How councils are working with NCS to boost prospects for young people

This initiative provides the impetus for a range of organisations, including NCS, to work more closely with local leaders from across communities, business and government, understanding their priorities and focusing our expertise and resources in the most relevant and impactful way possible.

The initiative has the potential to make lasting, tangible change to communities, and support NCS's aim to help young people develop the skills needed to reach their full potential, with confidence building and teamwork.

However, it is not just the individual young people who benefit, it is society as a whole. That is why we are redoubling our efforts with new and exciting approaches in these 12 areas, working in partnership to reach the young people and communities who need support the most.

Close relationships

We know that a key way to tap into communities and better understand their needs is through fostering a positive relationship with local authorities. Many already work closely with NCS and an increasing number deliver the programme directly. We want even closer partnerships.

In 2017, our approach has focused on building relationships with local authorities in Kirklees and six of the Opportunity Areas: Bradford, Doncaster, Stoke-on-Trent, East Cambridge and Fenland, Ipswich and Hastings. We are partnering with the National Youth Agency (NYA) as part of the NCS Innovation Fund to deepen these relationships and utilise NYA's extensive experience of working with councils to generate greater awareness and engagement with NCS, and the benefits it can bring to young people in their area.

Some examples of current initiatives with local authorities in the Opportunity Areas include engaging NCS graduates in council consultation events on local priorities for youth provision, and prioritising ways to reach specific groups of young people such as young carers, those living in care or being educated outside mainstream school, using the local authorities knowledge and reach to engage these groups. We are also highlighting the benefits of NCS to specific harder-to-engage schools, to help open up the programme to more young people.

Looking ahead, we will start to expand this work to new areas and will focus on ways to trial and test our relationship with councils and evaluate new approaches to see how effective they are.

The Opportunity Areas are also where we are testing the "NCS Schools and College Co-ordinator" project. Working closely with school leadership teams, we are investing resources and support to help create a member of staff in each school who is able to champion NCS and support young people to understand its benefits and sign up to the programme.

Encouraging results

The results of this pilot have been encouraging - for example, in Scarborough where we've already seen 12 times more young people sign up than in previous years. It empowers school leaders to connect with, shape and benefit from the value NCS brings to their young people, and the personal and social development outcomes we are working to achieve.

The recently announced partnership between NCS and The Scout Association will see us working together to find innovative new ways to deliver NCS, with a focus on helping one another to reach even more young people.

In the Opportunity Areas, we are also in the process of developing new relationships with the Careers and Enterprise Company to support NCS graduates with effective careers advice. We need to make sure young people in these communities have access to the support needed to make important decisions about their future.

We believe that this work is going to have a lasting impact, helping even more young people reach their full potential.

Naim Moukarzel is head of impact at the National Citizen Service