Youth project may have increased teenage pregnancies

Richard Mckie - 14 July 2009

As the Project Manager who spent 3 years plus working with 27 excellent youth projects on

YPDP, all I can say is that the NYA will be making much fuller detail available when the furore has died down, and we can report on the many gains that young people got from their time on YPDP, and how a flawed research programme helped lead to such a damaging and misleading report.

Regards

Richard Mckie

The National Youth Agency

mas - 8 July 2009

 see what you mean and yes I think thats the case with many local projects. My perspective is a little different as much of my work has been residentially and has involved working with all sorts of different groups including quite a few made up of young people (and workers) who hadn't previously me - something we tried to discourage but could do little about and to the extent that one regular group often visited with young people through social service referrals who were picked up in a minibus on the morning of the course having never met previously. From that I'd definitely say that without very good support/organisation/discipline certain young people will get up to things that maybe they previously wouldn't.

The most extreme example was that of a young man and a young woman from separate cities, both lacking in good (or even average) support. Both sneaking away together to share a tent at night which I raised as an issue with the workers, it still happened and 9 months later that 15 year old girl was a mother. Impossible to argue that she wouldn't have fallen pregnant by somebody else and indeed both her mum and her elder sister had children in their teens, but also no denying that bringing them together and not supervising them well did result in her pregnancy. Although they weren't my responsibility I did feel in part responsible and spent a lot of time with the girl trying to ensure she could get on with life as normal as best as possible and she did pretty well for a while getting plenty of support from other volunteers, ultimately though her life took her in other directions and from the little I've heard not good ones for her or her child. So in part what will be will be, but equally its difficult to deny its possible to contribute to problems even where intentions are good - much more so if the risk of it being so isn't considered or dealt with.

Charlotte Goddard - 8 July 2009

 Mas, I guess I think its bizarre because the implication is that there are a whole load of young people engaging in risky behaviour in isolation, but then a project such as this brings them together, whereas I would have though that they are in peer groups anyway? I did some volunteering/ mentoring with a group called Youth at Risk which brought together "at risk" young people in Hammersmith and most of them knew each other already anyway.

But I am not a youth worker so I'm interested in your experience.

mas - 8 July 2009

"I remember someone saying that statistics are like a bikini: what they

reveal is interesting, but what they conceal is nearly always more

important." lol like that

Agree

about research in general - I think its been a trend in the last few

years for funders to require research to justify their funding, or to

commission it to determine future priorities. The last major funding I

raised I spent considerable time reducing costs and cutting back to try

and get the overall budget down - I was then told by the funder that

they would require "independent" research, go away and get quotes and

don't worry about the cost. The final cost worked out at roughly 20% of

the overall project budget and interesting as it was reading the

research reports I'd have much rather had that funding put into the

programme itself.

Simon Hall - 8 July 2009

I remember someone saying that statistics are like a bikini: what they reveal is interesting, but what they conceal is nearly always more important.

As with all research, people seem to be able to take whatever they want from it: there are blind dogmatists of every persuasion.

From their website, the NYA seem to be suggesting that if only the same programme had been done earlier, longer, more intensely, then the statistics would miraculously have changed. Ut would appear to be beyond the reasoning of this important body that we should try something different.

No-one has yet proved to me any causal link between information-based approaches to risk-taking behaviour and decreases in such behaviour.

People speak about Scandinavia as if their anecdotes are evidence. Yes, there is greater openness about sex, but (for example) the divorce rate is much lower than in the UK and families have meals together more frequently. Why do people pick up on one aspect of Scandinavian culture and not these others?

I have no idea what the causal links between these aspects of society are, but those who clog the airwaves with the banal and simplistic message that more explicit 'information' about sex will reduce risky sexual behaviour should perhaps pause long enough to see if anyone else has a better idea..

mas - 8 July 2009

@Charlotte - why do you think that sounds bizarre? I have experience of exactly that happening and anyone responsible for supporting such groups would surely be aware that its a risk. I'd say its not an argument against making provision but it is one for scrutinising how that provision is managed.

Iftikhar Ahmad - 8 July 2009

Salaam

Binge-drinking, underage pregnancies and abortion, drug addiction and anti-socialo behaviour is on the increase among school-age children. It is an eye opening for Muslim parents, who keep on sending their children to state and church schools with non-Muslim monolingual teachers.

Bilingual Muslim children need state funded Muslim schools with bilingual Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods. There is no place for a non-Muslim child or a teacher in a Muslim school.

There are hundreds of state and church schools where Muslim children are in majority. In my opinion, all such schools may be designated as Muslim community schools.

Bilingual Muslim children need to learn and be well versed in Standard English to follow the National Curriculum and go for higher studies and research to serve humanity. At the same time, they need to learn and be well versed in Arabic, Urdu and other community languages to keep in touch with their cultural roots and enjoy the beauty of their literature and poetry.

A Muslim is a citizen of this tiny global village. He/she does not want to become notoriously monolingual Brit.

Charlotte Goddard - 8 July 2009

I heard one of the researchers on Five Live this morning and she was suggesting that it was to do with gathering groups of young people likely to engage in risky behaviour together and letting them network with each other (I don't know if that was a euphemism for "have sex"), an argument which sounds bizarre to me. There was a similar bit of research last year that said youth clubs encouraged young people to take drugs where I think the researchers were saying the same thing.

jim oldridge - 8 July 2009

Education gives people the knowledge to expand and grow, but this also must be used with caution as knowledge without all the facts can cause mistakes to be made. They will need to look at the information given before condemning the program.

tom abbott - 8 July 2009

I have no knowledge of this work or the research findings, but you might assume that the targeted individuals would have been at a higher risk of teenage pregnancy or already engaged in sexual activity \(or highly likely to..). If this was the case then the findings should not conclude that the projects failed or increased a 'problem'. I would hope that snap shot headlines such as this would not damage some of the excellent work currently going on alongside young people..