Advice Agencies by Local Authority (December 2012)

This database has been compiled jointly by Advice UK, Age UK, Citizen's Advice, Scope, Law Centres Network, Shelter and Youth Access.

Download: Youth_advice_outcomes_pilot_-_ET_final_evaluation_report.pdf

Download: ET_spreadsheet_for_YA_outcomes_pilots_blank_version.xlsx

This Toolkit, published by Youth Access in September 2010, provides fully tested forms and guidance aimed at enabling any agency providing rights-based advice to young people, particularly within a holistic YIACS setting, to monitor the outcomes of its advice work.

The Toolkit is free for Youth Access members to access and use - follow this link: http://youthaccess.org.uk/resources/exclusive-resources/

Other agencies should contact James@youthaccess.org.uk for further details

Youth Access tested this two-stage survey for youth advice services in 2006-07 (NB: We found it required the input of significant staff resource to obtain relatively little data, but have made it available here as some agencies may find it of interest.)

Young person’s self-assessment form Part 1
Young person’s self-assessment form Part 2

Youth Access member, The Rendezvous in Dorset, has developed this two-stage survey for monitoring the outcomes of its advice work

Rendezvous initial survey form
Rendezvous follow up form

Results of a survey on the funding situation of Youth Information, Advice, Counselling and Support services, April 2011

Briefing: The funding situation of Youth Information, Advice, Counselling and Support services (YIACS) 

 

NB: Youth Access members can access our Policy & Research Bulletin via the Exclusive Resources link on the left of this page

NB: Youth Access members can access our regular Funding Udpate via the Exclusive Resources link on the left hand side of this page

Don't miss out on vital funding information - join Youth Access today!

Youth Access has developed an in-house training course for agencies wanting help to embed use of the Youth Advice Outcomes Toolkit in their agency, as well as a more general course on Monitoring the outcomes of advice work with young people for those unsure about which tool would be most suitable to their agency.

Youth Access will be developing guidance on outcomes tools for counselling services as part of our On the Right Tracks project. If you're seeking health service funding, you will be well-advised to look at nationally validated tools, including those that are part of the adult IAPT (Improving Access to Physchological Therapies), as well as those being developed specifically for CYP IAPT. If you need advice contact us admin@youthaccess.org.uk

On the Right tracks (OtRt) is a two year project (April 2011-March 2013) funded by Comic Relief

OtRt is providing a range of activities to improve young people’s access to counselling. This includes offering a package of help and support to youth counselling agencies to strengthen their capacity to demonstrate and improve the quality and effectiveness of their practice and thus secure a more sustainable public sector funding base.

The project also seeks to encourage the expansion of youth counselling services, as young people with a range of mental and emotional health problems, often prefer the non-stigmatising help they provide. 

Read news article on the launch of the project

Please see below for further information about the project:
 

These pages include briefings and guidance for YIACS on confidentiality, information sharing, data protection and child protection.

Information sharing is a key aspect of the Every Child Matters and Youth Matters agenda. Over the past few years Government has produced a number of policy consultations and proposals. You may find it useful to look at the resources on the Youth Access Policy section, which will offer some of the context to developing good practice in this area.

Key policy Practice Briefing briefing on Confidentiality, Child Protection & Information Sharing (2006)
Aide-memoire for services reviewing or developing their Confidentiality, Child Protection & Information sharing policies, which also have a key part in the quality framework underpinning Youth Access standards

Sample Confidentiality Policy: YIAC (2009)
Confidentiality Policy and supporting documents including Young Person’s version developed by No Limits, Southampton.

Confidentiality Policy
Youth Board Confidentiality Policy
Appendix A - consent form
Appendix B - serious incident form

New Philanthropy Capital are developing an online tool to help charities monitor the well-being of the children and young people they work with.
Further information on the Child Well-being Questionnaire

Developed by a consortium from the Norfolk Voluntary Sector and The Research Centre, City College Norwich, this is a toolkit that allows you to measure soft outcome progression and informal learning, such as increases in confidence, self-esteem and motivation.
Further information on The SOUL Record

This tool has been developed by young people at The Market Place, a Youth Access member in Leeds, and is designed to capture data from young people who have accessed one to one young person-centred services, including information, support and counselling.
How do you rate your life at the moment? The evidence, The Market Place, 2008.
For a copy of the evaluation tool itself, please email Liz Neill

Advice Services Alliance has published a number of resources for advice agencies as part of the Working Together for Advice project, including:
Choosing your method: survey or focus group?
Conducting a focus group
Outcomes Analysis Spreadsheet – contains tips about how to use Excel to analyse your results and put them into tables.

