Services for young people
Memorandum submitted by the Youth Service in County Durham
The relationship between Universal and Targeted Services
Striking the correct balance between universal and targeted services is always a complex issue however there are a number of underpinning principles that should be established. We believe that strong universal services are essential to the delivery of effective targeted work. Basically without good universal services those trying to offer targeted support could be overwhelmed by the increased number of young people requiring support. Good schools where young people can maximise their learning capacity and a good range of positive activities which offer young people the opportunity to develop new personal and social skills in their leisure time will minimise the need for additional or targeted support. The relationship between school time and leisure time is also important as those who are doing well at school usually do well in their leisure time and vice versa.
In other words accessible high quality universal services prevent young people becoming disengaged and excluded and in need of targeted work.
All young people should have access to a strong positive activities and youth work offer that they can engage with on a voluntary basis. Voluntary engagement is much more productive than engagement through coercion.
Universal work should be based on working with young people in groups whereas targeted work focuses on a young person’s individual needs.
The maintenance and delivery of frontline services is the key issue. It could be argued that under the last government the focus was weighted towards targeted work and the relationship became unbalanced. One of the dangers of integrated working/teams is that workers universal work becomes skewed towards offering individual targeted support which constrains and limits the universal offer through youth projects and sessions.
Every young person matters and we should seek to provide services and opportunities for young people because they are young people and not because they have a unique characteristic which results in them being labelled or categorised in some way. We should work with young people to make collective decisions about what the activities and programmes offered on their behalf look like and we should ensure that barriers to participation including cost and timing should be minimised as far as possible.
A curriculum that is rich and diverse, is culturally diverse and locally relevant and leads to improved outcomes should be delivered by skilled, enthusiastic and motivated workers. This is what high quality youth work does and the recent parliamentary debate concerning youth work reflected this position and was very positive in this regard.
Volunteering and the National citizenship Service
Through youth work young people are given the chance to volunteer within their communities and often to use this as a springboard to qualifications and a career. Award focussed work; particularly the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award is an excellent way of engaging young people in volunteering as reflected in one of the award’s sections. Through the award young people also learn a new skill, participate in physical activity and undertake an unaccompanied expedition. This balance of activities provides an excellent foundation for the personal and social development of young people.
The National Citizenship service would appear to offer a similar programme albeit delivered at a specific time in young person’s life, in an intensive way and over a shorter period of time. To be successful the service will need to be attractive to young people so that they participate with enthusiasm and commitment because they want to.
Which Young People Access Services, what they want from those services and their role in shaping provision.
Youth work is aimed primarily at teenagers and this should continue. The youth work curriculum and opportunities for socialising through group work is important to many teenagers and vital to some. Play work and activity clubs are more effective with young people who are pre teen. Youth work method is often more suited to working with teenagers than many pre teens owing to their more developed cognitive and emotional skills. In County Durham more young people aged 13-16 than those 17-19 year olds are engaged. The gender balance is almost 50/50. Youth work projects are usually based in more disadvantaged areas and tend to work with young people who are more socially and economically disadvantaged.
Primary age children appear to respond well to after school activities and to sport and activity clubs. This reduces when young people begin secondary school. A different offer is needed that includes youth work but also provides support and encouragement for young people to continue to use their leisure time positively especially continuing with sporting activity. A recent consultation carried out with over 1100 young people in County Durham also indicated that young people wanted to see more of this kind of activity on offer.
The very purpose of youth work and the relationships between the young person and the youth worker ensures that young people negotiate a programme that meets their needs. If it didn’t then they wouldn’t engage. What is important is to maintain a coherent balance between young people’s needs and wants. Increased emphasis on the young people’s voice is important and welcome however, it is possible that some of the responses of service providers have been too heavily weighted towards young people’s wants and not needs.
The payment of young people for their engagement has been controversial. The Youth Service prefers to recognise young people’s involvement and achievements through awards, positive publicity and extended programmes such as residential programmes and educational visits championing volunteering rather than remuneration.
Young people should have a voice in shaping services, but that should be in negotiation with adults. This form of working should also be a core skill of anyone working with young people thereby negating the need for any specialised teams of workers to work with young people in this way. If youth voice and participation are properly embedded into frontline service delivery then there is a greatly reduced role for specialists.
In County Durham the Youth Opportunity Fund and Youth Capital Fund have been very positively delivered. With the skills that young people have developed good decision making means that this work could be continued even with a significantly reduced budget.
