Evaluation Blog #4: An Evidence Review on involving young people in the design and delivery of programmes

The involvement of young people is a central principle of the Talent Match Programme: the programme seeks to encourage young people to design provision themselves, to give them control over this provision, and to promote new approaches.  Some Talent Match partnerships committed resources to involving young people before the project launch; whilst others have provided more support since the programme went live.

CRESR led an evidence review on the involvement of young people in partnerships. Whilst much is known about youth involvement, relatively little is known about the involvement of 18-24 year olds.  Three forms of involvement were identified: consultation with young people; co-production, where young people and staff work together; or mostly/entirely young- people-led projects.

In-depth case study work with three partnerships followed the evidence review, highlighting these key points:

  • there is a lot of good practice in terms of involving young people
  • the extent of involvement varies within, and across partnerships – there is no one size fits all
  • some approaches are more effective than others, particularly at engaging the hard-to-reach. These include: utilising staff with experience of engagement, outreach and youth work; building in resources for additional support; peer-to-peer approaches to recruitment etc.

However, there are various barriers and opportunities to involvement. These include: a lack of buy-in from staff for a youth-led approach; low levels of confidence among young people; the capacity of the organisations involved; training opportunities etc.

The evidence review raises the following questions for partnerships to assess how effective their approaches are:

  • What approach is being used: what facilitates involvement e.g. training, incentives, flexibility?
  • Is involvement meaningful?
  • What are the outcomes for those directly involved and wider beneficiaries?
  • How inclusive are the approaches to involvement?
  • Is the scale and scope of opportunities for involvement appropriate?

Underpinning these considerations, is honesty and clarity about the extent of, and limits to, young peoples’ involvement.  A major challenge for the programme will be about the management of expectations.

The evidence review can be found here: http://www.shu.ac.uk/research/cresr/sites/shu.ac.uk/files/tm-evidence-review-young-people.pdf

The literature on involving 18-24 year olds, and specifically NEET groups, is sparse. It is therefore even more important that evidence of good practice and lessons are systematically collected and shared.

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