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6. Improving Quality
We see many examples of high quality youth work across the country. Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education ( HMIE) publish examples of good practice as they conduct their nationwide system of inspections. We are supporting YouthLink Scotland to raise awareness of good practice, including using their website to highlight examples.
HMIE has recently published the revised How Good is Our Community Learning and Development? This is a self-evaluation framework to assist community learning and development providers to improve their work. Youth projects can also evaluate themselves against the framework so that they can continue to improve the quality of their service.
Communities Scotland is leading a project that aims to support the development of improved performance information (at both national and local levels) in community learning and development. As part of this project, Communities Scotland is consulting on the outcomes for young people that youth work can contribute to delivering. Many of these are well known and have been identified in previous work, such as Step It Up. They include improved self esteem, greater resilience, increased ability to communicate and work with others, and more effective community involvement.
Youth work also makes an important contribution to outcomes that make a difference to communities, such as increasing engagement with young people not in employment, education or training, decreasing anti-social behaviour, and improving health. Regeneration outcome agreements are an example of how a range of partners - including most importantly communities themselves - can identify what they want to happen in their local areas. Sometimes these changes are difficult to measure because the full impact may not be seen for some time. Often a number of factors make a difference in a young person's life and it can be difficult to see exactly what contribution youth work is making at the time of delivery.
We do need to know what works and what does not work to motivate and engage young people. They have clear views about what does and does not make a positive difference in their lives and projects can often clearly see
the impact they are having. This does not mean that we expect all youth work provision to do everything. But we do expect the projects to be clear about the difference they are trying to make. We expect them to involve young people in those discussions and to be able to explain the impact they are having. Being able to demonstrate outcomes and impacts is essential so we can direct future funding at the projects and initiatives which have the most positive effect on young people's development and lives. There are now several initiatives focusing on evaluation of projects, which people are finding helpful in the work they are doing for young people.
Q26: Are you getting enough support with self-evaluation and with identifying and measuring outcomes and impacts? If not, what would help?
We have made clear in Getting It Right for Every Child that everyone working with children and young people needs to work closely together to make sure that every child and young person is given the best possible opportunity to develop their full potential. Youth workers have an important role to play in this. There are already positive examples of youth workers working closely with teachers, social workers, police, health and other professions to help make sure that young people get the services that they need. This includes young people facing particular challenges, such as those who are looked after or have special needs.
Q27: How can youth workers work more closely with others (for example, health workers) to make sure that young people's needs are identified and met?
An important element of youth work today is the chance it gives young people to achieve recognition for informal learning. Significant progress has been made in developing systems to recognise and accredit young people's achievement. Examples include the Youth Achievement Awards for over-14s and the Dynamic Youth Awards for the 10-14 age group. In partnership with the Laidlaw Youth Project, we have recently provided funding to Youth Scotland to develop joint accreditation with other awards and level the Youth Achievement Awards against the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework. This important work is playing a significant role in making sure that the awards themselves achieve greater recognition among employers and others in future.
Q28: How do we make sure that young people receive recognition for informal learning?
Q29: How do we ensure that employers and others understand and value these achievements?
We are keen to encourage excellence in all aspects of youth work and would be interested to know your views on how best to support this. Previous suggestions have included the development of a National Centre for Youth Work Excellence, involving a research function.
Q30: How can we promote and encourage excellence in the youth work sector?
Case Study: Achieving Youth Achievement Awards: Active Steps, Fife 
Youth work projects can offer another way for young people to have their skills and achievements recognised. Many young people find that an informal learning environment suits them best and they can gain skills and awards to take with them for the rest of their lives.
Youth Achievement Awards are a peer education approach to recognising and accrediting young people's achievements aged 14 and over. They are accredited by ASDAN and recognise four levels of responsibility from Bronze (taking part) to Platinum Level (about developing skills to educate other young people).
Active Steps is a Big Lottery funded initiative based in Fife. It targets 'at risk' young people and provides personal and social development programmes with a focus on sports and outdoor learning. Its Junior Sports Leader Award programme offers the chance for young people already involved to progress further.
Vicky (15) took part in an Active Steps project during summer 2004 and completed her Bronze Youth Achievement Award by December. She was then accepted onto the Sports Leader course where she learned the skills to deliver short activity sessions to other young people and did a voluntary work placement. Here she gained experience to act as a mentor to other young people. She achieved the Sports Leader Level 1 Award in December 2005 and has also completed her Silver Youth Achievement Award.
Her achievements have given Vicky a real confidence boost. She is now working hard for her standard grades,
with good attendance at school. She still volunteers weekly with a junior youth club.
She says that her involvement with Active Steps has:
"given me … the opportunity to do stuff that other people dinnae get and has helped me
get more confidence."
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