News that a programme to help prevent young people becoming involved in crime will continue to receive £10m of Home Office funding has been welcomed by the very young people who provided the evidence of its success.
Kara Hitchin, aged 21 and Chair of the Positive Futures Youth Advisory Board (YAB) said: “Positive Futures has been around for ten years making a difference to the lives of young people from the toughest backgrounds. It gives us real hope to think that the Home Office has not only read our positive stories of being involved in the programme but acted so positively upon them. Continuing with the programme will help make Britain safer and the future brighter for young people.”
Young people’s achievements are tracked by filmed interviews, photos and artwork, plus case studies telling their personal stories, backed up with hard statistics around the qualifications and jobs they’ve gained and associated reductions in crime. Latest figures show improved engagement amongst 70% of participants with over 10,000 gaining qualifications and almost 30,000 achieving other positive outcomes including gaining employment, volunteering and returning to education.
This evidence base helped secure funding by giving the Home Office a detailed oversight of the programme’s impact at both micro and macro levels thanks to the sophisticated monitoring system from Substance that has been evaluating the programme since April 2004.
Positive Futures has for the last five years been managed by young people’s charity Catch22. The programme works with over 50,000 10-19 year olds from disadvantaged communities who are at risk of offending.
Joyce Moseley, Chief Executive of charity Catch22 said: “The Positive Futures programme provides long term support and takes young people through the sometimes difficult and challenging journey to adulthood. The way the programme is evaluated means that young people can demonstrate their achievements and have a voice about their future. We are delighted that they have been listened to, and can continue to have a positive impact in their communities and on the lives of other young people.”
Professor Tim Crabbe, Chair of Substance and lead evaluator on the Positive Futures programme said: “At a time of public spending constraint the renewal of Positive Futures’ funding for the next two years demonstrates the power of telling the stories of the people and communities you’ve helped to change. Now, more than ever, we need to know that the services the public funds are having an impact.”
Media Enquiries: Hannah McCree M: 07796 546 728 E: Hannah.mccree@catch-22.org.uk or Rowan Atkins T: 07834 158 725 E: rowan@rowanatkins.co.uk
CASE STUDY: Positive Futures Coventry
Friday and Saturday evenings are busy for staff at Coventry Positive Futures. Youth workers are out in full force, targeting groups of bored young people on the streets and telling them about the activities taking place over the weekend at Hillfields Young People Centre.
“Lots of the young people we work with tell us they are at risk of getting in to negative behaviour as they have nothing to do", says project co-ordinator Rashid Bhayat. To target this problem Coventry Positive Futures have developed an extensive timetable of activities. Last year over 1,500 10-19 year olds took part in 55 different programmes – from basket ball sessions training with the Coventry Crusaders and Sunday league football tournaments to girls only graffiti projects and education clubs for the Slovakian teenagers in the area.
Their model is simple. Youth workers earn the trust and respect of participants and their families, enabling them to identify the issues teenagers face and begin development work.
‘Daafi’ has been coming to Hillfields Young People Centre for the past six months. He is 14 and was recently caught shop lifting. At school his attitude to other young people and staff was described as ‘horrific’. He was removed from mainstream lessons and placed in a Learning Support Centre. Teachers referred Daafi to staff at Coventry Positive Futures who developed a learning timetable for him, overseen by a peer mentor rather than a teacher. Daafi would study in the informal atmosphere of Hillfields Centre with music in the background and in the evening he would attend a sports session.
Daafi was given tangible rewards, the most effective of which was the opportunity to play for the local Sunday League football team. Over three months his behaviour improved dramatically and he was granted access to mainstream education again. Recently Daafi was awarded the ‘Most Improved Student of the Year’ prize.
Coventry Positive Futures has many hundreds of stories like Daafi’s to tell. Staff collect demographic data about young people and track their achievements: did they enroll on a smoking cessation programme, complete their basketball coaching course or design a project poster?
Project workers also track the impact of the programme through one-to-one interviews with young people, comments on the project’s Facebook wall and feedback via youth forums. Young people keep short diaries, they take photos of their peers winning awards and they create questionnaires to find out what sort of activities their mates want at the youth centre. Report cards tracking the progress of pupils at school, newsletters designed by young people and interviews with their peer mentors are all included in evaluations.
Rashid Bhayat says that monitoring for his team at Coventry Positive Futures is about asking ‘why are we collecting this data? How does it fit with local strategic priorities? “A big part of it is performance management. Not checking up on staff but checking we are providing the right services. We can tell from the data and stories we collect that maybe we need to adjust an activity to target a particular age group more. Like many youth services, we are predominantly grant funded by our local authority so it’s never been more necessary to tell our story.”
Notes to Editors:
About Positive Futures
www.posfutures.org.uk
Launched in 2001, Positive Futures is a national community based prevention programme funded by the Home Office and for the last five years managed by Catch22. The programme targets 10-19 year olds and prevents them from becoming drawn into crime, drug and alcohol misuse and supports them in moving forward with their lives. There are 91 Positive Futures projects in total across England and Wales. Projects are focused on local communities and they are locally owned and driven. Positive Futures gives young people the chance to develop the skills needed to get on to a positive career path and take on roles to become active and responsible citizens, such as through volunteering. It works with over 50,000 young people every year In 2009-10 54,607 young people attended Positive Futures projects Thanks to Positive Futures, thousands of young people are now in education, training and employment In 2009-10 young people were recorded as achieving 10,709 qualifications The Positive Futures Youth Advisory Board was set up to put young people at the heart of the programme and give them a positive voice in policy and in their community. The board consists of 23 young participants, known as young advisors, drawn from all parts of the country.
About Substance
www.substance.coop
Substance leads the evaluation of Positive Futures in partnership with Sheffield Hallam University. As an experienced social research co-operative, Substance is specialist in the areas of sport, youth inclusion and community regeneration. Members hail from backgrounds in leading university research institutes, social enterprise and IT.
Projects funded by Positive Futures use a sophisticated and recently upgraded online system for proving the impact of initiatives – www.views.coop. This platform is now set to be used more widely as organisations respond to the need to demonstrate impact to secure funding.
About Catch22
www.catch-22.org.uk
Catch22 is a local charity with a national reach. We work in over 150 towns and cities, with tens of thousands of young people every year – supporting young people with tough lives who are facing difficult situations. They may have had tough upbringings or are living in difficult neighbourhoods.
Our programmes help to develop their confidence and skills to grasp solutions that are right for them; from getting back into school or into training, choosing to stay out of crime, finding a safe place to live and helping them with the skills needed.