Youth groups outline their plans to boost open-access working

In September, the 86 voluntary, community and not-for-profit organisations that successfully bid for a share of the £40m Youth Investment Fund (YIF) were announced.

The fund was set up to support voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations to create, expand and deliver high-quality open access youth provision in six targeted communities across England - Bristol and Somerset, East London, East England, Liverpool, Tees Valley and Sunderland, and West Midlands.

First launched in September 2016, the fund is a joint investment by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and the Big Lottery Fund.

Recipients received allocations ranging from £100,000 to £750,000, which is to be spent over the next three years, with ongoing support made available to help with analysing the impact of the funded work (see Inside View).

The cash has been hailed as a much-needed boost for open-access youth work: much of this provision has closed as councils have been forced to target groups of young people with the highest needs.

Minister for civil society Tracey Crouch says it should benefit up to 300,000 young people.

"This investment will have a transformational effect on the lives of some of our most disadvantaged young people," she says. "It will help thousands who might otherwise have gone under the radar flourish. Local voluntary and community youth organisations already do so much fantastic work and this £40m will enrich the lives of many more young people throughout England."

Here, we summarise how four organisations to receive funding intend to invest their allocation.

Creative Youth Network, £749,688

Bristol-based Creative Youth Network is using the cash to offset reductions in funding for existing work and develop new initiatives.

"It will ensure some youth clubs stay open and more often, and help us to reach more young people," says Sandy Hore-Ruthven, chief executive. "When so much other funding comes from targeted work, this is a way of ensuring old school youth work and open access courses are available to everyone.

"This is important because this is where we build relationships with young people. They come to us quicker when things go wrong if we already have built that relationship with them. It means they have somewhere to meet other young people and get involved in positive activities once they have been worked with in a targeted way."

Creative Youth Network is running courses in music, fashion, photography and film making - opportunities children may not normally get. It hopes to do more outreach work into the community to encourage more young people to participate in the activities, and hopes it will help bring different communities closer together.

"It is said Bristol is a community of villages, but sometimes there is prejudice between different [ethnic] groups," Hore-Ruthven says. "We hope to have one or two events a year - such as a football tournament or drama production - to bring people together. It will be led by young people and link up with organisations in the city."

Hemlington Detached Youth Work project, £750,000

A detached youth work service has been running in Hemlington, a district of Middlesborough, for nearly 25 years. Kul Peacock, director of the not-for-profit organisation that runs it, says the funding will help the service expand into other parts of the city.

"It will start with detached youth work, but if the young people then want a youth centre opened we will do that as well," she says. "Some young people want to go into a youth centre, but others prefer to meet at the park, on the street or in a café."

The project will be going into schools to deliver social action programmes as part of The Key initiative. Peacock says schools are also a good place to deliver one-to-one support because education cuts mean "early help support isn't always there for pupils".

The bulk of the funding will be used for staffing - in addition to Peacock and her deputy, four youth workers and four sessional workers will be employed. In addition, the organisation has employed four youth work apprentices, with funding paying for specialist youth work training at Stockton Riverside College. At the end of the one-year level 2 course in youth and community work, two of the apprentices will be stay on to complete a level 3 qualification.

The interest in the roles is confirmation that young people are still interested in youth work, says Peacock. "It's a chance to keep youth work alive. Open-access youth work is not about big numbers, but building quality relationships."

Knowsley Youth Mutual, £749,749

The youth mutual in Knowsley, Merseyside has been running youth services since 2014. The organisation is to invest the Youth Investment Fund money in providing a wider range of activities for young people and boosting staff levels.

Key features of its plan include:

• Recruiting and training up to 55 volunteers in youth work skills.
• An expansion of activities for young people.
• Recruiting new staff including an enterprise and events coordinator, a volunteers coordinator and a number of new youth activities workers to ensure that the funded activities are accessible to as many young people as possible.
• Developing 10 new youth enterprises and training 25 youth coaches in culture, arts and sports.

Sandra Richardson, chief executive of Knowsley Youth Mutual (KYM), says the funding will help boost participation levels by around 10 per cent by 2020.

"Universal youth work has been hard hit by funding cuts in recent years and our focus has been on developing targeted pieces of work," says Richardson.

"This will help us recapture and sustain our open-access youth offer."

A key part of KYM's plans is to make activities more self-sustaining. Richardson says volunteers will be trained to level 3 in youth and community work, freeing up KYM staff to focus on targeted work with young people with greater needs.

The enterprise coordinator will help build commercial links, while KYM members will be offered business mentors to spark their entrepreneurial spirit and ideas.

"We want to build their enterprise spirit," explains Richardson. "We might pay for someone to come in and do an FA coaching course, but by training our young people they may be able to deliver that course themselves."

The Albion Foundation, £750,000

The funding awarded to the Albion Foundation will help the organisation develop a wider range of positive cultural, media, arts and sports activities for young people in the Sandwell area of the West Midlands over the next three years.

Hayley James, outreach development officer at the foundation, the charitable arm of West Bromwich Albion Football Club, says the grant will enable it to deliver additional open access sessions during the week free of charge for young people.

James says the foundation plans to add to existing youth provision in the six towns of Sandwell - Oldbury, Rowley Regis, Smethwick, Tipton, Wednesbury and West Bromwich - by developing youth hubs offering services tailored to the needs of young people in those areas.

There will be sport, dance and drama activities; advice, guidance and employability services; and a wellbeing programme.

In addition, a team of youth workers will engage with young people through a new outreach service, particularly targeting young people at risk from gang-related crime.

The foundation has partnered with the Premier League Kicks Programme, which uses football as a way to connect with young people in some of the most high-needs areas of the country.

James says retaining open-access youth work will encourage more young people to participate in activities because they can turn up without needing to sign up or be referred by another agency.

Youth Investment Fund

• £40m
  Amount of funding allocated under the scheme
  
  
• 86
  Voluntary sector youth organisations across six regions received funding
  
  
• 3
  organisations received £750,000 - the highest amount allocated

Source: Big Lottery Fund

Inside View: The factors that influenced funding decisions and how grantees will be supported

By Matt Poole, head of funding, Big Lottery Fund

"We recognise how important it is for young people to have access to activities and services that build their confidence, talents and strengths. The Youth Investment Fund aims to expand what is already on offer locally or create new services. Our National Lottery investment in the programme will support open access youth services to develop their programmes, plan ahead and become more sustainable.

We looked to support applications from organisations actively involving young people in the creation, design and delivery of their activities, ensuring they reflect the requirements of the young people in their communities.

The six communities targeted were chosen as areas where the funding would have the biggest impact.

To understand this picture, we looked at multiple factors, including the local youth population, the services and support already available, levels of deprivation and the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training.

We also talked to other funders and organisations working in the youth sector to test our approach.

Over the next three years, New Philanthropy Capital (NPC) will be working with grantees. Together they will be developing a shared framework for measuring the impact of services and the investment on young people's wellbeing. To support grantees, NPC will be offering local capacity building workshops, tailored assistance and technical training.

Our ambition is that the additional capacity and opportunities created by this investment - along with expert support from NPC - will enable youth services to attract future investment.

We are also keen that the evidence and good practice gathered through the evaluation is shared widely to support the youth sector over the coming years."

For a full list of grantees, go to www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/youthinvestmentfund