and talk to the same person each time. They want that individual to be highly trained so that they are able to help them with their problems, or support them to contact those who can. It’s also vital that that individual follows through on actions, doing what they said they will do. They tell us that they need to be able to rely on someone.

Young people also tell us that they enjoy being able to access good quality services, both in relation to the quality of the staff, but also the quality of the premises and facilities themselves. It’s important that clubs have good facilities and equipment that are well maintained; experience tells us that when young people sense that something is special and done for them in a caring way, they respond.

Finally, young people tell us that they want services to be available from a young age and to be open at peak times, such as Friday and Saturday nights. In 2010, the Positive Futures Youth Advisory board developed their "Six Steps to a Safer Britain" which set out how they want things to be done [1] . One of their key steps was for "More Friday and Saturday night activities" and places to go for weekend activities (please see appendix 2 to hear Sue’s story):

Catch22 is committed to effective participation by young people in designing and delivering services. Catch22 was the first national voluntary organisation to adopt the "Hear by Right" (HBR) standards framework to ensure that service user involvement is firmly embedded at the centre of all the charities activities. HBR builds in service users’ voices in a systematic, sustainable and effective way across the organisation at local, regional and national levels, to empower young people to take responsibility for their own planning, and to inform the development of the service to ensure it meets their needs. For example, Catch22 in Cheshire regularly delivers overnight short breaks for young people and strives to empower participants to be as involved in the process as possible. (Please see appendix 3 for C’s story of how he got involved).

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

The voluntary, community, statutory and private sectors all have a vital role to play in the provision of services for young people.

The statutory sector is well placed to be a commissioner of services, to be delivered by the voluntary and community sector (VCS), and the private sector where appropriate.

The VCS is in a unique position to deliver flexible and bespoke services to young people who have high support needs by, for example, finding the ‘hook’ by which to engage them. The culture within the voluntary and community service is extremely effective at engaging young people, delivering services in a way which enable young people to relate to staff which ultimately leads to better outcomes for young people. At Catch22, we have a network of professionals who are properly trained to work with young people, everyone from social workers to resettlement brokers. Our staff form meaningful relationships with young people; they care about what they do and the impact they have. They understand how to reduce the risks young people face and strengthen those things that protect them and allow them to move on in their lives (please see appendix 4 to hear about how the Catch22 North Kent Vocational Skills Centre finds the ‘hook’.)

The VCS is also in a unique position to innovate and respond flexibly to new demands due to the structure of the VCS, their ability to cut across government programmes and funding streams, and the passion of staff or volunteers. A number of new approaches to social problems began within the third sector, from needle exchanges to family support centres.

Finally, t he VCS place s the importance of participation and empowerment of young people extremely high ly within young people’s services. For example, within Catch22, supporting young people’s participation is included in the core competencies for all staff, and young people are regularly part of interview panels for positions.

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

Catch22 is extremely concerned about the impact of the recent cuts announced with regard to the funding and commissioning of services. The announced cuts to local authority budgets will have a deep impact on our local services. However, we are hopeful that there will be opportunities for the VCS within the Decentralisation and Localism Bill where organisations will be able to challenge Local Authorities where we are able to demonstrate value.

With regards to payment by results, Catch22 strongly believes that services should be held accountable for the work that that they do and that payment by results (PBR) contracts for service providers are a very effective way of ensuring this.

However, for PBR to work for the VCS, there needs to be the means to capitalise them whilst larger organisations might be able to borrow on the basis of showing sound delivery models that will bring results. There is also a danger that large corporates with their greater resources will win the bulk of the contracts, then top-slice the contracts leaving less money for the VCS, but then also pass the risk and the cash flow requirements on. It is important that safeguards are put in place to ensure that this does not happen.

PBR could create significant challenges for the VCS because there is still a question for many of how to prove effectiveness of their services. Services will need support to be able to gather the necessary evidence which proves to potential funders that services achieve results.

However, social impact bonds a more attractive model for the sector. PBR as well as social impact bonds both rely on clear financial modelling around the delivery of the service but whilst PBR places the risk on the provider organisation, the risk with a social impact bond remains with the funder. 

With regards to contracts, it is important to ensure that they are designed in such a way to ensure that the financial incentives for providers do not result in those young people who need the most support being "parked" in favour of those who are easier to help. It is also important to develop sophisticated ways of measuring results, based on a scale, rather than binary measures.

