Policy
Policy Team - recent work
- Capturing take up of positive activities by young people
- Positive activities at weekends
- Young people shaping budgets
- Events celebrating the achievements of young people
- Young people, economic wellbeing and financial capability
Young people, economic wellbeing and financial capability
The National Youth Agency led a project to bring young people’s experiences and views into the heart of a March 2009 conference on financial capability organised by the Financial Services Authority and sponsored by Barclays Bank.
Four groups of young people, facing different forms of disadvantage, each took part in a focus group to explore major money issues for them. Each group then planned and led a workshop at the conference to bring the attention of the delegates to their issues and to seek suggestions for action by the delegates and others to improve their situation.
The major issues and the suggestions from the workshops are written up in the briefings below. The report of the project will be on this website by the end of October 2009. The NYA along with partners is exploring how to support the action needed for change.
A series of briefing papers produced in partnership with the FSA published autumn 2009. The briefings look in detail at major issues for the following groups of young people affected by money worries:
- Briefing paper 1: looked after young people and economic wellbeing
- Briefing paper 2: disabled young people and economic wellbeing
- Briefing paper 3: homeless young people and economic wellbeing
- Briefing paper 4: young people in vocational learning and economic wellbeing
The FSA Project Report is now available:
Young people, economic wellbeing and financial Capability – Project Report - November 2009
Capturing take up of positive activities by young people
The National Youth Agency developed two guides in summer 2008 for Connexions staff to support the recording of young people’s participation in positive activities (National Indicator 110). They contain the DCSF definition of positive activities. The DCSF sought support from Connexions services to ask some additional questions within their process for capturing intended destinations of young people in year 11 as a pilot in 2008-9. This was in addition to the official measure of the TellUs surveys for measuring progress against NI 110.
- Recording positive activities – frontline staff
- Recording positive activities data – detailed version
Positive activities at weekends
NYA was commissioned by the DCSF to research and publish a briefing paper to support expansion of provision of positive activities on Friday and Saturday nights. The government emphasised the importance of this provision in the Youth Crime Action Plan.
The briefing, published summer 2009, sets out some of the central issues and barriers for children’s trusts in implementing this policy, describes some ways local authorities are overcoming these and gives general points to consider when commissioning and delivering this provision in local areas. The primary audience is those responsible for securing and managing positive activities provision but it is relevant to practitioners working with young people in diverse settings.
Young people shaping budgets
The policy drive in Aiming High for Young People: a ten year strategy to increase young people’s direct influence over resources is known as ‘budget devolution.’ The NYA has worked with the DCSF to explore options for implementation. The report from a survey and a focused seminar led by The NYA in 2008 sets out the views of local authorities and third sector partners as to feasible ways forward for this well supported policy.
These views were built by The NYA into a toolkit for measuring budget devolution, piloted in winter 2009. The findings of the pilot with an amended toolkit based on a self-assessment approach is with the DCSF. It is intended to publish this in due course.
Events celebrating the achievements of young people
Aiming High for Young People: a ten year strategy for positive activities (2007) acknowledged that today's young people are faced with the challenge of growing up in a culture that has widespread negative perceptions of young people. It committed to do more to rebalance the public narrative by celebrating young people's achievements.
This pilot offered an exciting opportunity for local areas to celebrate young people's widest achievements, enabling parents and communities to recognise young people's contribution and place in society and foster more positive perceptions of young people. It shows how the local authority partners selected to run youth celebration events delivered against the three intended outcomes set out in the original specification, as well as the requirement to maximise the opportunities for inter-generational understanding and to evidence plans for the future.
Fifty-one local authorities made bids from which ten were selected in July 2008. All were allocated the funds they had requested: seven were allocated £15,000, Bournemouth and Poole shared one allocation of £15,000 and Cornwall received £9,500.
The youth celebration events provide rich evidence of the successes and challenges of running high profile events around this theme. There is much in this report which speaks to the National Youth Week consortium as well as to other Aiming High programmes which are tasked with celebrating young people's achievements and positive contribution at a local level.
The Celebration Events Pilots were managed by The National Youth Agency on behalf of the Department of Children, Schools and Families. This report is written by Wendy Flint, Sarah Hargreaves, Jo Poultney and Alex Stutz, with layout by Priya Patel, The National Youth Agency
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