Evaluation of the North East LEP and South Tyneside Youth Justice Service Mentoring Programme

HomeEvaluation of the North East LEP and South Tyneside Youth Justice Service Mentoring Programme

Evaluation of the North East LEP and South Tyneside Youth Justice Service Mentoring Programme

Read the evaluation of the joint support programme between the North East Local Enterprise Partnership and South Tyneside Council

Introduction

The pilot was devised to extend the national Enterprise Adviser model into the Youth Justice Service through the unique lens of employer mentoring. It sought to establish a small collective of employers in one local authority area (South Tyneside) to offer:

Mentoring for young people
Opportunities for workplace visits
Opportunities for work experience
Exposure to positive role models

The pilot was delivered jointly by the North East LEP, South Tyneside Youth Justice Service, South Tyneside local authority Economic Inclusion and Career Development with support from Mosaic Partners.

This pilot looked to support South Tyneside’s Youth Justice Service Education and Employment Officer, in particular as a way of dealing with the challenge of minimal business engagement with the service.

The key aim was to connect young people with employers through one to one mentoring, to enable them to have conversations about career readiness. This was focused on aspirations, opportunities for the future, impact of lifestyle behaviours, and expectations in the workplace.

The programme has succeeded in providing the first experiences of work for many of the mentees, enabling them to speak directly to employers and education providers. It has also helped build links between these young people and their communities, in part by legitimising spaces that young people may have previously felt were inaccessible to them.

Project aims

Traditional careers support and information is often delivered through schools and education. However, with a relatively low proportion of those young people engaged with the Youth Justice Service (YJS) in South Tyneside in mainstream education, an alternative approach is needed.

Just half (50%) of pre-16 YJS clients in the borough are in mainstream education, and around a third (35%) of post-16 clients are not in education, employment or training.

This contributes to a difficult transition for those young people out of education and into work.

A key challenge facing the YJS is employer engagement, as despite a dedicated Education and Employment officer, making those connections is difficult.

This pilot looked to bridge that gap through mentoring, but with six key aims.

To prepare young people to engage with employers or education providers, ensuring they are in a position to take advantage of opportunities
To improve young people’s decision making and planning around careers, by exposing them to work experience and working environments
For the mentor to act as a gateway, opening up new pathways for accessing opportunities for the YJS young person
To broaden a young person’s network to help them with finding support
To have a focus on positive wellbeing, through establishing access to work placements and experiences which facilitate this
To add value to a YJS young person’s life, boosting confidence and changing their perceptions of themselves, pointing the direction towards developing skills, stable employment and financial independence

Delivery

Eight mentors were drawn from a variety of industries, including advanced manufacturing, construction and higher education.

These mentors were then matched with six young people who were engaged with the YJS during the pilot period. The matching was carried out where possible based on expressed interest in specific sectors or job roles, to enable connections to be made with relevant industries.

After recruitment, mentors were trained by a range of specialist professionals from the local authority including safeguarding and youth justice, receiving three sessions covering the requirements of the mentoring programme, plus safeguarding issues.

Specialist consultancy Mosaic, devised a specific mentoring framework, plus key resources that were used throughout the project to support the mentors with relevant information as well as acting as a guide for reflection.

Meetings between mentors and mentees varied in frequency across the pilot - some met only once as circumstances changed, and some met a number of times of a period of months. These meetings typically consisted of conversations, but with a number of site visits and direct work experience in relevant sectors. Some employers progressed through the training but were still to be matched with young people during the project.

Key Evaluation Findings

Methodology

The evaluation was based on qualitative analysis, with semi-structured interviews with seven mentors and mentees, plus two focus groups with representatives from the Youth Offending Service and the North East Local Enterprise Partnership.

Building connections

The key challenge for transitioning young people who are engaged with the Young Justice Service into careers is that those young people often fall outside of the usual careers support programmes. The YJS itself has few formal relationships with employers, and the short term nature of the orders young people fall under prevents longer interventions. There is also a need to challenge the stigma attached to offending behaviour, and give young people more opportunities to demonstrate their skills and willingness to engage.

