SALFORD
ITEM NO.
REPORT OF
The Director of Children’s Services
To the
Children’s Services Scrutiny Committee
Date
8 March 2006
TITLE : Salford Youth Service:
RECOMMENDATIONS : it is recommended that members note the contents of this report.
MEND
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY :
This report provides members with information about the Youth
Service in response to a number of questions that members asked
at the Children’s Services Scrutiny Committee on 12 October 2005.
Information given covers the following areas: Progress against the
Post OFSTED Improvement Plan, Staffing Structure, Service
Provision, Statistical Information, Partnership working, Financial
information, Involvement of Young People, Every Child Matters
and Vision for the Future.
BACKGROUND DOCUMENTS : OFSTED Inspection report on Salford Youth service, July 2005
(Available for public inspection) Salford Youth service: Post-OFSTED Improvement Plan
CONTACT OFFICER :
Faith Mann – 0161 778 0139
WARD(S) TO WHICH REPORT RELATE(S). All
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1. Background
At the meeting of the Children’s Services Scrutiny Committee held on 12
October 2005 members requested further information in relation to various
aspects of the Youth Service. This report seeks to provide information on
the key points requested by members.
1.1
2. Progress against Post OFSTED Improvement Plan
2.1 The Service has made progress on a number of areas identified as priorities in
the OFSTED inspection report, including:
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Securing arrangements to safeguard young people. A 3-year rolling
programme of CRB checks for all Youth Service staff has been introduced.
Both full-time and part-time staff have received training on child protection
and revised guidelines have been issued to all centres.
Increased opportunities for accredited and recorded outcomes. The Service
has introduced the National Youth Achievement Awards and AQA Unit
Awards and is using these alongside the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. In the
period April 2005 – November 2005, 505 recorded outcomes had been
achieved as compared with 2,659 in the full year April 2004-April 2005 and
accredited outcomes had increased from 634 in the year 2004-2005 to
1,002 in the period between April and November 2005.
Improve the overall quality of youth work practice. Recommendations made
in relation to staffing and training have been completed and job descriptions
have been reviewed.
Involve young people consistently in service development and in negotiating
learning targets. Young people are participating in the development of
services across the city. Youthbank and City 2000 have enabled young
people to gain skills and confidence in democratic decision-making
processes. A survey of the views of users and non-users of the service has
recently been carried out and the results of this will inform future planning of
services.
Improve the management of the curriculum. Staff have been working with
consultants from the National Youth Agency to develop and implement a
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Curriculum Guideline document to ensure consistency of delivery for all
young people accessing our services.
Improve staff deployment and opportunities for professional development.
Some staff have been relocated and processes and procedures have been
reviewed to ensure efficiency.
Ensure that accommodation used for youth work is fit for purpose. A
property review has been undertaken and will be discussed with the Lead
Member for Children’s Services in the near future. All buildings have
become DDA compliant where possible.
Develop effective quality assurance arrangements, including planning and
recording systems. All Service policies and procedures have been reviewed
and updated where required and a system is in place to ensure this is
undertaken regularly. Documents used for planning, recording and
evaluation of youth work have been revised and re-issued to staff.
2.2 Much work remains to be done to ensure that the objectives identified in the
Post-OFSTED Improvement Plan are achieved and the current priorities are to
complete the work on the Curriculum Guideline and related quality assurance
processes.
3. Staffing Structure
3.1 The new Head of Service for Young People took up post on 9 January 2006.
The senior management team of the Youth Service consists of a Head of
Service and three Assistant Youth Officer posts, each of which has an area of
special responsibility – currently Operations, Quality and Workforce
Development and Projects and Partnerships.
3.2 In Resourcing Excellent Youth Services the government set standards for
youth work towards which Youth Services are encouraged to work. One of
these is that there should be in place 1 FTE youth worker per 400 of the 13- 19
population. Salford Youth Service has almost achieved this and currently
employs 49.85 FTE youth work staff. This equates to 1 FTE per 412 young
people aged 13 – 19 living in Salford. This is made up of a mixture of full-time
and part-time staff. The Service currently employs 28 full-time youth workers.
The current staffing structure is attached as appendix 1.
