News & thoughts

The Centre for Youth Impact has received over £607,000 of National Lottery funding through the Big Lottery Fund to lead a three and a half year (Apr 2018- Sep 2021) test and learn project for a ground-breaking quality improvement initiative.

The place of power in evaluation is an interesting question to ponder: it is somehow everywhere and yet simultaneously nowhere. Power relations could arguably be the single biggest influence on how an evaluation is designed, undertaken and experienced: power often decides the questions that an evaluation is seeking to answer, and how it goes about answering them.

The Centre for Youth Impact has been commissioned by the Local Government Association to develop an outcomes framework that supports stakeholders across the informal and non-formal youth sector to agree common goals for their work, collaborate more closely, and improve commissioning through a better understanding of quality and impact in youth work and provision for young people.

In June the Centre for Youth Impact and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) are hosting a series of roundtables that will explore the steps necessary to create and sustain an ‘evidence base’ for informal and non-formal youth provision in England.

This blog was written by James Noble, Impact Management Lead at NPC. It is part of a pair blogs, written by James and Bethia McNeil, Director of the Centre for Youth Impact, questioning the focus of impact measurement in youth work. You can read Bethia's blog “Thoughts on the Holy Grail” here.

This blog was written by Bethia McNeil, Director of the Centre for Youth Impact. It is part of a pair blogs, written by James Noble, Impact Management Lead at NPC, and Bethia. You can read James's blog “Let's stop chasing our tails on impact measurement”.

This April marks a significant moment for the Centre for Youth Impact.

The Centre for Youth Impact, supported by Big Lottery Fund, is delighted to present our report from one year of working with the Talent Match partnerships to learn about quality in mentoring relationships.

This blog was written by Thomas Lawson, Chief Executive of Leap Confronting Conflict and the Chair of the Centre’s new board.

Kevin Franks is the Programmes Director at Youth Focus: North East and is the lead for the Centre's North East regional network. Kevin has 25 years’ experience in statutory and voluntary sector youth and community work, which includes centre based, outreach, detached and schools work.

The £900,000 Listening Fund is designed to support 22 youth-focused organisations in England to capture the views and voices of young people in shaping the services that they receive.

In this blog Tania de St Croix, Lecturer in the Sociology of Youth and Childhood at King's College London, offers her thoughts on the Youth Investment Fund Learning Project, which the Centre is leading with NPC and others. You can find out more information on the YIF Learning Project at https://yiflearning.org.

This blog as written by Brahmpreet Gulati, a Member of the Youth Parliament and a youth councillor for Thurnby Lodge, who attended Raven Youth Centre in Leicester. Brahmpreet was part of the 'How Will You Hear Me?' project where young people shared their personal stories and talked about their experiences of being listened to – or not – by different public bodies across a series of short films.

The framework was developed by the Centre for the Young Brent Foundation and its members. It sets out six questions that will help organisations to understand the impact of their work with and for young people.

Building on our existing work with the Young Brent Foundation (YBF) that developed a guidebook to evaluation, the Centre is piloting an enhanced support offer for YBF’s members.

In this blog Bethia McNeil, Director of the Centre for Youth Impact, opens a conversation about funders and evaluation. You can read Jane Steele's, Director, Evidence and Learning at the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, response to Bethia's blog here.