Targeted youth support: redesigning services - universal services link with teenage pregnancy, substance misuse and looked-after children

Issue

Bullying, violent behaviour and a whole range of other problematic behaviours are acquired at a young age. The challenge in Worcestershire was how to ensure early years work tackles these potential problems, to reduce the risk of them manifesting at all and improve children's and young people's resilience to them should they occur.

Background

There are a lot of separate meetings in the authority and the primary care trust (PCT) about common topics, but the information and discussions are not shared across the involved agencies. Staff from services for young people are involved in many of the meetings and committees.

This lack of coordination is impacting negatively on outcomes for young people. For example, a recent teenage pregnancy report highlights poor aspirations as a key factor leading to teenage pregnancy and identifies a need for greater coordination of the support for young people to help raise their aspirations.

Actions prompted by targeted youth support

A targeted youth support (TYS) change team was formed including the teenage pregnancy and parenting manager (her 100 percent commitment has been vital to the effectiveness of the change team), the young persons' substance misuse representative and representatives from other agencies to look at more coordinated prevention and early intervention.

Part of this coordination involved making direct links between the change team and the looked-after children team. In particular, this involved making the looked-after children team aware of the TYS work and making explicit links with and building upon work already going on to tackle any bullying issues around children in care.

Having specialists involved in the change team has given it an in-depth understanding of the causes of problematic behaviour as well a detailed understanding of the management structure and operation of the organisations that provide services.

We are all very busy and we have to be clever about how we use resources. Because the TYS team involves very experienced people from a wide range of agencies, they know who the decision makers are and they know how to use existing processes, including meetings and committees, to get the TYS message across effectively within their normal service activities

Gail O'Malley, Connexions and change team leader 

Benefits and results

Involvement in the change team has provided its members with a tremendous learning resource to support their discussions and solutions and enabled individuals to make contact with a wide range of influential and expert people in a single meeting.

The change team members draw on the experience and views of their service colleagues and, after change team meetings, disseminate their discussions, plans and potential decisions to colleagues and a wide range of other relevant people and organisations though existing committees and scheduled meetings.

It is anticipated that this increased effectiveness will impact positively on the outcomes of at-risk young people. This will be assessed using individual service measures.

The local authority

Worcestershire is a large county authority. Its TYS pathfinder is focused on a rural area and two deprived urban sites. The authority's statistical neighbours include Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, West Sussex, Warwickshire, Gloucestershire, Cheshire, East Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Bedfordshire and Shropshire.

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