Youth Moves Our Impact Journey

The story of our impact journey  How has our evidence and impact measurement changed over the last 14 years?

 Alistair Dale  Youth Moves Manager     Facebook  Youth Moves  Youth Moves Community Space Challenge

Youth Moves background  Youth Work organisation  Based at The Park, former secondary school for Knowle West  Work with young people aged 8-25 years old  Provide services across South Bristol

Youth Moves in numbers  Work with approx 1100 young people every year  Turnover approx £250k per year  Core staff team of10 (7 FTE)  Regular casual pool of 10 staff  Plus adult volunteers, student youth workers, and young people on leadership training

Services we deliver  Youth Opinions – Youth Voice  Positive Activities – Urban Escape, Music Recording Studio, Sports  Education Support Programmes – SBY Consortium  Leadership/ Social Action and NCS  Youth Clubs  Targeted Support Work  Breakthrough Mentoring

So we deliver lots, so what…..?  How do we know we are making a difference?  What can we measure?  Lies, damn lies and statistics  Whose impact is it anyway?  What can we claim credit for/ be attributed to the work we deliver?

Can you provide the Rainbow?

Initial challenges in 2001  How do you measure a relationship strategy?  How do you measure things that haven’t happened?  What best practice is out there that we can learn from other youth work projects?  How do we collect the evidence?  What difference does it make?

The Positive Futures years  Part of a family of over 100 projects nationally  Overseen by Catch 22  Substance research agency & Views platform  Training provided, best practice shared  Bench-marking provided (RAG+)  Framework for evaluation provided

The Positive Futures years  Annual Report (cost saving to society of £2.5m!)  Qualitative and Quantitative measures  Use of local statistics  Identification of target groups  Partner feedback  Case studies

The economic crisis and austerity  Reduction in main grants and traditional funding  Local Authority  Central Govt Home Office to PCC  Difficulty in funding core costs particularly  Need for creative approaches

The plate-spinning years!

Our new impact challenges

Negotiating the maze – where to start?

Sesame Street or what do all these mean?!  Outcomes Star  Theory of Change  Logic Model  Randomised Control Trial or RCT  SDQ/ CES/ JET/ ARSE  Answers can be found at the Inspiring Impact Hub  Measuring Up tool

Do we make our own luck?  Financial squeeze increasing (“Treading water whilst putting on clothes”)  Struggling to cover core costs from myriad smaller funding streams, using reserves  Adapting and innovating (Wallace & Gromit the Wrong Trousers)  Banksy artwork in Bristol – wrong youth club for us!  Contact from NPC re funding opportunity

The Impact/ Evidence virtuous circle NPC Substance NPC Youth Moves Stone Family Foundation

Our Current Position  Developing a Theory Of Change  Looking for partnerships and new opportunities for research and evidence-based approaches  Using our evidence to build supporters/ champions  Working with data rich partners (e.g. schools)  Building more time into measuring our impact  The use of Social Media?

Closing thoughts…  Start now and do something!  Use a range of methods  Make it as easy as possible for your staff team  Value the process and make time for it  Embrace all results both positive and negative  Look out for unexpected results, they may be your best  Use national tools and share your findings  Love a data geek!

Any Questions?

Urban Escape Our Roundhouse Forest School and Arts Trails

Parkour Our Parkour arena!

Leadership and Social Action Snow Camp with Jenny JonesSocial Action

Celebrating Success Ambition National Volunteer of the Year Schools work involving the community