The roles of the Voluntary, Community, Statutory Sectors and private sectors
The first thing that needs to be established is coherent clarification, common use and understanding of terms particularly "community and voluntary sector". In County Durham we believe in a strong partnership between local volunteers and the statutory sector. In terms of youth work delivery, the local authority provides professionally qualified youth workers to deliver high quality work while the buildings and projects are managed by members of the local community. The Local Authority provides grant aid that supports the revenue costs of organisations supporting youth work and making space available for the delivery of youth work programmes. This partnership approach ensures the involvement of local people in the delivery of local services and greatly increases the quantity of work delivered.
Third Sector organisations that are not locally based and private providers may have a greater role to play in delivering targeted or specialist services rather than universal service. However we believe that wherever possible locally based organisations supported by volunteers from the communities being served should ideally deliver targeted and possibly even specialist services. The department for Education is now using the term Civic Society Organisations which presumably refers to organisations working in this way. This should be clarified but appears to be a much better and accurate description than the all encompassing community and voluntary sector which can be misleading to communities and young people.
The Training and Workforce Development Needs of the Sector
Youth work is currently a degree entry profession (professional range); however, much of the workforce is hourly paid (support work range) and trained to level 3 in youth work. It is very important that this training is maintained with opportunities for young people and volunteers to begin with introductory courses which promote progression to formal qualifications.
It is also desirable that specific youth work training and development is continued. The concept of a universal skill set for anyone working with children and young people and the integration of services could lead to a generic training approach. However, this should not be at the expense of specific professional skills which ensure a mixed economy of services. For instance, the specific skills set that makes a youth worker, a careers advisor, a teacher and a social worker should be maintained. A broader and non hierarchical appreciation and understanding of those skills would also be helpful in ensuring that young people receive the support they require whilst eradicating professional divisions. What should be considered is making it easier for workers to transfer from one profession to another within the overall field of work with young people.
The impact of public sector spending cuts on funding and commissioning of services, including how available resources can be best maximised and whether payment by results is desirable or achievable
The potential impact of spending cuts on youth work could be terminal in some cases. Youth work tends to operate with a minimum of management and administration capacity and usually with little programme development funding and consequently, cuts will affect front line delivery very quickly. Most of the resources are used to employ staff so any cuts will mean that they impact almost immediately on front line delivery and youth club sessions and even projects and centres will close. This is completely at odds with stated Government priorities, and what young people and communities want. We all want to protect frontline services.
Communities are still consistently identifying activities for teenagers as a key issue in fact they want more not less. In County Durham, a recent consultation process through the 13 Area Action Partnerships has confirmed this view.
Since Transforming Youth Work most youth services especially here in Durham have worked extremely hard to ensure that the resources we have are used to deliver the maximum possible youth work programme. Youth workers are involved in face to face delivery as much as possible and any further cuts will have an immediately impact on front line delivery.
The relative lack of funding for youth work has meant that Youth Services have developed structures that maximise or indeed add value to the resources available. In Durham the partnership with local volunteers achieves just that. For example even the youth centres that are owned by the local authority are managed by local volunteers. The potential external funding generation function of this arrangement often results in grant aid given to the local committee being increased 10 fold in value.
Where workers are based with voluntary organisations the outcome of these partnerships can be dramatic. The successful Myplace project which will shortly open in Barnard Castle in Teesdale is one such example where input from the Local Authority has enabled a locally based voluntary organisation to realise a new £5 million development.
This approach, which has operated in Durham for many years, could be regarded as an example of the Big Society at work.
Payment by results is probably neither achievable nor desirable as young people should have a consistent universal offer of youth work available to them and adequate resources to provide it. Financial penalties may result in a reduction in service to young people who need it i.e. young people suffer unfairly because of the inadequacies of the provider. Inspection and observation should ensure its quality and targets for the provision should ensure results. Performance Management built on solid needs analysis and robust scrutiny and evaluation. What is important is that whoever is delivering the youth work offer is achieving high quality and best value. The quality and value of provision needs to be measured on a regular and consistent basis and where necessary contracts awarded to alternative providers.
How Local Government Structures and statutory frameworks impact on service delivery
In County Durham the partnership between local volunteers and the Local Authority Youth Service works very well. It allows the local organisations to raise funds that extend the resources committed by the Local Authority and extends the use of facilities. Some of the corporate requirements imposed by the local authorities, particularly in relation to hourly paid staff are onerous and time consuming without contributing to the quality of delivery and can result in a reduction in contact time.
How the value and effectiveness of services should be assessed
The value of external independent inspection is very important. The ofsted inspection was very valuable in Durham and also across the country in helping to drive up standards. We think they should continue (be reinstated).
The National benchmarks for youth work were very effective and we still use them in County Durham. We believe they are more effective and relevant than NI110. We believe that it is very important to measure not only engagement of young people but also what they have achieved.
December 2010
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