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Centre for Youth Impact – Regional Impact for the North East
Led by Youth Focus North East, The Regional Impact Network is open to any organisation working with young people in the North East of England that has an interest in developing their impact measurement practice.
The Impact Network is supported by the Centre for Youth Impact (CYI) and is one of seven Regional Impact Networks across the country. The network exists to support youth organisations to undertake meaningful evaluation and impact measurement. It does this by providing a ‘safe space’ in which members can share issues or challenges that they are facing in their work, seek advice from peers, and access support that enables them to develop solutions that work for them and that will inform their practice.
We aim to support network members to:
– Be better able to assess, appraise and interpret evidence.
– Strive to improve the quality of the evidence that they are gathering and use that evidence to inform practice.
– Be more confident in applying their technical skills and knowledge to plan and undertake meaningful evaluations.
Collectively, we want to hold each other to account on:
– Ensuring that we keep young people at the centre of any impact measurement and evaluation.
– Improving the quality of the evaluations we undertake.
– Using the findings from any impact measurement and evaluation to inform ongoing delivery and practice.
To sign up to join the Regional Impact Network for the North East contact office@youthfocusne.org.uk
Network of Regional Youth Work Unit – England
The Network of Regional Youth Work Units: England brings together independent organisations working across the youth work sector at regional level within the nine English regions.
Regional Youth Work Units act as hubs for developing and supporting youth work in their regions, working with commissioners, providers and young people themselves to ensure the sector is well-informed, skilled and responsive to changes in government policies and young people’s needs.
Youth Focus North East is proud to be the Regional Youth Work Unit (RYWU) for the North East of England.
The Network supports and strengthens the capacity of RYWUs, sharing and promoting best practice. We work with a range of national and regional organisations to develop new initiatives and joint partnerships for the benefit of youth work and young people.
In addition, the Network provides a bridge between national policy and initiatives, and local policy and delivery – enabling communication and supporting new developments.
North East Youth Alliance
The North East Youth Alliance (NEYA) has been created to support the development and sustainability of the people and the organisations working to improve the lives of young people across the region. Our ambition is to support a culture shift across the sector – to get people in the youth and community sector thinking and working differently.
The overall outcomes for the NEYA are:
– Improved capacity, collaboration and coordination in the youth sector leading to improved youth provision in the region,
– Increased influence of young people’s voices in shaping of services,
– Increased sustainability of services and support for and with young people.
Youth and Culture Sector
The North East Youth Alliance are working collaboratively with Culture Bridge NE, over 2023-25, to build closer relationships between the culture and youth sectors.
Together, we want to build stronger, sustainable strategic links between our respective sectors. Our aim is to foster a greater mutual understanding, enable the workforce in both sectors to learn from one another, give young people a greater voice in decision-making and to work towards a more joined-up offer for children and young people across the North East. This work is delivered as a partnership between Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums and the North East Youth Alliance.
Some of the key anticipated outcomes include;
- CPD sessions held for the Youth and Culture Sector.
- Networking sessions held to bring together workers across the sectors.
- Action research pilot projects completed, with findings shared more widely across both sectors and recommendations for future working made.
This initiative is funded from Arts Council England and is for the purpose of delivering the outputs below.
- NEYA membership associated with the cultural sector increased from 26 to 70 by March 2024, with targets for the second year set after first year of activity.
- 6 CPD sessions held for youth sector in the first year, with targets for the second year set after first stage of activity.
- 6 CPD sessions held for cultural sector in the first year, with targets for the second year set after first stage of activity.
- 4 networking sessions held to bring together workers across the youth and cultural sectors in the first year, with targets for the second year set after first stage of activity.
- 5 action research pilot projects completed, with findings shared more widely across both sectors and recommendations for future working made.
- 4 Local Cultural Education Partnerships working meaningfully with Local Youth Partnerships and/ or the NEYA Youth Board.
STRATEGIC WORK
Belong Collective
Astra Foundation + Co-op Foundation
The Belong Collective aims to be a cross sector network, which is focused on connecting practitioners to share learning, challenges, good practice, and new thinking about youth loneliness. The focus of this work is wider than just the youth sector – supporting those who work and engage with young people to consider youth loneliness and embed effective solutions to tackle it.
In Partnership with UK Youth;
Youth Focus North East are leading the work to co-design resources and deliver training which will enable practitioners to support young people to articulate feelings of loneliness, explore their emotions around this challenging issue and develop practical actions that begin to help young people take positive steps forward.
