Youth Access is seeking member agencies to pilot our Youth Advice Outcomes Toolkit between now and September 2009.

The toolkit includes two methods of getting young people to self-assess the difference made to their lives by the advice they received: a two-stage self-assessment questionnaire process (designed primarily for use by agencies that undertake ongoing casework and want robust data based on a relatively small sample of users) and a single-stage self-assessment questionnaire (designed for agencies undertaking a lot of one-off advice and for those wanting ‘quick and dirty’ data).

The two-stage self-assessment questionnaires have already been piloted with three youth advice agencies as part of our Rights to Access Project. The first questionnaire generates data on the impact of the young person’s problem and is given to the client when they seek advice. The second, given to the client three months later or when their problem has been resolved, provides data on the short-term impact of the advice they received. The pilot agencies found the outcomes monitoring exercise valuable and obtained data they have used to try to influence funders.

View an example of data collected by one of the pilots.

The toolkit also contains some suggested ways of monitoring hard advice outcomes and of asking open questions for those wanting to take a qualitative approach, as well as methods of linking your outcomes monitoring to the profile of young people and to the nature of the issues and advice given. Finally, the toolkit maps all the potential outcomes against the Every Child Matters outcomes, so that agencies can use the data collected in negotiations with funders.

We plan to review, develop and consult on the whole Youth Advice Outcomes Toolkit during the second half of 2008. This process will include:

• Working with young people to test the language and format of questionnaires – we would like to find YIACS willing to test the survey forms either with individual users or groups of young people.
• Consulting members on a revised version of the toolkit.
• Recruiting YIACS willing to pilot different elements of the toolkit – we want some to use the two-stage questionnaires, others the one-stage survey, the hard outcome forms or qualitative techniques – or even a combination of approaches.

By 2010 we aim to have developed outcome monitoring systems that are appropriate for all youth advice agencies.

View the current version of the Youth Advice Outcomes Toolkit

If you are interested in participating in this work, please contact:

James Kenrick, Advice Services Development Manager (email: james@youthaccess.org.uk; Tel: 020 8772 9900)
or
Steve Lee, Advice Services Development Officer – Policy (email: steve@youthaccess.org.uk Tel: 020 8772 9900)