Fitzrovia Youth in Action Impact Report 2018-19
Basement, 66-68 Warren Street, London W1T 5NZ Tel/Fax 020 7388 7399 ‘Young People Creating a Better Community’ 1
Breakdown of participants Over the past year we have directly worked with 545 young people across our youth action and leadership programmes. Of those, 350 were youth action volunteers participating as delivery mentors, youth ambassadors, health champions and community events organisers. The following table outlines the breakdown of youth action volunteers by group and the increase from the previous year. Youth Action (YA) programme type
YA volunteers engaged during 2017-18
Peer Education Youth-led community events (eg street parties, festivals, community dinners – excluding youth volunteer event stewards) Peer Mentoring (mental health) Youth Ambassadors Health Champions Total
147 52 (5 event groups)
YA volunteers we are engaging over 2018-19 163 57 (6 event groups)
0 0 18 199
80 20 30 350
Ethnicity breakdown
Black Caribbean 5%
Congolese 6%
Asian Bangladeshi 16%
Black African 6% Mixed White/Black African‌
Black Somali 7%
Any other Asian background 8%
White British 17%
Any other black background 13% White Other 13%
Mixed White & Asian 2% Any other mixed background 4%
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Our youth social action models The following is an overview of each of our youth action programmes and highlights of this year’s activities and achievements.
Peer mentoring Our Peer Mentoring Programme offers a space for young people to come together to access and provide peer support to one another through group work, 1-1 activities and discussions. The programme has been coproduced with young people and our project partners, Mind in Camden and the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. The core programme content has been informed by evidence based models the ‘5 ways to Wellbeing’ and ‘Resilience Framework’. Together young people and our partners developed 6 key themes that form a semi-structure to the programme and devised AQA accredited training for peer mentors to complete prior to delivering mentoring sessions. This year we delivered the Peer Mentoring Programme to 14 groups in numerous schools, youth and community centres across Camden including William Ellis and the Somers Town Youth Centre and Somers Town Community Association. In total 80 young people participated and delivered peer mentoring and peer support workshops with a further 275 young people.
Case Study; T was recommended and recruited on to the peer mentoring programme through BWA as a mentee. He was identified as at risk of engaging in anti-social behaviour, had affiliation with crime and was excluded from school. Despite this T showed a commitment to the programme and attended every week and on time. The thing that kept him coming was that he saw it as a space for him to actually ‘just be’ and speak about what was on his mind. T said of the programme; “what I liked most was being able to talk to someone. I looked forward to seeing my mentor each week and felt we really had a connection. I could talk about whatever was on my mind and learned a lot from him.”
Peer Education Over the year, FYA worked with 19 groups of young people. Each group attended workshops at least once a week over a period of 8 to 15 weeks. Participants took part in drugs and alcohol and mental health awareness training and delivered awareness raising workshops to 1267 other young people at their youth clubs and schools across Camden. Monitoring results of the programme showed 50% of participants reported an improvement in their well-being scores and 86% had an increase in knowledge. Of the young people who attended the peer led information sessions 76% said they preferred learning from peers and 75% said the sessions made them feel more confident about making decisions in the future. A major endorsement of our peer education programme was being awarded the Camden Youth Award for Best Youth Volunteering Project.
Young Ambassadors FYA is committed to being a youth-led organisation in youth programmes and decision making. The FYA Young Ambassador Programme aims to directly involve and empower young people in the running of the organisation by recruiting and training a team of alumni young people to represent the voices of service users in programme and organisational decisions. The ambassadors have collated and evaluated consultation results, identified actions and potential solutions to develop and improve the existing FYA programmes, new project ideas and the organisation as a whole and presented them to FYA staff and trustees.
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Some of the activities the Ambassadors have been involved in this year are:
Working with UX design volunteers to develop ways to improve our data collection systems. Advising on strategic aims of FYA, identifying possible new streams of work, emphasising the need for FYA programmes to be more inclusive for young people of all abilities. Organising and delivering consultation events including an afternoon tea for older residents to ascertain their needs and wants at the annual FYA Christmas lunch. Attending school assemblies and youth organisations to promote FYA’s activities and encourage participation. Session delivery at mentor training sessions, sharing service user feedback at staff meetings or assisting with the delivery of engagement sessions, such as drop-ins and football. Participating in staff, volunteer and mentor’s recruitment, interview and assessment panels.