The aims of the Belong Collective are:
Cross-sector, joined up working –
To help identify young people who may be hidden to youth services and also provide referral pathways where further support is needed.
Targeted support –
To support Youth Workers with training and resources in reaching out to young people experiencing loneliness.
Bring together youth-centred resources –
To provide opportunities for young people to connect through providing safe spaces, youth-centred peer support and detached youth work.
Tackling Youth Loneliness and Isolation Report – 15th March 2023
Enrichment Partnership Programme
Youth Focus: North East and NEYouth, have been awarded two grants for an exciting new programme aiming to test whether providing centralised support to schools around enrichment has a positive impact on the quality and uptake of enrichment activities locally, without leading to additional costs/resources for schools.
The programme has been developed by NCS – National Citizen Service Trust and The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and jointly funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Department for Education. North East Youth Alliance (NEYA) has been created to support the development and sustainability of the people and the organisations working to improve the lives of young people across the North East. Our ambition is to support a culture shift across the sector – to get people in the youth and community sector thinking and working differently. Through the Enrichment Partnerships Programme, our collaborative efforts aim to synergise resources and drive positive change within the educational landscape. This is thanks to two grant awards with the total exceeding £232,000. Youth Focus: North East will be focusing our efforts on Middlesbrough, aligning strategically with the Middlesbrough Youth Mutual, a local youth partnership.
Feast of Fun
Feast of Fun is a partnership of local churches, community groups and schools that offer holiday activities with healthy food across Middlesbrough and Redcar & Cleveland. The funding has been received during the summer, Easter and October half term holidays for the past three years, which enables us to provide our youth support service and providing food for young people over the half term.
Great North Children’s Hospital
A partnership between Youth Focus North East and the Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (NUTH), has resulted in new roles for two youth workers to work with young people and young adults (age 16-25) with diabetes, within the Great North Children’s Hospital. This is part of an exciting project funded by NHS England to transform the long-term health and social outcomes of young people with Diabetes, helping to promote the social development of young patients aged 16-25 years via a range of activities, combining education with enjoyment, challenge resilience and learning.
Alongside this project, a further Youth Worker will support young patients across the hospital with the aim of improving the advocacy for groups of patients currently under represented, assisting in the transition to adult and tertiary care, accompanying young people to hospital appointments and undertaking support work on the wards.
Holiday Activity Fund
Holiday Activity Fund (HAF) pays for youth provision sessions which run during the school holidays offering free, fun activities and food to children and young people aged 5 to 16 years. HAF understand that the school holidays can be a challenging time for parents. Middlesbrough Council on behalf of the Holiday Activity Fund have granted us funding over Easter, summer and Christmas to support young people to engage in positive activities, physical activity and providing a hot nutritious meal over a time which to some can be very difficult.
Streetlaw
Streetlaw involves law students going into schools and youth groups to inform young people about legal issues using practical and interactive teaching methods. Since 2011 we have had the pleasure of working with Newcastle University to support their own Street Law project. The project develops and evolves every year, led by the student Street Law Ambassadors (SLAs).
The SLAs have developed materials on legal issues such as police powers, access to legal advice, rights at school, street drinking and transitions into adulthood.
As a key partner on the project, Youth Focus North East delivers bespoke interactive training sessions to undergraduate students from Newcastle Law School on effectively working with young people. The training enables them to become SLAs, delivering discussion and awareness sessions to groups of children and young people in the region. We have recently provided an additional peer mentoring support service included within the training and programme delivery.
UK Youth Parliament
The UK Youth Parliament was established in 1999 to provide opportunities for young people, including those from marginalised communities, to influence the parliamentary process.
The UK Youth Parliament is made up of more than 300 young people aged between 11 and 18 years, elected as Members of Youth Parliament (MYPs) to represent the views of their peers. It provides opportunities for young people to bring about social change through meaningful representation and campaigning.
In the North East we have 11 out of the 12 local authority areas that have an elected MYP. Youth Focus North East is the regional lead for the North East and we support the elected MYP and the Local Authorities. The NYA was selected to run the UK Youth Parliament through 2024-2025, in May 2024, following the closure of the British Youth Council in March 2024.
Key activities for the UK Youth Parliament include participating in regional roundtable events and undertaking a national ballot of UK-wide youth views, Make Your Mark.
The MYPs also campaign locally, regionally and nationally throughout the year and deliver sessions with schools and in the community to engage young people with the democratic process.
