Targeted Youth Support - A Guide

The Youth Matters green paper (2005) sets out a vision of integrated youth support services helping all young people achieve the five Every Child Matters outcomes through the coherent, young person-centred delivery of information, advice and guidance, support, development opportunities and positive activities.

Targeted youth support is central to this - it is integrated delivery in action for vulnerable teenagers. It aims to ensure that the needs of vulnerable teenagers are identified early and met by agencies working together effectively, in ways that are shaped by the views and experiences of young people themselves.

Targeted youth support a guide

The guide to targeted youth support (above) offers practical help with the design and implementation of targeted youth support in each local area, drawing on early learning from 14 targeted youth support pathfinders.  The guide is designed to inform all strategic leads, operational managers and frontline staff involved in the design and implementation of targeted youth support from, for example, education, health, social services, youth services, Connexions, police, youth justice, voluntary and community sector and housing. 

Also above is a letter which introduces the guide, explains the fit between targeted youth support and integrated youth support services, and sets the context by providing further details of our vision for integrated youth support services.

Targeted youth support toolkit

To complement the guide above, the targeted youth support online toolkit sets out a flexible change process to help partners in local authority children's trusts build on their existing work and redesign their targeted youth support provision. The toolkit also draws on early learning from 14 targeted youth support pathfinders.

Related guidance documents and toolkits

Targeted youth support touches many areas of young people's lives - schools, health, parenting, housing, positive activities, youth justice and many more. The Related guidance documents and toolkits document (above) gathers together links to a number of guidance documents and toolkits related to such areas.

Help available

The guide and toolkit supplement the help offered by government offices, supported by the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA), to local areas implementing the targeted youth support reforms. This support is tailored to meet the needs and circumstances of individual areas and based on a change process that has been strongly endorsed by the pathfinder areas. You can find out more from your government office.

Copies of the TYS guide are available through TDA's publication distributor Orbital, tel: 0845 6060 323; e-mail: tdapublications@omsg.co.uk