4. Service Provision
4.1The Youth Service has 11 centres situated across the city. In addition to this
there are detached youth work teams and examples of partnership working
where youth provision is delivered from venues belonging to outside agencies.
4.2 Ongoing youth provision is delivered in the following wards:
Irwell Riverside – Beacon Youth Centre /Gears + / UPS Project
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Boothstown & Ellenbrook – Boothstown Community Centre
Walkden North – Bridgewater Youth Centre/ Detached team
Walkden South – Detached team,
Swinton North – Clifton Youth Centre / Detached team
Swinton South – Deans Activity Centre / Detached team
Eccles – Eccles Youth Centre / Detached team
Little Hulton – Greenheys Youth Centre
Claremont – Height Youth Centre
Irlam – Irlam and Cadishead Youth Centre
Ordsall – Ordsall Youth Centre
Broughton – North Youth Centre / Oasis Youth Centre / detached team
Weaste and Seedley – Detached teams
Details of opening times as at December 2005 are given in Appendix 2.
4.3 The Service has a number of City Wide projects available to young people,
these include:
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Young Fathers Project
UPS – working with young people towards independent living
City 2000 – Young people’s participation project
Youthbank
Disability Youth Project
Duke of Edinburgh Award
Gears and Gears + motor projects
Hindley Prison project.
LGBT ( Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgendered ) young peoples
project
4.4 The specialist project work delivered by the Youth Service received favourable
comment from the OFSTED inspectors in May 2005. Youthbank, the Unwaged
Project and the service’s black and ethnic minority provision were all singled
out for special comment as was the work with young people with learning
difficulties and disabilities. The work that the Youth Service delivers in HMYOI
Hindley, (funded by the Prison Service) was identified as an example of good
practice by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons in her report on the inspection of
HMYOI Hindley in 2004.
5.Statistical data
5.1 The data collected between 1.4.05 – 31.12.05 shows 4,317 young people
accessing the Service. This equates to 21% of the 13 – 19 population of
Salford and compares with 3,758 young people accessing the service for the
twelve month period from April 2004 to March 2005.
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5.2 The benchmark and Best Value Performance Indicator for Youth Services
nationally is to have contact with 25% of the 13 – 19 population. The Service is
working hard to ensure that the development of the Management Information
System will be able to calculate accurate data showing young people accessing
the service together with their achievements and progression.
6 Partnership work
6.1The Service is engaged in a number of partnership initiatives across the city.
Links with the voluntary sector are building. The Service is currently funding a
development post within Nexus, the youth related section of Salford CVS and
plans to continue this funding in 06/07. The Service is also looking into
additional areas of support for the voluntary sector in particular around capacity
building and sharing of resources and increasing training opportunities for
voluntary/community sector organisations to access.
6.2Through the involvement in Neighbourhood Management teams and the
Locality Partnerships joint initiatives are developing locally as well as City Wide.
Examples include:
 Joint work with Broughton Action Group delivering youth provision from the
Pavilion at Albert Park in response to concerns about levels of youth crime in
the Broughton area.
 Detached youth work teams being able to respond to concerns that are raised
at Neighbourhood team meetings and contributing to the joint working across
the city in addressing youth nuisance.
 Joint work with Salford Community Leisure in the delivery of SAYO (Sports and
Youth Ordsall) project.
 Joint work with the police researching the need for a Youth Shelter in Light
Oaks Park.
6.3 The Service has a number of city- wide initiatives as outlined in section 4.
These involve the Service working closely with agencies such as PCT,
Teenage Pregnancy Unit, HMP Services, Youth Offending Team, Social
Services and Housing Association and Foyer projects.
6.4There are still areas of partnership work that the Service needs to address,
including increased work with schools, wider links with voluntary and
community services and exploring how the Youth Service can work alongside
other departments such as Libraries, Arts and Culture and Community Safety.
The Service is also working towards building a positive working relationship
with the newly appointed Children’s Champion.
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7.Financial Information
7.1The 2005/06 core budget was broken down into the following areas:
Staffing and General costs
Buildings (accrued allocation per building)
Duke of Edinburgh’s award scheme
1,275,414
190,424
16,286
7.2 It is anticipated that the 2006/07 Youth Service budget will be allocated and
administered less centrally, enabling service managers to have localised
control of their budget allocation and enabling clear routes of responsibility and
accountability. The changes to the structure of the budget will also enable the
Service to establish via monitoring of spend, an accurate report on the running
costs of individual centres and spend per locality area, which at present it is
unable to do.
