"It's difficult to measure emotions, and it kind of takes the focus away from why you're coming here in the first place," says 21-year-old Jamie, a client of The Market Place project in Leeds. The Market Place offers counselling and individual support, as well as drop-in and other services, to 13- to 25-year-olds. Jamie has been part of a focus group of 12 young people helping to create a measurement tool to make that work more accountable.
It is increasingly important to measure work with young people. Outcome monitoring can make services more effective and staff more motivated by allowing better planning and enabling staff to focus on their achievements. But when youth agencies are pushed for resources and immersed in day-to-day work, they can end up picking a tool from a selection of those already developed, none of which feels quite right.
Clients of The Market Place either make an appointment directly or can be referred by a worker or parent/carer. If they want one-to-one support they can choose between counselling, individual support and My Plan - a new scheme run by youth workers that allows them to put together and work through a personal development plan.
The Market Place decided to involve young people in the development of a new measurement tool for its one-to-one services. A focus group, which consisted of a dozen 15- to 23-year-olds, two male and 10 female, decided first what they should actually measure.
Some of the outcomes they identified included "feeling better about yourself", "improvement in relationships", "dealing with life better", "change of lifestyle", "acceptance", "feeling more positive" and being "happier".
This exercise allowed staff to make sure their understanding of the value of the support they offer is the same as that of the young people.
The group came up with a range of creative suggestions. They wanted the measurement method to be optional, confidential, not too long, informal and easy to understand. However, they were also worried about the whole idea of measurement. Some thought counselling was too vague and subjective to be quantified. "I can't define what happens for me in counselling by ticking boxes and writing a few words," says 23-year-old Jodie. Other comments included "one day you could feel miserable, the next your head could be in the clouds"; "you can really diminish things" by taking measurements, and "it's horrible to have to fill in forms".
"You can talk to people and ask them what they got out of it, and there will be common themes that you can pull out," says Jodie. "Whatever the tool is, it should be open to different ways of expression and as many different things coming out as possible."
Statistical tool
The young people decided to use a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. The proposed tool is simple, but sophisticated enough to be able to apply some statistical analysis.
At the start and end of support, young clients will fill in identical forms. Posting the questions to clients, rather than asking them to complete them with a worker in a session, was seen as the least disruptive and safest method.
The forms contain four scales relating to the question How do you rate your life at the moment?, and young people are asked to plot themselves on the four lines. It also contains 20 different emotions, presented both in written form and through visual facial cues.
The form also dedicates plenty of space to a series of qualitative, open-ended questions and creative modes of expression - drawing, collage and poetry, for example.
We need to remember how articulate young people are in expressing themselves.
We also need to trust them to say it in their own words. Young people in this research have convincingly argued the benefits of doing it this way.
- Liz Neill is mental health development worker at The Market Place. For more information or to get a copy of How do you rate your life at the moment?, email liz.themarketplace@virgin.net. Names of the young people have been changed.
