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Member Profile: Young Devon

13 July, 2009

Who are Young Devon?

Young Devon (Formerly Devon Youth Association) is a charity that was established in 1949 to support and deliver services to young people living in Devon. In that time it has grown to become the largest voluntary youth service in the area with a workforce of 120 paid staff and 200 volunteers.

The vision

To promote and support a quality life experience, enabling young people to become resilient and succeed in their right to enjoy safe, healthy and happy lives.

To secure young people's right to participate and be meaningfully involved in society and to influence decision makers who have the power to impact on their lives.

To invest in young people, assisting them in building their life skills, confidence and motivation: and to create opportunities for them to make an active and valued contribution to their communities.

Under one roof: leading the way on inter-agency working
Young Devon has been a lead agency in promoting inter-agency and co-location of young people's services. Agencies such as Care Leavers Team from CYPS and Young Peoples Drug Services, are brought together under Young Devon's roof to provide young people with access to specialist workers, who provide additional support for a whole range of situations including, the threat of homelessness, and mental health issues. A Connexions worker offers additional support in relation to education and training opportunities.

Specialist workers
Young Devon is able to provide specialist workers in housing advice, and homelessness prevention, sexual health, counselling and psychotherapy. Support is also available for specific groups such as Young Carers, Care Leavers, and those who undertake extreme risk taking behaviour.

The services

Youth Enquiry Services
Young Devon works to provide free confidential support and advice, located in YES centres across Devon: Ivybridge, Tavistock, Exeter and a new building opening in July in Newton Abbot:

Sexual health
The YES teams have been at the forefront of delivering Sexual Health services within the community and supporting the promotion of Chlamydia screening outside of GP health services.

Counselling
Each YES team has a counselling coordinator who supports volunteer counsellors. Each centre provides in excess of over 540 sessions per year.

Housing
Young Devon provides a range of housing options:

Supported Housing
Move on accommodation with floating support
Supported Lodgings.

All of the young people are provided with a key worker, and gain the skills to enable them to move towards independent living and to sustain their accommodation. Accredited training – positive housing units – can be attained during this time.

Supported Lodgings Scheme: "best practice"
Young Devon recruits, trains and supports individuals, families and couples who have the space within their home to offer accommodation to a young person in need of safe and appropriate accommodation. The scheme has been recognised as 'best practice' by Shelter. Young Devon provide workshops on it's implementation at the annual Supported Lodgings Conference in York.

Support for Young Carers
Young Devon supports Young Carers by:

Providing support and information
Providing people who will listen
Offering a place where the young person can have some timeaway from their caring responsibility
Providing a place to meet other young carers, helping to remove the isolation and stigma of being a carer

2 Key Successes

Risk and Behaviour Project wins Award!
Devon's Children's Trust recently held the second annual Young People's achievement award. There were over 100 nominations for young people who had worked hard to improve their lives, challenge expectations, inspire others and make a difference. Five young women from the Risk and Behaviour Project won the group category for their outstanding achievement in working hard over a period of two years on the project. They designed, filmed and edited their personal journeys into a DVD.
View the footage

'Voice for Young People' - UK's first Young Commissioning Ambassador
The most disadvantaged young people are to become key stakeholders in future service design and development following the announcement of the UK's first Young Commissioning Ambassador, Sarah Williams (20), who is employed by Young Devon. Sarah will be engaging young people who rarely have their views heard, before training them to become young commissioners. They will help identify key priorities, develop specifications and assess tenders. This will help to ensure that as powerful stakeholders, the best quality local provision meets their needs.

Young Devon and Youth Access

Dianne Simpson, Young Devon's Director of Services says "Young Devon employees all receive Youth Access information via the website and though the email bulletin. They are then able to access training opportunities directly. Young Devon have been members of Youth Access for a long time and have worked cooperatively on various projects over the years ~ with particular focus on counselling. Young Devon is currently part of the Youth Access pilot in measuring outcomes for young people accessing information and support."

Youth Access's James Kenrick says "We chose Young Devon as one of our ten advice outcomes monitoring pilots as they are clearly well-managed and their centres provide a classic combination of information, advice, counselling and support services. The early data coming in from their outcomes monitoring indicates that Young Devon achieves some life-changing results for the young people who use their services."

Go to Young Devon's website