We are currently working on plans to expand our Young Ambassador programme. We will work with them and interested partner agencies to develop a cycle of peer-led research and consultations to establish priorities for young people and programmes they would like to help deliver to address their concerns. We hope to create opportunities for our Ambassadors to engage with policy makers and practitioners about their findings, which will in turn help to inform the work of FYA and other organisations.
Case Study; G was initially very shy and quiet but since joining the young ambassador’s programme she has grown in confidence and is now able to open up and share her thoughts and feelings about matters she feels passionately about. She was very passionate about ensuring all our work was inclusive and championed the creation and delivery of an inclusive event as part of our intergenerational consultation work and delivered an introductory session for the 2018 Camden Unity Cup Festival. Camden Health Champions Young people who were a part of this programme have gained a strategic view and understanding about mental health service provision in Camden. The majority of them have had direct experience as a service user of mental health services in Camden and / or they have been involved with some aspect of the Peer support programme (either as a mentor, mentee, peer educator or a participant in a peer education workshop). The role of a health champion has a strategic focus and is designed to enable them to help shape services, plan and lead promotional, outreach and awareness raising activities and share good practice from the project amongst professionals and wider sector. Over the past year our Health Champions have worked on the flowing projects:
Advising on Camden’s Commissioning processes, developing a Young Inspectors model, which they will be implementing through inspecting CAMISH services. Development of a The Camden Youth Mental Health Charter. Design of two “Crisis Cards” to support young people’s communication with professionals when transitioning between services. Deliver outreach activities and events raising awareness of mental health and well-being reaching 1059 young people. Part of the reviewing and developing panel for our peer education and mentoring programmes.
The health champions are also very active in partnership working and ensuring what they do has a wider reach. Notably they have worked in partnership with the Camden YOS Youth Board, supporting improvement to services and co-creating training with the YOS for Primary and Secondary school teachers and staff. They also attended a meeting of the engagement committee at Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health to consult on the upcoming NHS review for youth health services and priorities for patient care. They have also been invited to speak and/or run a workshop at the annual conference in May in Birmingham. 4
Case Study: M has been a part of the Camden Health Champions since the very beginning, he has attended every session and played a key role in the young commissioner’s group and development of the “Crisis Card” for other young people. M says of his involvement with the Champions “… has been brilliant, I’ve learnt a lot through it and enjoyed doing something different knowing I am making a difference in Camden for other young people. I really like working with FYA and hope I can do more in the future.” Youth led community events FYA ran a youth leadership programme in which groups of young people were supported during 2018/19 to organise and deliver one large scale community event per group. Each group of young people participated in weekly workshops over a 10-12-week period. The events included the Warren Community Planting Event, Fitzrovia Summer Festival, Camden Unity Cup Festival, Fitzrovia Street Party and Community Dinner, Camden Youth Action Showcase and Christmas Community Dinner. In total 57 young people participated as steering group members and 45% recorded an increase in their well-being scores. In addition to steering group members 139 other young people participated in the events as stewards with 71% stating that participation was brilliant, 70% said they had learnt new skills and 67% said it had improved their sense of community belonging.
Warren Centre Plans are well underway for the opening of the Warren Centre, a new activity space located in the basement of a social housing unit situated adjacent to our Warren Sports Pitch. The activity space will be a Youth Action Innovation Hub run by a management group of young people. The Hub will provide local young people with inspiration, resources and support to identify issues of concern in their community and devise social action projects to address them. We are hoping the centre will be fully operational by the end of the year if not sooner and have secured funding from Camden Giving for a FT project manager and some activity costs. Our Young Ambassadors have been very busy conducting research and consultation sessions with young people and the local community to ensure projects delivered at the centre meet the needs and aspirations of the young people it is for.
