The National Youth Agency - Fourteenth round Joint Area Reviews

Fourteenth round Joint Area Reviews - November 2007

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 services.

Also of interest...

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.

A total of seven reports have been published in this round which show that youth services are contributing in particular to young people’s health and wellbeing and to helping vulnerable young people make a positive contribution.

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.

Equality and diversity

The report on East Sussex notes that ‘inclusive practice embedded in youth and family work improves access to services for isolated parents, carers and young people from diverse minority groups’. In Lewisham, the young mayor’s advisory group is used as a good example of how the children and young people’s partnership makes sure that diversity is embedded in its approach to involving and consulting young people. The youth service in Southampton is described as engaging ‘vulnerable groups within different communities well’.

Being healthy

Four reports provide examples of how youth services are contributing to young people’s health and wellbeing. Youth work activities in East Sussex are highlighted as providing good support to help children and young people develop socially and emotionally. The report describes the work of the Girls Extravaganza programme which supports isolated and vulnerable young women, helping to build their confidence and assertiveness skills and providing them with information around emotional and physical health issues. In Lewisham, youth clubs help raise young people’s awareness of sexual health issues, and the youth service works with community sexual and reproductive health services’ staff to train young people as peer educators to raise other young people’s awareness of sexual health issues and services available. The report notes that ‘young people found the training very useful in helping them to make informed decisions about sexual health and conception and in equipping them for outreach work’.

Teen Talk@Kidbrooke, a multi-agency young people’s health centre based in a deprived part of Gateshead, is described as having ‘marked success’ in reducing conceptions among some groups of young people. In Kirklees, the youth service is also involved with a wide range of partners in providing programmes through schools that tackle drug, alcohol and substance misuse and issues around sexual health and personal safety.

Enjoying and achieving

Youth services and youth workers make a valuable contribution to this outcome through the provision of informal learning, particularly with vulnerable groups of young people. The report on Kirklees notes that ‘in secondary schools the strong involvement of the young people’s service is supporting a good range of extended provision for young people’. In Gateshead, the youth service is described as promoting ‘an extensive range of programmes and activities based on evaluation of local need’, with ‘good targeted provision for children and young people in disadvantaged groups and areas’. The youth service in Cambridgeshire provides ‘good and improving opportunities for young people to extend their development’.

Making a positive contribution

Local democracy

Lewisham has achieved Beacon Status for the involvement of young people. The report highlights the popularity of the young mayor scheme. Elections for the third young mayor had an increased turnout, higher than that in the adult local elections. The Greenwich Young People’s Council (GYPC) is described as an excellent example of young people influencing decision-making, and ‘the youth service provides good services in recruiting, training and facilitating the GYPC and the developing area-wide forums, opportunities that result in young people directly influencing a range of policy and practice initiatives’.

Bromley Youth Council and youth opportunity panels are described as ‘good forums’ where young people contribute to service design and the development of neighbourhood initiatives. Young people are also involved in recruitment to key council posts and are represented on the policy, development and scrutiny committee. In Cambridgeshire young people have successfully used the youth parliament and school councils to raise the problem of transport in the county and the problems of accessing services from rural areas.

Anti-social behaviour

In Greenwich, ‘good partnership work’ in diversionary activity has led to a 29 per cent reduction in anti-social behaviour. As part of this multi-agency response, the youth service ran a programme for young people that produced resources for youth workers and young people to use, including a DVD on gun and knife crime. In East Sussex, ‘skilled input’ from the Youth Development Service has ‘effectively contributed to a reduction in anti-social behaviour, crime and substance misuse’. The youth service in Bromley has also successfully reached young people who offend, particularly through the Positive Activities for Young People programme, which has played a ‘key role’.

Supporting vulnerable young people

The report on Kirklees highlights the active involvement of South Asian young people in decisions that affect their lives, and describes how they make ‘a good contribution to school councils and youth forums and effectively broker the views of children and young people’. Young people with learning difficulties and/or disabilities in Kirklees are also described as able to make a positive contribution, ‘notably through the young people’s service’. Similarly in East Sussex, looked after children and young people make a good contribution to improving services, and the youth cabinet and UK Youth Parliament are described as ‘highly inclusive’. In Lewisham, those young people in care who are identified as being at risk of long-term or regular absences from school are allocated a learning mentor or youth worker to support them.

Economic wellbeing

In Lewisham, the youth service is described as providing ‘good support’ in helping to retain underachieving black Caribbean students on programmes to increase their chances of employment. Southampton youth service also provides ‘good support’ to improve the self-confidence and emotional wellbeing of vulnerable young people and re-engage them in education, employment or training, particularly through the Positive Activities for Young People programme. The youth service in East Sussex is described as providing ‘effective support’ in work to reintegrated young people into mainstream provision which has resulted in a reduction in the permanent exclusion rate.