How local government structures and statutory frameworks impact on service provision

Local government structures and statutory frameworks can impact extremely positively on service provision in a number of different ways. For example;

· By facilitating the link between organisations working within the communities, enabling partners to network together and reduce duplication in service provision. For services to be successful it is imperative that they are commissioned and delivered within both a strategic and operational co-ordinated framework of support for children and their families. With such a range of need and circumstances affecting children and young people, the requirement for agencies to be working seamlessly and ‘joined up’ is essential (please see appendix 5 for an example of cross-agency working).

· Through the development of services and standards to ensure consistency in the quality of service delivery.

Conversely, local government structures and statutory frameworks can inhibit the flexibility and innovation of a service. For the VCS to be able to truly provide innovative services which provide real choice for citizens, we need to be given the space to do so. Often, services are restricted to operating within a narrow remit, such as just providing housing support, or just providing drug and alcohol support. However, we know from our experience of working with young people that these issues rarely present in isolation. Rather, they are often interrelated and mutually reinforcing.

As such, as part of our Ready or Not campaign, we are calling for services for young people to support them in the round, taking account of all their needs [2] . It is not only more effective, but also more cost-efficient, to work with young people across the range of their support needs at the same time, rather than expecting them to navigate the maze of different agencies for support with different issues.

Catch22 is encouraged by the recent announcement to pilot Community Budgets to give councils and their partners control over local spending to tackle social problems around families with complex needs by pooling funds for tackling these families' needs into one budget.

How the value and effectiveness of services should be assessed

Catch22 has long been calling for the value and effectiveness of services to be assessed on the outcomes that are achieved, rather than simply the outputs, without forgetting that young

people themselves are the most important part of our work.

At Catch22, we are constantly evolving new ways in which to improve outcomes for young people, drawing on relevant research and evidence-based practice to inform the design and delivery of our services. The impact of our work can often be measured in terms of considerable longer-term cost savings.

It is vital that services are able to show the impact that they have on a young person’s life, such as helping them to move into education and training and from there into a job, or helping them to reduce or stop substance abuse.

However, for many VCS organisations, the assessment of the value or effectiveness of services could be a challenge, particularly as we move to PBR models of working, and there is a role for Government in supporting them to do this. Services need to be supported to collate this type of information, for example putting the correct infrastructure and resourcing in place to allow them to keep in touch with the young people they help – seeing the impact of their service not just in the short term, but over the months and even years to come.

It is also important that state-run services are held to an equally high standard in respect of evidence of effectiveness, to ensure that the state is getting the best value for money and that young people are being effectively supported.

Conclusion

Catch22 welcomes the opportunity to respond to this inquiry. In conclusion, the key points we would like to raise are as follows:

· We believe that both universal and targeted services have important elements for ensuring that young people are properly supported. Catch22 Positive Futures operates through a framework of ‘Targeted Universalism’.

· Services for young people provide an excellent opportunity for people to get involved with volunteering. Catch22 has over 800 volunteers who deliver mentoring, administrative support, victim-offender mediation, and help with employment and training opportunities. We need to make sure that all young people are supported to volunteer, there is a risk that some young people are getting left behind.

· Catch22 has recently been named as one of the providers of the new National Citizen Service pilots. The strength of our involvement is Catch22’s experience of working with disadvantaged young people and within community partnerships to make citizenship truly inclusive for all young people.

· Our experience of working directly with young people means that we are extremely well placed to know what young people want from services and to ensure that they have a role in shaping provision. Catch22 is committed to effective participation by young people, we were the first national voluntary organisation to adopt the "Hear by Right" (HBR) standards framework.

· The VCS is in a unique position to deliver responsive, flexible and bespoke services for young people who have high support needs. The VCS has a culture which is extremely effective at engaging young people, ultimately leading to better outcomes. At Catch22, we have a network of professionals who are properly trained to work with young people.

· Catch22 strongly believes that services should be held accountable for the work that that they do. A payment by results (PBR) model is one effective way of ensuring this. However, social impact bonds are a more attractive model for the sector. For some organisations, the assessment of effectiveness of services could be a challenge. There is a role for Government in supporting them to do this.

· Local government structures can impact both positively and negatively on service provision. However, for the VCS to be able to truly provide innovative services, we need to be given the space to do so. We are encouraged by the recent announcement to pilot Community Budgets.

December 2010