Young people with support needs leading youth action Part of our strategic plan is to engage more young people with lived experiences of particular challenges to step into leadership roles and use their experience and skills to lead community action. We are currently working with a number of partner agencies to achieve this. For example; -
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Through our peer mentoring programme, we have delivered peer support programmes with young people from the Youth Offending Service and New Horizon. At William Ellis and Parliament Hill we ran cohorts made up of YP referred through school counselling and wellbeing teams. In collaboration with the WISH Centre in Harrow, FYA will be launching a peer support group for young people who self-harm in July 2019 We have developed a partnership programme with the Tavistock Centre for Relationship Counselling for FYA to run peer support groups for young people whose parents are in conflict. We are awaiting the outcome of a funding application to BBC Children in Need to start this programme. We have a partnership in place with the Camden Youth Offending Service. Our staff and Young Ambassadors help run their Youth Management Board and the identification and planning of youth action programmes. We have completed peer education programmes run by young people from Voice Collective (YP seeing visions or hearing voices) and Count Me In (a disability group based at Somers Town Youth Club)
Through our partnership work and our new Warren Centre youth action innovation hub we are planning to increase this further over the next year. 5
Measuring our impact FYA’s mission is to support young people to create positive change for themselves, their peers and the wider community. At the heart of our work is the assumption, based on experience and existing evidence, that youth led social action can lead to the following outcomes; • • •
increased resilience and wellbeing for young people, a sense of belonging to a community and; development of skills and confidence
To develop our monitoring and evaluation we are working towards Project Oracle Level 2 certification (we currently have Level 1) which requires us to collect pre and post project data and analyse our findings after a year of data has been collected (due this year). Our current monitoring and evaluation framework has three elements: pre and post-programme questionnaires, qualitative feedback (focus groups, session feedback, case studies and individual follow-up interviews 3 months later) and programme peer reviews led by FYA young Ambassadors. We use two validated questionnaires, an adapted Life Effectiveness Questionnaire and Short Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale as a pre and post programme evaluation questionnaire. These questionnaires help us to measure specifically: • • •
Wellbeing Self-confidence Social competence
• • •
Sense of community belonging Intellectual flexibility Task leadership
Where the youth action programmes involved young people delivering projects to others (for example peer education and community events), young people and residents who participated in these programmes were also asked to complete surveys to help us assess impact on them.
Summary of findings At the time of writing this report (April 2019), we have just produced the first draft of analysed data for 18/19. These are primarily based on our accredited baseline and exit surveys completed by 330 young people involved in our youth social action programmes. Below we present the combined statistics across our youth action programmes (based on 330 completed surveys). An overview of the results for each individual programme can be found in Appendix 2. Across our youth action programmes, we have seen positive increases in all areas that we monitor; increases in well-being, community belonging and skills development.
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Skills development and community engagement As the graphs below show, participation in our youth social action programmes appear to have had a positive impact on young people’s skills development and how engaged in the community they feel.
% of participants in our youth action programmes showing positive change (LEQ) 72% 70% 68% 66% 64% 62% 60% 58% 56% 54% Community Engagement
Social Competence
Intellectual Flexibility
Task Leadership
Self Confidence
The average positive increase within each factor measured ranges from 19% to 25%. Using the LEQ calculator, these levels of change can be described as moderate to strong, as the graphs below show.
Percentage of positive change increase by factor (LEQ) 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% Community Engagement
Social Competence
Intellectual Flexibility
Task Leadership
Self-Confidence
Factor Effect Sizes (LEQ) .80 .70 .60 .50 .40 .30 .20 .10 .00 Community Engagement
Social Competence
Intellectual Flexibility
Task Leadership
Self Confidence
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Mental health and well-being Comparison of baseline and exit surveys (330 completed) of the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Health Wellbeing Scale (SWEMHWBS) show increases achieved in all the seven factors measured, as the graph below shows.
Change in average wellbeing scores per SWEMWBS category before and after youth action programmes 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0
Maximum score possible per category = 5
I’ve been feeling I’ve been feeling I’ve been feeling I've been I’ve been I’ve been feeling I’ve been able to dealing with thinking clearly close to other optimistic about useful relaxed make up my problems well the future people own mind about things
Before
After
At the start, 30% of young people across our youth action programmes experienced ‘low’ levels of mental health, according to the SWEMHWBS scale. By the end of the programmes this had reduced to 11%. Those experiencing ‘high’ levels of mental health rose from 4% to 18%.
