Targeted youth support: redesigning services - linking TYS, extended schools and services for children, young people and families

Issue

Three town-based secondary schools in the Test Valley targeted youth support (TYS) pathfinder area have a higher than normal rate of school exclusions when compared with other schools in Hampshire. This case study focuses on one of the schools.

Background

There is a history of good inter-agency working in urban Andover. A number of support services including the behaviour support team, educational psychology, child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) and the youth service have a presence in the area.

The community secondary school is delivering and developing extended services. Services include provision delivered by Andover Family Learning, based in a community centre in the heart of the Alamein Ward. In this area 27% of the adults have no qualifications and divorce rates and teenage pregnancy rates are among the highest in Hampshire. The authority have also appointed a family support officer to support parents and their children and made extensive links with cluster primary schools and local organisations including health, housing, childcare providers and the voluntary sector. 

Many of the schools in Andover, and all key partner organisations, are engaged in the extended schools remodelling support programme. The youth service has been involved in the extended schools support programme which has forged links to TYS, the emerging common assessment framework (CAF) and the youth inclusion support panel (YISP).

Actions prompted by TYS

School exclusions and young people not in education, employment or training emerged as high priorities for the TYS pathfinder. A TYS change team has been set up to look at these problems and to improve them. The team includes an extended schools remodelling consultant, a member of staff at the community school, and representatives from the behaviour support team, child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS), the youth inclusion support panel (YISP), educational psychology, the voluntary sector, health, children services recreation and heritage and the youth service. 

The youth service, which is heading the TYS pathfinder, is one of the key ways to reach the most challenged young people, as often they are not attending or are excluded from school.

The TYS change team has already achieved good collaboration between agencies around extended services in the area and is currently drafting a straw model for TYS to present to Hampshire County Council prior to delivery in early 2007.

Exclusion and NEET data will be used to monitor the success of the change team's solutions.

Benefits and results

The TYS change process has encouraged agencies (particularly their frontline staff) to communicate and work together more consistently, with a clearer understanding of each other's roles and services. Consequently, there should be better communication between professionals working with individual families and a better use of resources. There is also more clarity about the causes of challenging behaviour and the range of staff to be involved in interventions and support.

This includes a recognition that specialist services will need to integrate a broad range of interventions for young people rather than deal with each element of need separately. There is also awareness that there are not enough links between young people's services and adult services working with parents. There is a willingness to explore training of other staff to better support and use specialist services.

TYS will inevitably focus on young people at risk of exclusion and young people causing difficulties in local communities. Useful discussion with the YISP (which has a remit to support eight to 13 year olds) and the behaviour support team has identified the need to address key transition phases in young people's lives and set up a common locality based panel to cover the 0-19 age group. The panel will start operating in the New Year.

It is currently too early to measure outcomes, but there is optimism that exclusions will reduce as a result of these changes which in turn should impact on the number of anti-social behaviour orders and other behaviour orders.

TYS has an excellent chance of making profound change happen as it brings together key players in a quality dialogue that creates a willingness to make joint-working happen.

Clive Graham, Community Education Manager at one of the town secondary schools

In parallel to the TYS changes, the town secondary schools, along with the local further education college and Connexions, is developing and improving the 14-19 curriculum to better meet the needs of  students including the less academic and the more marginalised. The intention is to reduce the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training.

The local authority

Hampshire is a large county authority. The TYS pathfinder is focussing on the Test Valley, which includes rural communities and an urban area of deprivation. Hampshire's statistical neighbours include Gloucestershire, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Dorset, Oxfordshire, Devon, Bedfordshire, Kent, North Yorkshire and Worcester.

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