The connections built by employment-based mentors not only provide these opportunities, but also provide positive role models and a bridge into employment or education.

Practice experience

A clear finding from the evaluation was the value of direct experience of work and education sites. Verbal communication of the options did not have the same impact.

‘He got on well, talking to lads on site rather than looking at brochures or websites. It’s fine to look at websites and read brochures, but it really is different when they try and do stuff, so I helped him to do things and get involved'.
Mentor

These visits and practice experience allowed direct knowledge of a possible vocation or educational setting to be built. Young people could then ask questions and gain a better understanding of pathways, as well as the related pay, processes and realities of working life.

For many of the young people involved in this pilot, these visits were their first experience of direct access into work settings.

Rapport and communication

The ability to build a rapport between mentor and mentee is crucial, as is finding an appropriate communication style.

“He is motivated and always happy to see me, and he is always happy to help with whatever he can and that makes me happy- he is just quite interested in me as a person’[.. .] that is much more useful to me than sitting in a room with my worker at the YOS and looking at websites or reading brochures.”
Young person

Each relationship is tailored to the needs of the young person, including any neuro diverse needs. However, mentors expressed a desire to know more about the specific circumstances and needs of their mentees, in order to better tailor communication.

A key element was a need for authenticity, and for the young person to feel listened to, and like the mentor cared about outcomes. This level of interest in the young person, as well as knowledge of a relevant sector, was vastly preferred to more formal engagement with YJS workers with no direct experience.

Managing Expectations and Breaking Down Barriers

The evaluation highlighted the critical importance of defining the boundaries of what was possible through mentoring.

Mentors made efforts to explain what they could and couldn't do, so as to build trust and manage the expectations of mentees.

“I really wanted to make it clear with him, I cannot do everything, I can try, but he needs to know that I cannot do everything and not everything can or will work”
Mentor

These efforts were driven by an awareness that the young people's previous experience of similar programmes may not have always been positive and productive.

The depth of understanding also broke down barriers.

While some mentors had some understanding of youth justice and the criminal justice system, others knew very little. The process of building a connection with their mentees broke down barriers and stigma associated with youth offending.

“It opened up my mind, I was in awe of the young person, my god, he had some challenges thrown at him. And he was sitting in front of me, and he was engaging and he wanted to work and had a positive attitude.”
Mentor

Training and Organisation of the Pilot

“The safeguarding session was so insightful; it really helped to prepare me and make sure I can grade the information the mentee shares with me to identify what is and what is not important to potentially pass on.”
Mentor

Formal training from an external partner was seen as a valuable part of the preparation for mentors. It allowed them to meet other mentors, and was helpful in breaking down the individual steps to take with mentees.

Feedback from mentors suggested more resource would be required to ensure the running of the mentoring programme was smooth in future, and also suggested exploring additional training opportunities to help identify alternative mentoring approaches if initial efforts weren’t successful or suitable.

Reflections and recommendations

The evaluation makes a number of reflections and recommendations, based on the discussions with pilot participants and data collection.

Resourcing - the Youth Justice Education and Employment Officers have an already complex role, it would be difficult to add running a large-scale mentoring programme, managing mentors and a large number of young people, without also adding additional resources
Organisation - the short nature of the orders which dictate how long young people are under the YJS means there is a need for multiple intakes of mentees through the year. This would enable onboarding of mentors, training and other organisation to occur as part of a set calendar
Supporting Young People - the one-to-one support from a mentor is valuable to young people, but a successful transition into work or education may require extra support. As such, this programme should be included as part of a wider strategy around transition, and attempt to align with wider routes into engagement
Supporting Mentors - the evaluation found mentors benefited from the experience too, but that they wished to be part of a more formal network to be able to work more closely together, and benefit from additional training and support
Building Networks - a next stage would be expanding local stakeholder networks, including the formation of a steering group to aid with finding potential mentors and employers and training providers.
Future Evaluation - this pilot programme generated interesting and positive results, but establishing the true impact of mentoring will require a longitudinal study with a bigger cohort of young people and mentors. This could inform wider YJS policy, as well as have ramifications beyond this setting and with young people who fall outside of traditional careers support for other reasons