 

A guide produced by the BLF for the New Opportunities fund aimed at helping projects look at self–evaluation.  It aims to signpost some of the most useful resources on monitoring and evaluation.

Charities Evaluation Services have produced a range of resources you can down load for free to help with evaluating services. For further details visit the Charities Evaluation website

Download: Self Evaluation: A Handy Guide to Sources

This section includes good practice resources for YIACS on integrating meaningful user involvement and participation within your organisation, conducting needs assessments, gathering feedback and developing complaints procedures.

Youth Access resources:

Building User Involvement (2001, by Carolyn Mumby)
A guide to help YIACS develop user involvement.  It draws on young people's and practitioners experience to set out potential benefits and pitfalls of various type of involvement and sets out an action plan to make it sustainable.

Key Practice Briefing on User involvement and participation (2006,Catherine Wilson)
A briefing guide for YIACS on developing an user involvement and participation policy.

Needs Assessment & Questionnaires (2007)
A short briefing explaining the elements of a needs assessment, how to gather evidence of needs and planning for surveys and questionnaires.

 

External resources:

NYA: Hear By Right
Hear by Right is a tried and tested standards framework for organisations across the statutory and voluntary sectors to assess and improve practice and policy on the active involvement of children and young people.  Hear by Right helps to map current participation of children and young people and to develop a strategic plan for improvement.  Practical resources, information and tools can be downloaded

Getting Your Advice Service Ready for Commissioning
Youth Access, 2008.

A briefing written for YIACS setting out what you need to think about in order to put your youth advice service in a better position to thrive under commissioning arrangements and pointing you to other useful resources.

Download: Getting your advice service ready for commissioning

Working in Partnership: A Source Book (New Opportunities Fund)

Commissioned to encourage effective partnership working, it draws on good practice and academic research.  Intended as a practical source of ideas and suggestions for new and existing partnerships.
 

Aide Memoir for YIACS to Assist the Development of Partnership Agreements (May 2002)

This resource was produced as the result of meeting of service managers looking at the issue of partnership working and offers a checklist of the areas services need to consider in drawing up agreements.

Advice Training & Workforce Resources

Legal Advice Unit included in Levels 3 and 4 Awards and Certificates in Working with Vulnerable Young People
The first ever qualification in providing legal advice to young people - 'Providing initial advice to young people on their rights under law.' This was developed by Youth Access alongside our partners in the advice sector and Skills for Justice. This unit is now part of the Vulnerable Young People qualifications awarded by ABC. Contact ABC: Sue Langton, Qualifications Development Manager, ABC Awards, 01257244922

Qualifications framework for legal advice
New Qualification and Credit Framework for Legal advice have been approved. These QCF units are based on the 2009 version of the National Occupational Standards for Legal Advice . These include a level 4 Diploma in Providing initial advice to young people on their rights under the law as well as a level 5 Award including Providing specialist advice to young people on their rights under the law.

Youth Advice Worker  NCVYS Career Information Sheet

A Manager's Toolkit: How to develop your Workforce
This toolkit* explores a number of workforce development Issues facing the advice sector, including skills gap and shortages; recruitment and retention difficulties; barriers to accessing training and education; and lack of career progression in parts of the sector. In particular it looks at the need for strategic organisational planning, including carrying out regular staff and organisational Training Needs Analyses as a way of addressing workforce issues.  *produced by Advice UK for the Working Together for Advice Consortium.

 

Counselling Training & Workforce Resources

NB: Youth Access members can access a 'Guide to the Induction of Newly Appointed Counsellors' via the Exclusive resources link on the left hand side of this page

The National Occupational Standards for Counselling, 2007

Counselling Workforce Briefing: Young People’s Consultation Findings and Recommendations.  By Youth Access, 2008. The briefing summarises the results of a consultation with young people accessing Youth Information, Advice, counselling and Support Services (YIACS).  The consultation gathered information from young people about their experience of youth counselling and their suggestions for improving counselling services in YIACS.  The briefing includes a summary of the project’s aim, what we did, how we did it and highlights young people’s views, and suggestions to improve youth counselling services and keep ‘good services good’.

Counselling Workforce Key Findings Briefing.  By Youth Access, 2008.  The briefing provides an overview of a national survey and consultation with YIACS and young people and maps the youth counselling sector within YIACS.  The findings highlight counselling managers and practitioner needs, concerns and aspirations for the delivery of high quality youth counselling provision, and young peoples’ views of counsellors and counselling.  The briefing concludes with a series of recommendations to policy makers, commissioners, CWDC and Higher Education providers.

Signposting & Referral Procedure (IQP / Youth Access, 2003)
A sample signposting & referral procedure for youth advice services.

Conflict of Interest Procedure (Youth Access 2006)
A sample Conflict of Interest procedure for a Youth Advice Service.

Youth Access resources:
Sample Appraisal procedure (IQP,2003)

External resources:
People Management - Sample Procedures (Advice Services Alliance, 2002)
A CLS Support briefing providing sample procedures for advice agencies on recruitment, induction, supervision and appraisal.

Model Financial Control Procedure (with IQP, 2003)

Case Management and Client Care (Advice Services Alliance, 2003)
A CLS Support briefing on the CLS Quality Mark requirements regarding case management and client care issues.

Conflict of Interest Procedure (Youth Access 2006)
A sample Conflict of Interest procedure for a Youth Advice Service.

Sample Health and Safety Policy (YA with IQP, 2003)

Key Practice Briefing on Equality & Diversity
Practice briefing to support YIACS to develop an Equality and Diversity policy. Youth Access, 2006

The Home Office has announced that the roll out of the Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS) has been put on hold to allow a review to be carried out. Voluntary registration with the VBS was due to start on 26 July 2010 has been put on hold. However, the regulations that were introduced in October 2009 will continue to apply.

link: VBS-update-21-06-10.pdf

Guidance on statistical monitoring for youth information, advice and counselling services, contains editable classification systems.

Download: Youthstat

Questionnaires for self-completion by young people aged 11-16, depending on their level of understanding and literacy.

SDQ Questionnaire
SDQ Scoring Instructions

NB: Both AdvicePro and Casetrack are available at a discounted rate for Youth Access members.

AdvicePro
In partnership with the Law Centres Federation and Resolution Case Management, Advice UK have developed an online case management system which is suitable for small advice agencies. There are three versions of Advice Pro: Custom, Standard and Essential. For further details and pricing visit the Advice UK website

Casetrack
Case monitoring software, from Zebra Computers.

AIMS
AIMS (Advice and Information Management System) is the database and information management system developed by LASA for voluntary and statutory advice organisations.

YPInfo
YPInfo is an online database for organisations working with young people developed by Youth Access member Young Devon. For further details, please contact www.youngdevon.org; 01392 331666
 

ASA outcomes evaluation - lessons learned from the pilots – contains a summary of the pilot work conducted by Advice Services Alliance with several different types of advice agency and some lessons for funders and policy makers on the challenges of measuring outcomes.

NB: Youth Access members can access Youth Access' Quality Standards for YIACS via the Exclusive Resources link on the left hand side of this page

 

Quality in Advice Services

10 Steps to a Quality Youth Advice Service (Youth Access, 2011)
A Youth Access briefing for managers of youth advice services.

Information Resources to Support Youth Advice Work (Youth Access 2011)
A briefing setting out suggested information resources a youth advice worker will need.

Models of Technical Supervision (Youth Access, 2010)
A short briefing highlighting the different models of technical supervision appropriate for a youth advice service, including the advantages and disadvantages of each model.

Quality of Advice Assessments (Youth Access, 2008)
A short briefing exploring the different quality of advice assessment methods used in the advice sector, including the pros and cons of each.

Mystery Shopping Evaluation Report (Youth Access/Age UK 2010)
An evaluation report of the mystery shopping pilot carried out as part of the Quality Workstream for Working Together for Advice

Independent File Review (Advice Services Alliance, 2002)
A CLS Support briefing on how to audit advice case files to meet CLS Quality Mark requirements.

 

Quality in Counselling Services

To follow

 

Commissioning Counselling Services for Young People: A Guide for Commissioners.  By Dr. Cathy Street, Youth Access, 2007.

Aimed at assisting commissioners with how to commission counselling services for young people.  Pass this guide on to your local funders!

Download: Commissioning Counselling Services for Young People

Commissioning Young People's Counselling Services in YIACS: A Toolkit for Managers and Fundraisers of Services.  By Catherine Wilson, Youth Access, 2007.

Aimed at equipping YIACS with evidence and information to demonstrate to Children's Trusts and Health commissioners the contribution YIACS can make to local, national needs and targets.

Download: Commissioning Young People's Counselling Services in YIACS: A Toolkit for Managers and Fundraisers