Proportion in 'low'/ 'medium'/ 'high' well being category 4%
18%
66% 71% 30%
11%
Before (Transformed Score)
% Low Wellbeing
After (Transformed Score)
% Medium Wellbeing
% High Wellbeing
Participants’ average well-being score at the start of the programme was two points below the national average for 16-24 year olds. At the end of the programme, their average score was one point above the national average. (The national average SWEMWBS score for 16-24 year olds is 23.42 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5376387/). 25
SWEMWBS score, before and after programme
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National Average = 23.42
23 22 21 20 19
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18 Before
After
Impact on wider community - other young people We surveyed 1267 young people who took part in awareness workshops delivered by our young volunteers. Baseline and exit questionnaires showed 83% improved their knowledge as a result. We also wanted to find out more about the importance of peer to peer delivery; -
48% felt there was not enough good sources of information locally available to young people about the topics covered in the workshops 76% said they preferred learning from someone closer to their own age
As the graph below shows, young people are most likely by far to approach a peer before seeking advice elsewhere. This provides another solid rationale for our work – youth action as an effective way to get information across to young people.
Where would you go for advice about Drugs & Alcohol or Mental Health? 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Friend/ peer
Internet
Doctor
Parent
Service
Youth Worker
Relative (Not a parent)
Phone Helpline
Teacher
Other
Impact on wider community – adult residents We surveyed 718 adult guests who attended community events organised and delivered by our youth action volunteers; -
73% said they met people at the event who they had not met before 63% described the event as ‘brilliant’ (31% as ‘good’)
We also ask 285 adult guests to score their sense of community belonging before and after the event. 52% showed an improvement of community belonging after the event.
‘I felt that I had to briefly say how very much I enjoyed this afternoon's dinner. It was heart-warming to see all those young people working so well and giving of their time to make a totally splendid afternoon out for so many of us. I am immensely grateful so thank you very much once again.’ Local resident, Fitzrovia Christmas Community Dinner
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‘Enclosed is a small contribution to your planting which I so much appreciate, not only for improving the look of the neighbourhood but for also engaging young volunteers in a community project and to interest them in greening, Fitzrovia Youth in Action indeed! Your effort is truly valued’ Local Resident, Community Planting Day
Our experience of the new monitoring and evaluation framework We are pleased that the first results from our new evaluation tools are indicating that positive outcomes are being achieved. Part of our Strategic Plan is to promote youth social action and the positive impact that it can have. Through our new data collection methods, we are hopefully helping to contribute to the wider base of evidence about the positive impact of youth social action. Implementing the new framework has been challenging and a learning curve for the organisation. We worked with our Ambassadors and a steering group of young people, staff and UX designers to try to find a way for the questions to be administered in a way which is most youth-friendly. However, the length of questionnaires doubled after adopting the new surveys. Both staff and young people have found it very challenging at times to complete so many questions, especially the baseline questionnaire which needs to be completed in addition to membership and equal opportunity forms at the start of the programme. Some of our targeted groups (for example with New Horizon or disability groups we worked with) needed to be excused from completing the forms. We are still working on ways to ensure we provide correct and consistent communication to help explain the questions and why these forms are important. Importantly, we do not want young people to feel they are a ‘subject’ whose performance data is being collected for the benefit of the organisation. Without changing the actual questions (we can’t as they are validated tools), we are still going to try to co-design ways of implementing these new data analyses tools so that they can somehow provide young people with information about themselves which they find useful and empowering. Our new monitoring system also gives us insights into areas that need improving in each programme to ensure participants receive the input they need to address their needs.
Sharing the FYA experience of youth-led social action Whilst we will continue to focus on delivering youth action within Camden, we want to be able to disseminate the learning from our work and engage with a much wider debate about the role and value of youth-led action. We have produced draft manuals for our core programmes to help develop consistency of delivery. By the end of 2019, we will aim to achieve Project Oracle Level 2, which will help provide evidence of the impact of our programmes. Our staff and Ambassadors have begun engaging more on a regional and national level and over the next year, we will be looking for more opportunities for our young people and staff to exchange learning and experiences with others.
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APPENDIX 1 – OUR COMMUNITY PARTNERS We delivered our youth action programmes in partnership with the following agencies during 2018/19;
Somers Town Youth Club
William Ellis School
Camden School for Girls
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APPENDIX 2 - OVERVIEW OF OUTCOME RESULTS PER PROJECT Peer Education – outcomes overview Out of the 163 peer educators, 71 completed the new surveys.
