Services for young people
Memorandum submitted by the Youth Work Unit for Yorkshire and the Humber
Executive Summary
1.i. Both universal and targeted services are needed and there should be an open flow between the two.
1.ii. The NCS should complement what already exists and not replace it; and there should be continuing support for the youth volunteering support organisations at a local level to facilitate young people’s positive involvement in volunteering.
Volunteering should not be seen as a way of running services cheaply.
1.iii. Young people should have a choice of activities and projects available at a reasonable distance and cost and where they can also talk with youth workers/ trusted adults; further they should be able to get involved and shape those activities and if interested, broader services, to meet their needs.
1.iv. Young people generally do not mind who provides activities and services so long as they are what they want – there should be a rich mix of different sorts of provision which begins with a clear and detailed specification, drawn up involving all potential providers and young people; however ‘capacity building support’ will be necessary and time to allow all organisations to develop and so have an equal chance of providing to the specification.
1.v. Training and workforce development needs investment at all levels as it is a key factor in ensuring quality.
1.vi. Youth work provision in both sectors, is already being severely reduced by the current cuts and there is a real worry that young people in many locations will have little available provision. The broader educational and developmental nature of youth work outcomes needs to be more fully acknowledged, and work done to assist in appropriate measurement and related value for money.
1.vii. Government should set the broad policy direction and endorse the overall purpose of youth provision and services as being to enhance the personal and social development of young people. LA and their partners and providers should decide on structures and manage the process with external checks from Local councillors and Ofsted.
1.viii. Both young people and staff should be jointly involved in quality assurance which should be part of any commissioning process. External quality marks are not necessarily delivering better quality. Work within the profession to refresh the Ofsted framework with learning from recent experience would be very helpful.
2. What should be the relationship between universal and targeted services for young people?
2.i. There should be a broad offer of services available ‘universally’ with young people able to choose and move between specialist and universal/ open access provision related to their need. Evidence shows that youth work provision is accessed extensively but not exclusively by marginalised and vulnerable young people, but it is the very universality and openness of the offer which facilitates their participation. Stand alone targeted provision can create ghettos and stigmatise, discouraging the very people who need it from accessing it. Universal provision allows for an informal or formal assessment of need and the movement of young people into appropriate ‘targeted’ or specialist support as and when they need it and back to universal and mainstream services when they don’t. Relationships built within broader provision creates trust and confidence that allows young people to participate in targeted provision; and a positive relationship between the two, ensures that there are still support systems in place after a crisis or particular work is complete. Universal and targeted are an interdependent part of the offer of services which should be available to young people so that they are able to choose what they need and want at any particular time.
3. How services for young people can meet the Government’s priorities for volunteering, including the role of the National Citizen Service.
3.i. Young people currently and for many years, have undertaken much volunteering activity both within projects as helpers, mentors, trainers, youth councillors, MYPs etc but also through specialist young people’s volunteering projects (eg MV and V) they have done much more. Good local infrastructure support in both youth organisations and in specialist volunteering organisations (eg CVSs and volunteer bureaus) is necessary to facilitate this. Without established local knowledge and contacts, coupled with the ability to accompany, introduce and support young people, many would not initially have the confidence or skills to volunteer.
3.ii. The YWU, with Y&H Forum (of voluntary organisations), recently produced a paper ‘Young people, volunteering and worklessness’ with case study examples of a wide range of youth volunteering. In this we highlighted both what is needed to sustain young people’s volunteering – local support, relationships, training - but also the benefits to young people personally and in terms of employability as well as to society more broadly.
3.iii. The NCS scheme is a welcome addition to the development opportunities available to young people but it must work with and complement what is already working well so that young people, where they live, can receive the appropriate support to facilitate their involvement both short and long-term.
3.iv. Volunteering is not a cheap option for running services but needs
resourcing by skilled support organisations if the young volunteers are to have positive experiences from which they can develop skills and confidence and feel valued and progress.
4. Which young people access services, what they want from those services and their role in shaping provision.
4.i. Young people irrespective of backgrounds, should be able to access a diverse range of groups, activities, services and specialist provision, motivated by their needs or wants. Their voluntary involvement and choice is key and recent surveys show that in addition to places and activities, young people do value having a relationship with and the ability to talk to a youth worker, a trusted adult interested in their development but not a parent, teacher, or other authority figure. Young people need access to most services close to where they live, as they have little capacity or money to travel distances though there is an understanding that accessing specialist services may only be possible at specified places.
4.ii. Evidence from voluntary and LA provision, from the recent Youth Opportuntities and Capital funds, MyPlace centres, Youth Councils and UKYP; show the very real contribution that young people can make by their active involvement in planning, shaping, designing, and financing of provision providing they are given the necessary information and support to do so. That support has to be given at a level and time appropriate to their interest. Young people can and do deal with the most complex issues within Youth Councils and organisations such as UKYP and have an appetite to do so.
5. The relative roles of the voluntary, community, statutory and private sectors in providing services for young people.
5.i. Young people generally do not mind who provides services so long as they are there when they want them, provide the sorts of experiences and opportunities they want, have a welcoming and non-judgmental atmosphere, allow them to have fun and to learn and develop as well as have an influence on running things. There has long been a mix of private, voluntary and LA provision complementing each other and facilitating choice, diversity and sustainability, this should continue.
