We've gathered a selection of external resources to support the continuous development of the Foundations of a hub: the core elements of a safe and effective organisation
The quality framework areas of focus in this section include:
- Safeguarding
- Clinical governance and risk management
- Workforce development
- Outcomes and impact
- Service learning and improvement
- Internal coordination
- External integration and collaboration
You'll find a variety of external resources, including webinars, podcasts, guidebooks and toolkits.
All of the resources linked here will take you to third-party sites not managed by Youth Access. For Youth Access Principles resources, please visit youthaccess.org.uk/auroraresources.
1. Safeguarding
🌱 8 steps to safeguarding and child protection
A practical breakdown for charities: assess risk, nominate a designated safeguarding lead (DSL), write policies, train staff, recruit safely, establish codes of behaviour, set up incident logging, and agree clear escalation paths.
📓 A 10 step guide to sharing information to safeguard children
Information Comissioners Office
This is a 10 step guide on data protection considerations when sharing personal information for child safeguarding purposes. It aims to help you feel confident about sharing information when you need to safeguard a child or young person at risk of harm.
📓 Good governance for safeguarding: A guide for UK NGO boards
This practical guide explores six ways that trustees of UK-based NGOs should take the lead on safeguarding.
🌱 Safeguarding and child protection self-assessment tool
Our free self-assessment tool will help your school or organisation audit current safeguarding and child protection arrangements. The tool will also help to identify areas for development and support you in making any changes necessary.
🌱 The national youth agencys safeguarding and risk management hub
The Hub provides guidance, support, advice and access to training resources for all organisations and individuals working with young people – whether you’re a volunteer, a trustee, a youth worker or an organisational lead.
🌱 Understanding effective safeguarding culture tool
2. Clinical governance and risk management
📓 Leading with values: creating a safe organisational culture
Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO)
Offers frameworks for defining values, leadership commitments, and aligning ethics with everyday practice.
3. Workforce development
🌱 A Positive Culture Toolkit
Toolkit for leaders to build inclusive, collaborative workplaces. Provides checklists, activities, and a simple Analyse-Plan-Do-Review model to improve culture, teamwork, and care quality.
📓 Burnout in healthcare: risk factors and solutions
The Society of Occupational Medicine
This report outlines burnout’s signs, prevalence, and risk factors in healthcare - from excessive demands and lack of autonomy to emotional labor and poor support - and offers evidence-based, multi-level strategies (individual, team, and organisational) to manage and reduce burnout effectively.
📓 The Burnout Report
The Burnout Report 2025 finds one in three UK adults face high stress, with 18–24 year-olds most affected. Younger workers report more absences, unpaid overtime, and isolation, alongside declining trust in managers. The findings highlight a widening generational divide and the urgent need for targeted workplace support to prevent burnout.
The Burnout Report 2026 reveals one in five workers took time off sick due to poor mental health caused by stress, remaining consistent with the previous year. Age also continues to be a factor, with two in five 18-24 year-olds taking time off for the same reason.
🎤︎︎ Conversation: The importance of reflective supervision
Podcast with Alison Domakin offering tips, tools, and questions for reflective supervision. Explores purpose, leadership, power, and systemic barriers, with resources to strengthen supervision practice.
💻 Reflective supervision: learning hub
An open-access hub for practice supervisors and middle leaders, offering research, practical tools, and resources to strengthen reflective supervision, critical analysis, and emotional resilience. Relevant to children’s and adults’ services, its six sections support organisations in building a positive supervision culture for both new and experienced supervisors.
🌱 Reflective supervision: resource pack
This Resource Pack offers 25 tools to help supervisors, teams, and organisations develop, strengthen, and sustain reflective supervision in child and family services - whether starting out or building on existing practice.
🎬 Understanding moral injury
NHS England Workforce, Training and Education
This NHS England film supports healthcare workers in understanding moral injury—what it means, how it appears, and ways to respond. Part of a wider series on emotional challenges, it includes reflective questions, peer support discussion, and links to further reading to help staff care for themselves and colleagues.
🖊 How burnout broke Britain – and how it can recover
This article examines how burnout has damaged Britain’s workforce, with case studies illustrating personal impact. It offers ideas for recovery, resilience, and sustainable workloads - insights that could prompt valuable conversations among healthcare professionals about preventing burnout and improving workplace well-being.