7.3 Details of external funding are as follows:
Name of Project
NSF – Kersal Voice
NSF – UPS
PAYP Swinton
PAYP Walkden
PAYP Broughton
Hindley YOI Project
Directions/Careerline
TPU Fatherhood Project
NRF - Detached
NRF – Youth Bank
NRF – Youth Bank
Transforming Youth
Work
GEARS +
City-wide Detached
U Project
SAYO
Little Hulton/Walkden
05/06
Funding
budget
(YS
secure
figures)
to
£50,000
Mar-06
£31,800
Mar-06
£30,000
£8,000
£25,000
£35,000
£4,217
£30,412
£133,000
£98,362
(£12k)
£48,625
Mar-06
Oct-05
Mar-06
Dec-06
Mar-06
Mar-06
Mar-06
Mar-06
Mar-06
Mar-06
£177,039
£160,000
£45,498
July-07
Mar-06
Dec-05
£23,000
£4,377
Mar-06
Mar-06
Funding renewed
Application
submitted
Application
submitted
07 commissioning
07 commissioning
07 commissioning
Annual renewal
Mar 07
Re funded 2008
Re funded 2008
Re funded 2008
Funding stream
finished
Core budget
Funding stream
finished
Project ending
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DAT
Beacon receptionist
£25,000
£929,330
Mar-06
Dec 06
8. Involvement of Young People
8.1 The Youth Service established City 2000 as a youth consultative group several
years ago. Members of City 2000 now sit on the Children and Young People’s
Partnership Board and contribute to decision making at this level. The Youth
Service continues to provide support to the young people on the Partnership
Board. In addition, a number of youth settings are establishing members’
forums to enable young people to have more say in the planning of the
provision
8.2 The Service also adopted a youth participation model in setting up Youth Bank
and young grant makers are provided with support and training to enable them
to contribute fully to the decision making process.
8.3 The Service will develop its youth participation work further through:
 responding to the views expressed by young people
 recommendations within the property review of the Service
 regularly monitoring and evaluating work and related outcomes to ensure
that the Service is providing value for money and meeting the needs of
young people and stakeholders
 ensuring that there is a robust model of participation that will enable young
people to increase their involvement in the decision making and
development of services through the distribution of new funding as outlined
within the Youth Matters paper.
9. Every Child Matters – the five outcomes
9.1
The work of the Youth Service contributes to the achievement of the 5
outcomes in the following ways:
Be healthy
–access to information on a number of health issues, e.g. sexual health,
healthy eating, drug and alcohol use
- opportunities for sports, active recreation and physical development
- partnership work with the PCT and DAAT
Stay safe
- enabling young people to develop self esteem
- supporting young people to understand and challenge discrimination and
bullying
- working in partnership to reduce crime and the fear of crime
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Enjoy and achieve
- targeted work with young people disengaged from school, (Time out projects)
- a range of informal learning opportunities
- development of accredited learning programmes
Make a positive contribution
- support for youth participation work
- active participation in group work increases young people’s skills.
Achieve economic well-being
- contribute to preparing young people for employment through personal
development/confidence building
- partnership working with Connexions
- opportunities for accreditation
10. Vision – the way forward
9.1A visioning process is currently being undertaken with the support of external
consultants provided by DfES/National Youth Agency. Focus groups and
interviews are being undertaken with stakeholders, staff, elected members and
young people to ensure a 360 degree approach. The contributions will lead to
the production of a report to which the Head of Service will be able to respond
and implement future Delivery Plans that reflect the needs of the city in line with
Youth Service objectives. This exercise is expected to conclude in April/May
2006.
9.2 The government’s response to the consultation on the Green Paper, Youth
Matters, is expected on March 8 2006. Although the response is unpublished
at the time of writing this report it is expected that it will give greater clarity on
the government’s expectations for an integrated youth support service and will
be accompanied by guidance on and final allocations for the management and
use of the Youth Opportunity Fund and the Youth Capital Fund. Youth matters:
next steps will inform the future vision for the Youth Service.
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