5.ii. However, as resources shrink LA commissioners should come together with key VCS, young people’s representatives and others to produce detailed specifications of the flexible mix and range of activities and provision, the values, principles and developmental outcomes, quality measures etc so that the best organisation, from whatever sector, could be commissioned to deliver. This process should be a supported and resourced developmental process as neither the voluntary, LA or private sector is used to services being funded in this way. Without this contracts will be awarded either to protect vested interests or to facilitate compliance with the LAs statutory duty but without deep and serious consideration of which would be the best service for young people.
5.iii. Support is needed to move to this model and to ensure the delivery of high quality services; regionally based Youth Work Units are well placed to assist here, brokering relationships, and facilitating developments. Furthermore, young people need continuity and a broad range of sustainable developmental services not short-term funded targeted provision which young people cannot rely on and trust.
The voluntary sector in particular is keen to be commissioned and is often closer to local communities, more flexible and cost effective in their provision but will need time and resources to adjust to this new regime and to whatever accompanying monitoring requirements are specified.
6. The training and workforce development needs of the sector
6.i. The lack of financial support for the placement component of the Youth Work degree/ professional qualification puts a severe strain on professional formation, placement supervisors and the host organisation. The Youth Work profession does not receive equal treatment with other professions eg social work.
6.ii. At the pre-professional Youth Support Worker (YSW) level there has been a reduction in training, with fewer LAs running VRQs and NVQs as funding and staffing issues have increased. This has had knock on effects to those voluntary organisations who accessed YSW training via their LA. Some VYS organisations have registered and offered VRQs and NVQs but funding has been difficult. CWDC’s WSPP funding has been helpful, as has their support for management and leadership training, albeit with an IYS focus. More recently Progress, also CWDC funded, has facilitated access for young people’s workers to a variety of accredited QCF units relating to their particular work focus (eg play, sport. Youth work etc) but there remains a need for subsidised YSW training.
6.iii. CPD also needs investment in specialist and advanced areas particularly supervision and management and leadership. Progression routes need support so that a volunteer could become a professional youth work manager or to other related roles. The quality and availability of training is one way of ensuring the quality of the services used by young people and in A Picture worth Millions’ the young people’s workforce was seen to be under trained and under-developed and the picture will deteriorate with the current cuts.
7. 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.
7.i. Of the region’s 15 LAs all are facing significant cuts in 2011-12 on top of cuts made in 2010. Over a half of the 15 LAs have issued redundancy notices to their youth work staff and significant numbers of qualified and experienced staff have already been made redundant. Contracts with VYS organisations have been reduced or withdrawn so there too redundancies have been made and provision reduced or closed. In some localities there will be very little provision available.
7.ii. LAs are focused on meeting safeguarding requirements etc and so youth work is seen as an area ripe for cutting or out-sourcing. Commissioning work has been under-developed in youth work and now specifications are being drawn up speedily and in a cutting climate with the focus being what’s cheapest rather than what is needed or is good value.
7.iii. There is an acceptance in both VYS and the LAs that youth work needs to be accountable. Youth work has traditionally been seen as problematic when it comes to specifying the outcomes achieved and many initiatives and funding regimes have concentrated on targeted areas as they are easier to specify in terms of outcomes.
7.iv. Nonetheless, youth work is an educational process which contributes to young people’s development in many ways which can by described eg skill development, self awareness, resilience, self confidence, team skills, communication, understanding, attitude etc though they are not usually seen as an outcome, an ‘end’ but rather as a development along the way. Commissioners and those monitoring performance need to develop better and more sensitive measures which indicate growth and development and ‘distance travelled’, rather than that of outcomes or results which seek to specify the achievement of a particular point rather than on-going positive growth and development.
8. How local government structures and statutory frameworks impact on service provision.
8.i. A huge amount of energy and resource has been spent on restructuring in the LA sector, most recently with regard to the focus on the young person, on integrating services and Children’s Trusts. While this has brought benefits as shown in the recent Ofsted survey, there has also been a loss of discrete budgets and a shift in funds to critical areas such as safeguarding. Government should provide broad policy guidance about overarching outcomes and services as with earlier times (Albemarle, Thompson, Transforming Youth Work) and leave LAs and their delivery partners to manage the process of delivery and quality monitoring. Ofsted should be supported to refresh their Quality Framework which is still very broadly used within youth work and this could be used to underpin internal quality assurance and self assessment. This could be overlaid by periodic external inspections, which was greatly valued as providing external scrutiny and areas for improvement.
In the Y&H region we run a regional QA moderation scheme based on the Ofsted framework which gives external and independent validation and is widely recognised as helpful in terms of both quality and staff development.
9. How the value and effectiveness of services should be assessed.
9.i. See above re Ofsted.
All providers should be required to have internal quality assurance procedures and measures in place which facilitate users and staff engaging with the issue of quality. There are many good examples of young people being actively involved in quality assessment through mystery shopping, surveys, inspections, peer evaluations etc. Workers should also participate in quality measures and monitoring on an on-going basis. Commissioners should monitor this on-going focus on quality both internally and externally.
The external schemes often used for this purpose externally are not fit for purpose being over bureaucratic, expensive and procedure and process based rather than activity and service-user based.
Currently, the measures and management information collected relates to past regimes (eg recorded and accredited outcomes, NIs, PLINGS) and does provide some qualitative data but are less helpful regarding quality. Funding support for expert work within the profession would be helpful here and this could draw on models such as Results Based Accountability, recent Quality standards for Positive Activities, Ofsted and the various Quality Marks.
December 2010
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