Youth Work and Youth Services: Practice example - Youth Neet prevention programme, Portsmouth
Derren Hayes
Monday, October 10, 2016
Young people at most risk of leaving school without a job, training or college placement are identified by the council.
- Young people at most risk of leaving school without a job, training or college placement are identified by the council
- The young people are appointed an adviser with youth work experience to ensure they make a smooth transition onto their post-16 placement
- The adviser supports the young person into their placement, with more than 80 per cent making a successful transition
ACTION
Over the past five years, policymakers have developed a range of initiatives aimed at reducing the number of young people not in education, employment or training (Neet). Extending the school leaving age from 16 to 17; expanding vocational training places; and increasing apprenticeships for young people have all helped to reduce the number who are Neet.
Most recent official data shows there were 843,000 young people aged 16 to 24 who were Neet in June 2016, a rate of 11 per cent, compared with 18 per cent in 2011.
The national drive has also helped galvanise local action. In 2014, Portsmouth City Council's post-16 education forum put forward an idea to develop a Neet youth prevention programme that brought together the skills of youth workers and education providers.
The prevention programme ran for the first time during the 2015/16 academic year. It supports young people as they make the transition from school to post-16 education through a three-stage programme of support. It involves nine schools and three further education colleges in the city that have opted to take part and contribute, along with the council, towards the £27,000 a year running costs.
"The principals of the colleges were at the forefront of the idea," says Amanda Percy, post-16 commissioning manager at Portsmouth City Council. "They started to understand why young people were dropping out and that's where this came from."
Percy says that with improved data on young people's progress, captured through its Risk of Neet Indicators (Roni) system, the authority and schools were able to recognise those who were at greatest risk of being without a college place, job or training opportunity to go onto when they left school.
"Every school has a cohort that is at risk of not progressing," she adds.
The key to the prevention programme is the five part-time "progression advisers" employed to support the young people. They come from a variety of backgrounds, including Connexions and careers services, but it is their youth work experience that has proved the most valuable.
"It's very much about keeping the motivation going and supporting young people to make the transition," explains Percy. "The kind of tasks they do are youth work-led, such as perhaps going with a young person on that first bus ride to college and understanding what else is going on with the young person's family. Sometimes it can be quite simple things like helping the young person find the right equipment to start a course."
The advisers spend the spring term using the Roni scores - which capture a wide range of information on behaviour and support needs - to identify the cohort of young people they will be targeting, work with the schools to understand the young person's issues and develop support packages for successful transition. They have small caseloads of between 20 to 30 young people each, with advisers matched to the needs of the young people.
"We work with all the referrals from schools," says Percy. "There will be a core of young people who we feel you can make it happen with. They could be a teenage parent who needs access to the college nursery to enable them to get to college.
"There are some harder to reach young people that may not make a successful transition. They are transferred to another project for more specialist support."
A crucial time for the young people is the summer holidays, as this is when plans can change and contact is hardest to maintain.
"The gap from May to September is a long time," says Percy. "Advisers continue to work with the students in the summer and help keep them on track for their progression options.
"In 2015, we put on set activities in the summer holidays, such as CV writing and job application workshops. Clearly young people didn't want to do that. So this year we did it differently by staying in touch regularly.
"It could be simply sending a text message to remind them that college enrolment is coming up, or meeting for a coffee and a chat, or to take the young person to an interview."
From GCSE results day, the advisers move to the further education colleges; although their caseloads may be different to the previous term. They support the young people through the college enrolment process and ensure they settle into the course or apprenticeship. Progress is continually monitored to ensure any problems are identified early.
"It may require a weekly phone call to ensure the young person is settling in okay; or helping resolve more complicated problems such as if a young person feels they have enrolled on the wrong course," explains Percy.
"The warning signs are when there are attendance issues. If they quickly start to miss class you know you've got a significant problem.
"The college has resources to support that and may not need our help, but, if so, we are there for young people. For example, one student enrolled for a full-time course, but for reasons linked to a mental health problem they were unable to cope. So the adviser worked with the college to help the young person undertake the course part time."
Monitoring of progress continues into the spring term alongside the work to identify the next cohort of young people.
"We believe this is the window of opportunity to engage these young people," adds Percy.
IMPACT
In the first year, 116 young people took part, of which 96 made a successful transition to post-16 options. The remaining 20 young people were offered additional support.
In 2015/16, 118 young people are being supported. Percy is hopeful that results for this group will be an improvement on the previous year because "we've had a much better handle on all the young people's needs this year".
Looking further ahead, Percy says that the young people will go on to A-levels, Level 3 vocational training or an apprenticeship. But the requirement to have GCSE grade C or higher to progress into further education increases the risk of dropping out post-17.
At the end of 2015, Portsmouth's 16 to 18 Neet rate had fallen to 5.6 per cent, down from seven per cent in 2014 and below the national average of 6.5 per cent.
