Measurement Tools Spotlight - Stratford Youth Collective

In 2021, two youth organisations jointly established what would later become the Stratford Youth Collective to strengthen youth provision in the Stratford-Upon-Avon area. The organisations initially delivered detached youth work before progressing into open access provision in line with young people’s needs and preferences.

The Collective is strongly committed to using data to tailor and improve its provision. Until early 2024, it was using paper-based methods to gather demographic and consultation data from young people. This was labour-intensive and did not provide the in-depth, longitudinal insight that the organisation required to inform its provision.

[Having a paper based approach] is a nightmare…as a manager, it makes it incredibly hard to be able to delegate anything to anyone, because a paper folder follows me around everywhere…And then when I was asked to report…it's literally going through all of the paper and trying to figure out individual participants

The Collective currently works with 260 to 300 young people through open access provision, youth arts and gaming groups, drop-in sessions (where young people can get advice and support on anything, from CV writing to sexual health), and a group for young people who are not in full-time education. The latter group is funded by the local Police and Crime Commissioner as part of a pilot.

The local area has pockets of high deprivation and young people who have characteristics and are facing circumstances which make them particularly vulnerable.
 

We have quite significant issues around county lines…we've had a massive increase in antisocial behaviour: more knife crime. We work with a lot of young people who are from displaced families that are living in hotels waiting to find out the outcome of their asylum seeking or refugee status. We work with a lot of young people who are in care, a lot of young carers.

In addition, quite a few of the young people who access the Collective’s provision are LGBTQ+, are neurodiverse, or have Special Educational Needs (SEN).

Stratford Youth Collective is using the Youth Engagement Survey[1] (YES) and the Young People’s Survey[2] (YPS) to identify where young people currently were in terms of their engagement and functional skills, with a view to capturing changes over time. The YPS has been primarily used with young people who are engaging in a pilot project targeted at those who do not attend school regularly. The YES is used with young people attending open access provision to understand their engagement with it in depth.
 

[The YES] was really interesting to do with young people…Especially with us, being youth led [and] having a 50% youth Trustee Board, it’s really important to know how involved they feel and how heard they feel when they are here.

Initially, staff offered one-to-one support to young people to complete the measures on paper during a quieter evening session. This helped young people to complete the questionnaire as fully as possible. Completing the questionnaire on-site also ensured that it captured the views of young people themselves as opposed to them having help from parents or carers, thus capturing more valid data.
 

With the younger ones, we don’t always have direct contact with the young people. It’s through parents and carers and then you kind of think…who’s actually filling it in, if I just send a link out. Whereas [if] the young person’s there and in front of us, we can answer any questions.

The YPS has given The Collective valuable insight into the development of the social and emotional skills of the young people who engage with its provision. It has used this insight to monitor, shape, and report on its provision. 
 

[The measures] have provided valuable data enabling me to monitor and evaluate young people’s progress and report rich data to our board and funders. We are also trialling the QPT in several different ways as a line management tool [and for] peer observation and reflections. I have been able to add [reflections from the measures] to recent funding and grant applications to support and develop our service.

The Collective found that encouraging young people to complete the measures could be challenging. This was especially the case when young people have just started to engage (or re-engage) with the provision and staff are working to gain their trust. To overcome this, staff are considering more creative approaches to gathering data on young people’s engagement with their provision and its impact on them.

Stratford Youth Collective plans to continue exploring how the QPT can support its practitioners. It is anticipated that this measure would be particularly helpful to support the integration of practitioners from different organisations. The organisation will also continue to use the YES to assess young people’s engagement with its provision, including its group for young people who are not in full-time education.

Please visit our measurement hub to find out more about our tools and how to use them.

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[1] The YES is a survey completed by young people to assess their mental engagement (e.g. enjoyment, inclusion, attention, and voice) during provision.

[2] The YPS is a survey completed by young people to assess young people’s functional skills (i.e., how they feel and behave in life) in terms of emotion management, empathy, problem solving, initiative, teamwork, and responsibility.