Transforming Youth Services

• The think-tank helped commissioners carve out a new role for young people at all stages of commissioning
  
  
• NEF has devised a two-day training package for commissioners informed by the project
  
  

ACTION

For youth services, co-production means commissioners and providers working in partnership with young people to design, commission and deliver services.

The New Economics Foundation (NEF) received a £149,000 grant from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation to work with three authorities over 30 months from 2011. It selected Cornwall, Lambeth and Islington from the 13 interested councils, working separately with them for 18 months to develop and embed co-production, then helping them spread their learnings through training and networking events.

All were in the process of re-commissioning youth services, enabling them to put their developing co-production know-how straight into practice.

Key to the project was helping commissioners find ways of working alongside young service users, as there "wasn't a great amount of interaction" between them, says Lucie Stephens, NEF head of co-production. "There were strong relationships with third sector providers, but sometimes they were seen as the default voice of young people," she recalls. NEF helped staff adopt new approaches to dialogue with young people, including "appreciative inquiry", focusing on what is working well in an area, rather than on problems to fix.

Cornwall's previous youth service was mainly delivered directly, with a stock of youth centres that 11-plus commissioning manager Melanie Carne says "were not always used as much as they used to be."

The authority embarked on the project to find new approaches to meeting young people's needs in the face of significant budget cuts. "We had to really focus with young people on what they wanted," Carne explains. "And give them some ownership of the decisions being made."

Work towards co-producing an outcomes framework and new set of services started with a peer research project in 2013. Supported by NEF, youth workers trained around 80 young people as peer researchers, recruiting them from youth organisations and specialist services. Paid with vouchers, they interviewed 500 peers, asking how the council could improve communication with them, what outcomes mattered most to them, what assets they brought to their community and what incentives and rewards could encourage them to volunteer. Their responses informed an outcomes framework based on NEF's "dynamic model of wellbeing", arranging outcomes across four inter-relating factors contributing to wellbeing; "good feelings", "good functioning" such as problem-solving and positive relationships, personal resources such as resilience; and external conditions such as a safe environment and employment opportunities.

Youth workers asked young people what percentage of the budget should be spent on different services. A three-month consultation called You Choose saw 1,600 11- to 24-year-olds help decide spending priorities. Young people's wish list included more outdoor activities, opportunities to develop their own ideas for activities, projects and services, more online information, advice and counselling and increased peer support. Reference groups in summer 2014 asked them what these services should look like and in October half term, they helped develop the service specifications. Organisations were required to co-produce their bid with young people and include co-production in service delivery.

A "commissioning panel" of young people participated in the tendering process, devising a range of methods to evaluate bids and a scoring matrix, accounting for 17 per cent of the overall score. These included asking bidders for a case study showing a young person's journey through their service and its impact, and a presentation followed by an interview with them. Young people spent two-and-a-half days evaluating presentations, asking questions, reviewing case studies and scrutinising how organisations had involved young people in their bids, before awarding scores.

The four services being tendered for were community development, offering community groups and young people support and training for youth initiatives from community development and participation workers; information, advice and guidance, offering face-to-face, phone and online support; emotional resilience, offering online and face-to-face counselling, mentoring and peer mentoring; and timebanking, earning young people credits for volunteering, redeemable against leisure activities.

All four services, named Your Way, have been delivered since January 2016 by The Learning Partnership for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, in partnership with Young People Cornwall, online mental health provider XenZone, Penwith Community Development Trust and Volunteer Cornwall. Carne is now working with these organisations and young people to devise an ongoing role for service users in quality assurance.

IMPACT

Cornwall's recommissioning process involved 2,200 young people. Impact measurement work is getting under way and Carne reports signs of improvements in service users' personal and social development. She says a "huge number of young people, more than before" are using the advice, counselling and mentoring services, due to increased online provision. "We've got a more flexible offer now; young people get online support to start with, then face-to-face support, then back to online and a bit of both when it suits them," she explains. "So they're engaged in services far quicker. And the community development service has demonstrated the vast amount of organisations involved in delivering services for young people. It's building on their capacity to meet young people's needs."

Transforming Youth Services has led to a range of NEF guidance, including a guide on establishing peer research projects, and a two-day training package for commissioners, alongside bespoke training. NEF has so far trained more than 600 commissioners.