Services for young people

Memorandum submitted by CoMusica, The Sage Gateshead

· The relationship between universal and targeted services for young people; In the provision of universal and targeted services for young people the aim is fundamentally the same - to help enrich and empower a young person so that he or she can fully realise their own unique individual potential. This can happen in a whole variety of ways and so the services on offer have to be diverse enough to satisfy this demand. In both cases it is important that young people are consulted about the provision they receive and that they are able to influence the decision making process and outcomes. This also needs to be an informed choice, with the acknowledgement that there are options available to young people that they may not be aware of. It should be within any service provider’s role to help young people to think creatively about the kinds of activities they would like to be able to access.

As far as activities are concerned on a certain basic level the services may be the same e.g. a group playing music together. However when it comes to targeted services for vulnerable young people it is the environment that often has to be different in order for those young people to feel safe and to flourish. The size of groups will also tend to be smaller as there is often a greater need for more intensive and focused provision.

In the interests of cost saving an argument could be made for bringing universal and targeted services together but the evidence suggests that this does not work for vulnerable groups. The Sing Up Beyond The Mainstream (BTM) programme which has been working with Looked after Children (LAC) has shown this to be the case.

· How services for young people can meet the Government’s priorities for volunteering, including the role of National Citizen Service; In order to encourage volunteering from young people then the activity has to hold some interest and attraction as well as feel worthwhile. It needs to be self evident that the skills they are learning whilst volunteering will be useful to them.

The National Citizen Service promotes social action and this is to be welcomed. The concern would be how much it will attract young people who are already living in challenging circumstances. The programme almost has the feel of a ‘gap year’ activity that would appeal to young people about to go to college or post graduates.

The Foundation Learning programme at The Sage Gateshead targeting young people 16 – 18 years old classed as NEET encourages young people to take up volunteering opportunities. But the reality is that it is paid work they are looking for and there are only so many times they can be asked to volunteer if there are no job prospects coming out of the sessions. This can easily translate into a feeling of employers getting something for nothing. For some the experience of volunteering can be as bad as waiting around for hours with nothing to do. It is then very difficult to equate this experience with enhancing their employment prospects.

Encouraging volunteering from the pre 16 still attending school category is a good way of introducing the concept and engaging young people in the wider social curriculum. The pressure to get real paid work does not apply here. The Voltage Volunteer programme funded through Youth Music and delivered through The Sage Gateshead’s CoMusica Youth Music Action Zone has been successful because it has brought all the volunteers together to meet regularly outside of their volunteering placements. So there is a chance for them to discuss their experiences amongst themselves and with the project leader. From this process has come some valuable insights and the young people have been able to reflect on the benefits that they had come from these volunteering opportunities. Equally a not-so-positive experience can be fed back and ways of improving the situation can be found early in the volunteering experience.

· Which young people access services, what they want from those services and their role in shaping provision; The more able, articulate and confident young people in the community will be the first to access services on offer. They will also express opinions as to the quality of that provision and how much it meets their needs. However in a world of decreasing resources and provision one of our tasks must be to help vulnerable and marginalised groups develop a voice that will be heard and listened to.

The role of detached work is very important when it comes to reaching out to these disaffected groups and there is undoubtedly a place for arts and cultural practitioners to have some input here. The threat of closure to youth centres and community buildings means an even greater emphasis will be made on the effectiveness of detached work as a means of engaging with young people and signposting them to opportunities that may still be on offer.

The Sage Gateshead’s Youth Music Action Zone, CoMusica has been running a project called Urban Alchemy which is part of NE-Generation, the Legacy Trust UK funded regional programme for the north east inspired by the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games. The aim is to take music and urban arts into the spaces young people occupy in their daily lives. By being in the community there is a dialogue not only with the young people but also with the adults who live near by and so as well as addressing issues that affect young peoples lives there is also the added benefit of helping to tackle problems around community cohesion.

· The relative roles of the voluntary, community, statutory and private sectors in providing services for young people; In order to be more effective there is a need for all of these sectors to work more closely together in order to share practice, disseminate information and offer progression routes. Closer links will help to ensure that a young person does not ‘disappear’. Where employment opportunities are scarce the need for young people to continue to feel valued is greater than ever. Boredom is often a major factor leading to social disengagement. Cultural activities linked to volunteering and youth leadership can have an important part to play here but only if the activity is perceived as being interesting and worthwhile to the young person.

· The training and workforce development needs of the sector; The breadth of training on offer to practitioners should be much wider than simply addressing the teaching of a particular cultural or musical activity. The social pedagogy framework can embrace the needs of the whole person and link a young person’s cultural learning to the wider social curriculum. This is particularly relevant when it comes to marginalised, disaffected, vulnerable young people. Through cultural and musical engagement, the skills can be acquired to enable a young person to fully re engage with mainstream society, building confidence and self esteem as well as core functional skills.

The most effective approach to meeting sectoral workforce development needs would be to create a training environment that brings together people from the voluntary, community, statutory and private sectors. This would enable them to share practise, discuss needs and develop a better understanding of how each sector interacts with each other and with young people. It would also make it easier to build progression routes across the different sectors.

· 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; The impact of public sector spending cuts is most likely to be felt when it comes to high quality long term sustained engagement. It is here and particularly with vulnerable young people that strong, trusting relationships are formed not only with practitioners, but also within groups where mutual support and understanding can sometimes be the difference between a young person becoming completely isolated or remaining within a community where he or she continues to feel valued. Payment by measurable results has a part to play but it should not be at the expense of informal leaning where outcomes can be more difficult to quantify and calculate.

So the task is, can we find ways of measuring this informal learning and the outcomes that are sometimes almost invisible? This is particularly challenging when engagement ids only short term.

In terms of maximising available resources, these must be targeted at those who most need them. In some cases a young person, a group of young people or a community organisation, may be able to pay for these resources but the likelihood is that they will not. Even on a very basic level it is almost impossible to envisage these community organisations (even when run on a voluntary basis) being able to survive. We need to find wasy to work with the private sector to encourage them to take up the shortfall resulting from the current round of cuts. cuts)? There is an economic argument that needs to be won both with the public and the private sector - monies spent on activities that engage young people in a dialogue about their own lives and personal journeys is very small in comparison to the amounts that are spent dealing with the consequences and results of young people being abandoned.

· How local government structures and statutory frameworks impact on service provision; In the delivery of community arts, the relationship between arts practitioners and youth and community workers has not always been as good as it should be and this is always to the detriment of young people. Often there is a misunderstanding of each others roles and in some extreme cases one is seen as replacing the other rather than both practises being complimentary. There is a need for greater flexibility particularly when it comes to targeting the more vulnerable young people in our society.

The possible reducing of provision in key statutory services such as social services and health, means there is a greater need for youth services to be working within an educational and preventative framework rather than simply providing activities. Issues such as sexual health, drug awareness and community cohesion if addressed early enough in a young person’s life, even in simple economic terms, will not be such a ‘burden to the taxpayer’.

· How the value and effectiveness of services should be assessed; There is a danger that there will be too much emphasis placed on accreditation and short term easily measurable targets in the form of achieved qualifications. Some forms of learning and achievement are not so easily categorised and are dependent on long term sustained work with young people. Outcomes are more subtle and only recognised over a long period of time where contact is maintained. Opportunities for youth leadership and volunteering can play a part here, giving young people the chance to move from an initial participatory level in activities, to actually working alongside established practitioners helping to shape and deliver the services themselves. The effectiveness of services can also be more accurately assessed when evaluation and feedback has come through young people talking to each other.

December 2010