75%
Percentage of participants in Peer Education showing positive change (LEQ)
70% 65% 60% 55% 50% Community Engagement
Social Competence Intellectual Flexibility
Task Leadership
Self Confidence
Change in average wellbeing scores per SWEMWBS category before and after peer education programme Maximum score possible per category = 5 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 I’ve been feeling optimistic about the future
I’ve been feeling useful
I’ve been feeling relaxed
I've been dealing with problems well
Before
I’ve been thinking clearly
I’ve been I’ve been able feeling close to make up to other my own mind people about things
After
Proportion in 'low'/ 'medium'/ 'high' well being category, before and after 4% 18%
66% 71%
30% 11% Before (Transformed Score)
% Low Wellbeing
After (Transformed Score)
% Medium Wellbeing
% High Wellbeing
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Community Events – outcomes overview Out of the 57 steering group members, 30 completed the new surveys.
Positive of participants in Community Events showing positive change (LEQ) 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Community Engagement
Social Competence Intellectual Flexibility
Task Leadership
Self Confidence
Change in average wellbeing scores per SWEMWBS category before and after community events programme Maximum score possible per category = 5
4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 I’ve been I’ve been I’ve been I've been I’ve been I’ve been I’ve been able feeling feeling useful feeling relaxed dealing with thinking clearly feeling close to to make up my problems well optimistic about other people own mind the future about things Before After
Proportion in 'low'/ 'medium'/ 'high' well being category, before and after 3%
13%
57% 83% 40% 3% After (Transformed Score)
Before (Transformed Score)
% Low Wellbeing
% Medium Wellbeing
% High Wellbeing 13
Peer Mentoring – outcomes overview Out of the 275 participants, 179 completed the new surveys.
64%
Percentage of participants in peer mentoring showing positive change (LEQ)
62% 60% 58% 56% 54% 52% 50% 48% 46% Community Engagement
Social Competence Intellectual Flexibility
Task Leadership
Self Confidence
Change in average wellbeing scores per SWEMWBS category, before and after peer mentoring programme Maximum score possible per category = 5 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 I’ve been feeling I’ve been feeling I’ve been feeling I've been dealing I’ve been thinking I’ve been feeling I’ve been able to with problems optimistic about useful relaxed clearly close to other make up my own well the future people mind about things Before
After
Proportion in 'low'/ 'medium'/ 'high' well being category, before and after 3%
17%
70% 69%
27%
14%
Before (Transformed Score)
% Low Wellbeing
After (Transformed Score)
% Medium Wellbeing
% High Wellbeing
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Health Champions – outcomes overview All 30 of the health champions completed the new surveys.
Percentage of Health Champions showing positive change (LEQ)
80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%
Community Engagement Social Competence
Intellectual Flexibility
Task Leadership
Self Confidence
Change in average wellbeing scores per SWEMWBS category before and after Health Champion programme Maximum score possible per category = 5 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 I’ve been feeling optimistic about the future
I’ve been feeling useful
I’ve been feeling I've been dealing I’ve been thinking I’ve been feeling I’ve been able to with problems well relaxed clearly close to other make up my own people mind about things Before
120% 100%
After
Proportion in 'low'/ 'medium'/ 'high' well being category, before and after 3%
7%
80% 53% 60%
77%
40% 20%
43% 17%
0% Before (Transformed Score)
% Low Wellbeing
After (Transformed Score)
% Medium Wellbeing
% High Wellbeing
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Youth Ambassadors – outcomes overview All 20 ambassadors completed the SWEMWBS survey and 19 completed the LEQ questionnaire.
Percentage of Young Ambassadors showing positive change (LEQ)
90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%
Community Engagement
Social Competence
Intellectual Flexibility
Task Leadership
Self Confidence
Change in average wellbeing scores per SWEMWBS category before and after Ambassador programme Maximum score possible per category = 5
4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 I’ve been feeling optimistic about the future
I’ve been feeling useful
I’ve been feeling I've been dealing I’ve been thinking with problems well relaxed clearly Before
120% 100% 80%
I’ve been feeling close to other people
I’ve been able to make up my own mind about things
After
Proportion in 'low'/ 'medium'/ 'high' well being category, before and after 0%
15%
55%
60%
60%
40% 20%
45% 25%
0% Before (Transformed Score)
% Low Wellbeing
After (Transformed Score)
% Medium Wellbeing
% High Wellbeing
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