Fifteenth round Joint Area Reviews (JARs)

Ofsted has published another round of Joint Area reviews (JARs) which continue to include an encouraging number of positive references to the role of youth work and youth services. JARs explore the extent to which children and young people are healthy, safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution, and secure economic well being.

They focus specifically on children with learning difficulties and/or disabilities, children who are looked after and children at risk or requiring safeguarding. They evaluate the collective contribution made by all relevant children’s services to outcomes for these groups. There are further sections on equality and diversity and safeguarding, and additional investigations are carried out into issues such as child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS), other health inequalities, and the 14-19 strategy.

The eight reports in this round show a particularly strong role for youth services in contributing to young people’s health and wellbeing.

While it is sometimes difficult to detect youth services’ contribution to partnership work, scrutiny of accompanying youth service inspection reports reveal instances where youth services are involved in multi-agency work highlighted in JARs.

The youth service in Bolton is a partner in the Bolton Harmony Forum, set up to ensure that strategic planning promotes equality of opportunity for children and young people. Youth work is also delivered through the Bolton Council of Mosques, ‘which provides good advice about the needs of Asian young people’.

Durham youth service ‘promotes healthy lifestyles well’ and has developed a Healthy

Youth Work Standard in partnership with the County Durham Primary Care Trust – ten

projects have achieved the standard so far.

Youth centres in Bolton provide ‘a high level of clinical expertise, simple testing and treatment’ for sexually transmitted infections, which has resulted in more young people using the service. The report also notes that ‘young people’s views have had a major influence on the development of sexual health services and have led to improvements’. One of these success stories is the Parallel Youth Health Centre, designed for and by young people and described as nationally renowned as a ‘centre of excellence’. The centre offers a comprehensive range of health and well being services for 11-19-year-olds and is highly regarded by young people. It has also been responsible for increasing the number of hard-to-reach young people using sexual health services. In particular, there has been a 5.2 per cent rise in the number of young people from black and minority ethnic communities using the services since the centre opened in 2003. The report praises the centre for its ‘open-door, free access policy, with a strong ethos of individual support and respect for the young person’s opinions and rights’. Young people in Bolton have also been involved in producing ‘Safe night out’ packs which include free condoms, advice about alcohol and contact numbers for support agencies. Other young people have been trained as peer educators, and young mothers have been engaged in improving the quality of sex and relationships education (SRE) and making educational videos.

The youth service in Derbyshire promotes healthy lifestyles to young people through mobile outreach facilities. The Big Blue Bus provides information and advice to young people which, the report notes, is ‘improving their understanding of sexual health issues and the dangers of smoking and drug use’. The bus is also accessible to young wheelchair users, and is equipped with a kitchen where young people are shown how to prepare cheap and nutritious meals.

Youth workers in Warrington are involved in the work of PHAZE, a young people’s substance misuse service. The report states that in partnership with the local drug action team (DAT), this service has ‘significantly increased the number of young people in receipt of clear and consistent information about the impact of substance misuse’. Young people in Warrington have also been trained as peer educators to deliver drug awareness programmes, and others have produced ‘high quality’ publicity materials delivering healthy living messages to young people across the borough.

In Dorset, ‘a committed team of youth workers’ offers advice on sexual health and relationships in youth clubs and drop-in centres, and young people also have ‘good opportunities’ to learn about personal responsibility and risky behaviours. The report notes that ‘the team employs a flexible approach to reach out to isolated communities’.

The report on Durham states that ‘young people are making good personal gains through their contact with the youth service’. Extended services provided by the youth service and its partners in Sunderland ‘contribute to a universal and targeted offer of services to children and families’.

Local democracy

The report on Sunderland states that the council’s commitment to ensuring young people are consulted about and involved in the development and delivery of services is ‘outstanding’. Young people’s representatives meet regularly with the senior leadership team of the children’s services department and the city treasurer, and are described as having ‘a strong sense of themselves as advocates for their peers in such meetings’. The We’re All Ears campaign, developed by young people, was successful in attracting 7,500 young voters in elections for the Youth Parliament, an increase of 300 per cent. The 4UM and City Equals forums effectively represent the views of looked after young people and young people with learning difficulties and/or disabilities.

In Durham, young people are ‘actively encouraged’ to participate in planning provision in the youth service, and in Warrington, young people are involved in recruitment processes and youth service developments.

In Bolton, the youth service and other providers play ‘an important part in the promotion of fairness and community cohesion amongst young people’. The report describes how the youth service used information from the police about a potential problem area to target positive activities and thereby avert tension. Mobile outreach facilities provided by Derbyshire youth service in socially deprived areas identified as ‘hot spots’ of anti-social behaviour have ‘led to an improvement in community safety in targeted areas’. Similarly, in West Berkshire, the report notes that ‘an outreach model of youth work has helped to promote a more tolerant attitude among young people’ and has helped contribute to an overall significant reduction in anti-social behaviour. In Warrington, the youth service is part of a partnership of family support services that are described as ‘outstanding’. The Tim Parry/Jonathan Ball Young People’s Centre (known as The Peace Centre), is also described as ‘excellent’. It provides a range of programmes run by a partnership of services including the youth service ‘to help reconcile young people through dialogue and learning programmes for all ages’.

The report on Durham states that ‘many young people with learning difficulties and/or disabilities make good personal gains through targeted work within the youth service, which gives them opportunities to make new friends and discuss sensitive issues in a safe, non-judgemental environment’. In Derbyshire, the Hear and Now group, run by the youth service, provides disabled young people with specialist recreation and leisure facilities. Participation and access for young people with learning difficulties and/or disabilities is described as featuring ‘high on the agenda’ at Richmond Youth Forum. Planet Blue, a drop-in project at the Peace Centre in Warrington, is also described as ‘well used’ by young people with disabilities.

In Bolton, targeted youth work provision for young people from minority ethnic groups, such as the Just 4 Girls Club, is described as ‘popular’ among young people. Looked after young people in West Berkshire ‘are supported to develop personally and to raise their self-esteem through programmes of activities arranged by a dedicated youth worker’, and looked-after young people in Warrington are supported by the youth service to participate in the UK Youth Parliament.

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