Devon Youth Service’s Journey into

Impact

“We don’t believe you, sorry, try again………”

“Why can’t we explain Youth Work??”

“Whatever it is, it’s not good enough”

“That’s all very nice but are you reaching the ‘right’ young people”

“Trust you? Professionals?”

“Why can’t ‘they’ see what we see??”

“This isn’t Finland you know”

The ContextReduced budget

Successive cuts for 3 years

Huge reduction in staff.

Closure of 26 Youth Centres.

Effect on staff & young people

Low moral

A feeling of being undervalued

A sense of self doubt (self blame)

Leading to...

Some of the quotes on the front page

Action

Opportunity

Mutualisation

ActionIt’s not our fault

Dusting DownWe spent time with staff to reassure them that we understand the changes and importance that they make every day.Also gaining support from key stakeholders helped.

Let’s give this one more go

ResilienceRelied on what carry us - the young people, we started to learn new buildings, new staff teams - started a new specification.

“Why can’t they see what we see?”Views & EvidenceEveryone was committed to not letting our work go unseen or heard again. Recognising our strengths and designing services that work.

Implementation

Nov 14

Management Information system Design (Views)

Jan 15

Training and roll out

April 15

Full-scale adoption for 4 of our major Service Area

May-Dec 15

Cultural shift and adjustment

Feb-June 16

Evaluation plan, Project Oracle standard, Ambition Kitemark

Urm, so what are we

measuring?

“I am not a number!”

Easy things

Footfall

Gender

Accreditation

Ethnicity

How many YP volunteer in our services

Why?

How?

Are they feeling better?

Do we help stop crime?

Are our services effective?

Not so easy

HOW?

So what do we measure?

Large-scale trends

Outcomes

Enablers

If we don’t do it, don’t say we doIt’s ok to not be changing the world every dayBe kind to each otherYou can’t please all the people all the timeDon’t judge a fish by it’s ability to climb a tree

Some mantras we live by

So how do we measure?

Evaluation Plan:

Individual feedback from YPTermly Evaluation PlanTransformative EvaluationAnonymous data and statsBespoke measuring tools for service

areasEvents, culture and emphasis in

buildingsCalendars for reports, events.Built trust in the Theory of Change from

within and without