4. Outcomes and impact
🌱 Tools and activities for evaluating and recording the impact of youth work
Toolkit with surveys, templates, and outcome tools to measure youth work impact. Helps services assess trust, engagement, skills, and personal development through both qualitative and quantitative data.
🌱 Evaluating detached youth work toolkit
Toolkit for evaluating detached youth outreach. Provides mapping tools, session records, and interview templates that can also track coordination, shared planning, and young people’s journeys through services.
🌱 Goal-based outcomes: directory page and guidance
Child Outcomes Research Consortium (CORC, an Anna Freud project)
Introduces the Goal-based outcomes tool, where young people set and track goals. Provides guidance, downloadable resources, demo videos, and training to support personalised, collaborative outcome monitoring across services.
🎬 How do young people relate to filling in mental health outcome measures?
Child Outcomes Research Consortium (CORC, an Anna Freud project)
Video featuring practitioners and young people discussing experiences of outcome questionnaires in mental health. Explores usefulness, challenges, and young people’s perspectives on sharing their views through structured tools.
🌱 Outcomes star: website with supporting resources
Evidence-based tool supporting collaborative measurement of change across 20+ tailored versions. Combines reflective practice, goal-setting, and secure digital tracking, with training, guides, and case studies for embedding outcome monitoring.
🌱 i-THRIVE Toolkit: Practical Support for Implementing the THRIVE Framework
Partnership between the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice and UCL Partners.
Toolkit to support implementation of the THRIVE Framework in children’s mental health. Provides editable resources, case studies, animations, and training materials to guide services through engagement, redesign, and embedding practice.
🌱 Measuring service effectiveness and impact through outcome and experience tools
Child Outcomes Research Consortium (CORC, an Anna Freud project)
Searchable directory of validated outcome tools with guidance, training, and resources. Supports practitioners in selecting, adapting, and using measures to track children and young people’s mental health, wellbeing, and experiences.
🌱 The data ethics canvas
Practical tool to identify and manage ethical issues in data use. Offers guiding questions, multilingual print-at-home guides, and training courses to support responsible, transparent, and trustworthy data practices.
5. Service learning and improvement
📓 Developing a learning organisation
New Philanthropy Capital (NPC)
A learning organisation enables staff at all levels to use insights - from data, experience, and sector research - to improve decisions on strategy, delivery, and partnerships. NPC’s briefing explores why organisations sometimes fail to learn and offers ideas from a seminar on building a culture that supports continuous improvement.
6. Internal coordination
📓 Logic model for integrated care
Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE)
Visual model showing enablers, activities, and outcomes of integrated care. Useful for planning, setting coordination goals, refining referral processes, and monitoring internal cohesion across teams.
📓 Resource bank: multi-disciplinary teams working for integrated care
Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE)
Guide explaining how multidisciplinary teams work in community settings. Covers shared records, access points, key workers, and collaborative notes to support referral systems, clarify staff roles, and strengthen coordination.
🎬 Successful multi-disciplinary teams: findings and practical insights
Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE)
Webinar sharing practical learning on planning, facilitation, evaluation, and digital tools for MDTs. Highlights success factors and impact measurement, helping services set up or improve team-based coordination.
🎬 Integration webinar series
Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) for NHS England
Series exploring system-level integration in NHS England’s ICSs. Topics include leadership, prevention, and community engagement, offering lessons on collaboration and culture relevant to youth hubs.
7. External integration and collaboration
🖊 Projects, programmes and partnerships
Outlines WithYou’s collaborative projects with schools, health providers, and community organisations. Shows how co-designed programmes integrate substance misuse and mental health support, offering youth hubs a model for effective external partnerships without duplicating services.
📓 Youth work with schools
Report advocating youth work’s alignment with schools. Highlights benefits for attendance, wellbeing, and engagement, while guiding services on embedding youth work values and practice into education settings.
a note on external resources
Please note that these links will take you to a third-party site not managed by Youth Access. If you have any other resource recommendations that fellow youth advice and counselling services might find useful, let us know!
You can find external resources to support your work on areas of focus falling under Principles and Services below.