Special Report: Youth Work Impact
Derren Hayes
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Despite deep cuts to funding and service provision, youth organisations are developing new ways to demonstrate the beneficial impact they have on improving life outcomes for vulnerable young people.
Since the dawn of austerity in 2010, pressure has grown on youth organisations to provide data to evidence the impact of their work on young people.
This emphasis on data has, according to some, arisen out of a new youth impact agenda - a broad consensus between government and influential non-governmental organisations that the youth sector needs to improve its evidence through the (usually quantifiable) measurement of young people's progress against outcomes.
Funding for youth work, whether delivered by local authorities or voluntary organisations, is in short supply - council spending on young people has halved since 2010, while government early intervention funding has fallen from £2.4bn to £1bn over the same period.
In light of the shrinking money pot, projects and organisations are under even more pressure to produce data that shows the beneficial impact they have on young people's lives and life chances.
Some youth organisations have embraced the impact agenda more than others, and there is much debate about how to measure impact and the value put on it by funders and commissioners of services. Some are also concerned that it leads to services being provided that deliver the outcomes easiest to achieve, rather than what young people value.
Amid growing recognition of the value of youth work across a wide range of services for vulnerable young people, the sector hopes the government will commit to investing in youth work when it publishes its Civil Society Strategy later this year.
CYP Now's special report on youth work impact assesses the evidence base on measuring impact and highlights four examples of evidence-based practice. Meanwhile, four leaders in the youth work sector outline the key challenges in measuring impact.
Click on each article for more:
Youth Work Impact: Policy context
Research evidence:
- Youth Work, Performativity and the New Youth Impact Agenda: Getting Paid For Numbers?
- Forging Futures Through Mentoring: A Risk Worth Pursuing?
- Listening to Our Future: Early Findings From the Health Foundation's Young People's Future Health Enquiry
- Preparing Youth to Thrive: Methodology and Findings from the Social and Emotional Learning Challenge
Practice examples:
