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Question
1 - What are your
views on young people’s access to youth work services,
including, for example:
- levels of
provision across Wales and any regional variation;
- issues relating
to access for specific groups of young people e.g. language,
disability, rurality, ethnicity.
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Intelligence from
Estyn’s local authority link work and follow up inspection
work with local authorities, indicates that the focus for local
authority youth services has been changing over the previous three
years.
These
changes are predominantly about reducing the direct provision by
local authorities of a broad range of open access community based
youth work. This is replaced increasingly by more targeted
project work, predominantly focused on intervention work to support
the neediest young people into education and training. This
has inevitably resulted in a change of emphasis away from a focus
on ‘starting with young people and the needs they
present’, and working with young people who voluntarily
engage with youth workers. Increasingly youth workers are
taking more of a casework-based approach to their work, which is
focusses on a much smaller population of young people, who are
referred into the provision from outside agencies.
The
shift is towards more interventionist approaches, which are
designed to meet young people’s needs as defined by the
referring agency. This means two of the underpinning
principles of youth work (working with young people around the
needs they present, and young people’s engagement on a
voluntary basis) are either reduced or removed.
Estyn’s
intelligence also suggests that the funding available to local
authority youth service has declined steadily over this
period.
The
Welsh Government’s data unit collects annual data on the
range and scope of youth work provision across Wales. The
Welsh Government’s data unit is best placed to provide this
evidence, especially the aspects regarding access to services for
specific groups of young people e.g. language, disability,
rurality, ethnicity.
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If you believe that there are particular
problems, how do you think they could be resolved?
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Question 2
- How effective do
you think the Welsh Government strategy and policy on youth work
is?
In
considering this question you may wish to think about:
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the Welsh Government’s specific youth work policy and
strategy such as ‘The Youth Work offer’; The Wales
Charter for Youth Work; The National Youth Work Strategy for Wales
2014 to 2018;
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Welsh Government departmental responsibilities and whether there is
a cross-departmental and co-ordinated approach to support youth
work provision.
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Welsh
Government’s National Youth Work Strategy provides an
important steer for youth work professionals, local authorities and
voluntary organisations. The strategy clearly states the
priorities of the Welsh Government, and sets out how the youth work
sector can contribute to these. The educational function of
youth work and the contribution of youth work to young
people’s learning are clearly set out in the key Welsh
Government publications, especially the Wales Charter for Youth
Work, and the National Youth Work Strategy. The Youth Work
Strategy in particular sets as an objective the strengthening of
the working relationship between youth work and formal
learning. However, the responsibility for achieving this
objective is defined for youth work alone, as there are no similar
priorities defined for schools and FE colleges in strategic
documents aimed at these providers.
The
first national youth work strategy was published in 2007, and
updated with a new strategy in 2014. The 2014 strategy is now
at its mid-point, and its impact on the sector should now be
evaluated.
The
two most recent Welsh Government publications ‘The Youth Work
Offer’ and the ‘National Outcomes Framework for Youth
Work’, also provide important information about the Welsh
Government’s intentions for youth work and its contribution
to young people’s development. However, it is difficult
to use the strategic aims defined in these documents to hold
providers to account appropriately, as the defined outcomes remain
generic.
Estyn
welcomes the publication of the Youth Work Offer, and the Charter
for youth work. However, as these documents were only
recently published (during 2016), we cannot comment on their
impact.
The
intelligence available to Estyn arising from nine of the local
authorities subject to follow up inspection work shows that local
authorities continue to work in partnership with other local youth
work providers, and the local authority generally takes the lead in
this work. However, Estyn’s follow up work has also
highlighted the shift in provision away from open access community
services, to more targeted services frequently with a stronger
emphasis on reducing NEETs than addressing young people’s
social inclusion and health needs.
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How do you think the Welsh Government could
approach its youth work strategy and policy differently / to better
effect?
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The
Welsh Government could strengthen its approach to the development
of youth work through a more integrated strategic approach.
One opportunity for this arises from the development of closer
links between the youth work curriculum for Wales and the revisions
of the school curriculum proposed by Professor Donaldson in
Successful Futures. In particular, the four outcomes proposed
by Professor Donaldson have a lot to offer youth work and youth
services, and would form an effective basis for proposing outcomes
and indicators for youth work sector, as well as providing clear
overlaps in outcomes between youth work and formal educational
settings.
The
key outcomes for the Youth Work Offer and the National Outcomes
Framework could also then be clearly mapped against these four
outcomes, with the opportunity to identify a range of key elements
against which these can be evaluated.
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Question 3
- What are your
views on the funding available for youth work, including through
Local Authority, Welsh Government, European Union, and Third
Sector.
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Estyn
has no up to date data on youth work funding other than that
already provided through the Welsh Government’s annual audit
on the range and scope of youth work provision across Wales.
In addition, it is Estyn’s view that the Welsh
Government’s approach to non-hypothecation of youth service
funding which is part of the local authority’s RSG may
compromise the adequate delivery of services for young people at a
local level, and influence the parity of services across
Wales. Although the Welsh Government provides an indication
of the level of funding for youth services, the use of that funding
is not linked in any way to minimum expectations about the quality,
quantity, or availability of youth work for young people.
This makes it very hard to hold local authorities to account for
how they prioritise funding for youth work and youth support
services, how they then spend this nominal sum, and for the quality
of the outcomes from this spending.
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If you believe there are problems in this area,
how do you think they could be resolved?
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While
recognising that the Welsh Government’s approach to
non-hypothecation of youth service funding is likely to remain, the
Welsh Government might provide clearer expectations about the
service levels and the quality of service young people might
receive from local authority funded provision. This steer
could then be used by local authorities to help them prioritise
their spending and to account through elected member scrutiny, and
annual returns to Welsh Government, for the impact of that spend
more clearly.
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Question 4
– Are there any
other issues you consider relevant to the Inquiry that you think
the Committee should be made aware of?
(for
example: workforce related issues; the Quality Mark for Youth Work
in Wales; buildings and infrastructure; youth work in schools;
transport issues; access to digital technology; Welsh
Government’s consultation on proposals to register and
inspect some out of school education settings).
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1 The
statutory basis for youth work provision sits within the Learning
and Skills Act 2000 section 123(1). The Welsh
Government’s statutory guidance for youth work in Wales,
which arose from that Act, is set out in its policy documents for
Extending Entitlement. Within those documents, the role of
the local authority in providing and securing suitable youth work
(youth support services) through partnership arrangements to meet
the needs of its young people is well defined.
2
Extending Entitlement identified the importance of using these
partnership approaches to identify, prioritise, and then to plan
collaboratively to meet the range of young people’s needs,
which youth support services can meet.
3
Subsequent to Extending Entitlement, the Welsh Government published
a national youth work strategy in 2007, and a revised national
youth work strategy in 2014. Both of these strategy documents
identified key national priorities for youth work in Wales and
proposed a series of actions for Welsh Government, local
authorities and the voluntary sector to address
these.
4
However, there has not been an effective and common management
information structure against which the Welsh Government, local
authorities, and youth work managers can get in place commonly held
intelligence to assess the suitability of youth work provision to
meet young people’s identified and prioritised
needs.
5 The
publication of the Welsh Government’s ‘The Youth Work
offer’; it’s ‘Charter for
Youth Work’ and its ‘National Outcomes Framework for
Youth Work’ are each intended to help move this
forward. These publications propose an approach which is
intended to help youth workers, their managers, trainers and those
who make policy, to plan and evaluate how broad, aspirational aims
for well-being can be translated into services for young people and
what the priorities for face to face youth work might
be”.
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Question
5 - If you had to
make one recommendation to the Welsh Government from all the points
you have made, what would that recommendation be?
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Seek
to achieve a better integration between the strategic developments
across the whole education sector, which brings together the
formal, informal and non-formal learning provision of young
people. Currently these strategic themes are not well enough
mapped or linked.
The
core outcomes that arise from the four outcomes proposed by
Donaldson’s ‘Successful Futures’ impact well
beyond the classroom. These outcomes provide a challenging
agenda for the development of young people as engaged and empowered
citizens. It is important that all education providers are
able to work together to achieve these high ambitions for the young
people in Wales. A segmented education sector will not serve
this purpose well enough.
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