As the national body for youth advice and counselling services since 1975, we represent and champion a diverse network of youth advice and counselling services which offer support for young people nationwide.
The Quality and Improvement programme pulls together the national community's expertise and young people's lived experience to support services' continuous improvement.
We worked with young people, practitioners, and experts to create the Youth Access Quality Framework; a meaningful, practical, and supportive, nationally recognised framework for the Youth Access model of advice and counselling.
We didn't stop there. We built a self-assessment tool to transform the framework into a roadmap for services, enabling them to better understand their strengths and areas for development.
The tool will also help commissioners and funders to recognise and invest in impactful services. While improved national data will inform policy-making and funding decisions. Plus, a growing suite of learning and improvement resources will help services target meaningful expansions in service delivery and improve support for young people.
Why is the programme needed?
Historic increases in the cost of living and the aftermath of a global pandemic have created difficult terrain on the journey to adulthood. Entrenched inequalities also mean that for some the climb is even steeper. At the same time, long waiting lists for mental health support and cuts to youth services have left young people alone and unable to find their footing. Young people tell us that they want easy to access wrap-around support in their local community that equips them along the way.
Local services want to offer a cohesive range of support for young people in their communities. Evidence shows that the Youth Access model of advice and counselling support is effective, with good reach to underserved groups. But these services often struggle to get the recognition they deserve or the funding they need. There is also no route for services to expand their offer to better meet young people's needs.
What is the Quality and Improvement programme?
Standards and self-assessment
The quality framework sets out the core areas of service delivery for the Youth Access model, for example mental health and youth work, describing levels of implementation for each from foundation to best practice. The self-assessment tool enables services to evidence and benchmark their provision against the standards. The framework and tool will help funders and commissioners to recognise and invest in impactful services.
Improvement
Building on our existing support offer and expertise, we will provide a suite of learning resources that will help services already providing the Youth Access model to deepen and develop their provision for young people. Community-based youth services will be equipped with tools to expand their provision to better meet young people’s complex needs.
National picture
Using the data generated from the self-assessments we will map assets and gaps, providing a clearer national picture of service provision. This will enable funders, commissioners and policymakers to make better informed decisions.
How did we build the Quality and Improvement programme?
We built the programme from the bottom up, bringing together young people, practitioners and other experts so that it is meaningful, practical and sector-led.
- Co-produced: shaped by young people’s lived experience, practitioner knowledge, and research evidence – because we value all three. Using our experience of bringing people together, to create something from the bottom up, not dictated from the top.
- Strengths-based: this is not about criticising and excluding. We want to celebrate great work, inspiring services to develop their provision and giving them the tools to better meet young people’s needs.
- Flexible: from working so closely with our members, we understand the reality that services are working in. We knew that it must be proportionate, connect to other relevant standards, and enable local flexibility.
Convening the sector is a natural part of what we do as the national network for youth advice and counselling services. By bringing together organisations with a shared mission from across the sector, we supercharge our collective impact and amplify the voices of young people.
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