Targeted youth support: redesigning services - rationalising resources to provide better things to do

Issue

Lots of local authority agencies in South Tyneside provide activities for young people, but some of this provision is not joined-up, which can lead to either gaps in provision or the duplication of activities.

Individual young people may or may not be accessing a range of activities, but as attendance information is not shared between agencies nobody knows.

Background

The following teams all provide separate activities for young people through a series of summer programmes:

• Youth offending team
  
  
• Youth inclusion partnership
  
  
• Youth inclusion support panel
  
  
• Drug action team
  
  
• Youth service
  
  
• Cultural development
  
  
• Sports development

The programmes are not coordinated and the local youth parliament is aware that many young people want to change some of the activities and when and where they are provided.

The youth service had produced a pledge of entitlement for places to go and things to do, but it did not include all of the activities and agencies.

Actions prompted by targeted youth support

A targeted youth support (TYS) change team was formed to look at things to do and places to go for young people. It focused on three areas: publicity, existing programmes and consultation.

The engagement of young people is a key part of this process. The team has supported the development of a youth audit group (a sub-group of the Youth Parliament) to monitor and assess the provision of activities through quality measures using, for example, a mystery shopper approach.

A meeting of representatives from the various agencies that provide activities was also convened. The group recognised the need for better coordination between agencies to give a better spread of activities which are more responsive to the requirements of young people.

Benefits and results

The representatives from the agency teams have agreed to meet on an ongoing basis to coordinate the activities they provide over the summer. They are including young people in the development of a combined summer activities programme.

The change team is building on the youth service's experience of producing its pledge of entitlement to produce a much broader and inclusive pledge that includes the provision of activities by all authority agencies.

There is a matching expectation that young people taking part in activities are responsible, courteous and polite. In addition, a complaints procedure is being developed for young people to feed back to current service providers.

A sub-group is looking at using different technologies to publicise the activities and the pledge of entitlement.

One result of the improved collaboration between the youth service and cultural leads in the authority is a trip to take three bands from South Tyneside to play a festival in Paris. A reciprocal trip is arranged for bands from Paris to play in South Tyneside. This broadens the horizons and aspirations of young people in the area.

The expectation of both young people and agency staff is that the improved provision and range of activities will enable young people to make more positive choices which will reduce youth offending, antisocial behaviour and other negative outcomes.

TYS has been challenging on top of my day job, but it is good stuff and it's really helping us to rationalise our resources and improve services

Steve Southern, TYS management team, South Tyneside local authority

The local authority

South Tyneside is an urban deprived metropolitan borough authority. Its statistical neighbours include Sunderland, Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead, Salford, Sheffield, Portsmouth, Tameside, Stoke on Trent and Blackpool.

Click to read more case studies on redesigning services to help young people with particular needs.