Executive Summary

Review Background, Purpose and Methods

In late February 2009, the Ministry of Youth Development (MYD) commenced a review to identify what is currently known about good practice in structured youth development programmes targeting at-risk or vulnerable young people. The review is intended to help MYD assess the continued relevancy of its existing structured programmes and inform future programme purchasing decisions.

There are two structured youth development programmes currently funded by MYD of interest to this review: the NZ Conservation Corps (NZCC) and the Youth Services Corp (YSC), both of which are funded through MYD’s Services for Young People (SFYP) fund. The general aim of the two structured programmes is to "build the confidence, motivation and self esteem of the young people by involving them in practical educational activity of benefit to themselves and of value to their communities, and improving ongoing movement into further ETE [employment, training or educational] outcomes".¹ This review does not involve a critique or evaluation of either programme; rather, the programmes are of interest because they are illustrative of the current approach taken by MYD to the provision of structured youth development programmes and provide a useful focus and comparison point for the evidence identified.

The review draws primarily on existing, published literature about young people, their needs, and how best to intervene with them. New Zealand-based literature is used when available, although most is international, and all is drawn from a range of disciplines. Both to supplement this literature and to assist with its interpretation, the expertise of various youth development specialists has been drawn on, both within, and external to, MYD.

Youth Development and its Emergence as a Field of Human Endeavour

Broadly speaking, ‘youth development’ refers to the developmental process associated with adolescence; the period one enters as a child and emerges from as an adult, ideally able to avoid the choices and behaviours that limit future potential and more or less equipped with the skills, attitudes, competencies and values needed to successfully navigate adult life.² What constitutes ‘necessary skills, attitudes, competencies and values’ is the focus of a great deal of attention in the literature and is conceptualised, confusingly, in a multitude of ways. The literature variously describes models of skills and competencies, of personal and social assets, of resilience, and of developmental outcomes, to name but a few of the approaches taken.

It is now widely accepted that the process of youth development, and the related acquisition of skills/competencies/assets, occurs through repeated exposure to 'positive' people and experiences which, in turn, provide young people with the opportunity to gain and refine these skills etc.³ There are four settings or environments in which young people naturally exist and where they can potentially access helpful people and have positive developmental experiences. These are:

• the family and whanau
• the community
• the school, university, training institution or workplace
• peers.

Each of these environments exerts a different amount of influence over individual young people, with family being the most powerful at all stages of adolescent development. Negative experiences in one (or more) of these environments can be counteracted by other stronger/more positive environments. More broadly, young people's development is also influenced by the wider economic, social and cultural contexts within which they grow up.⁴

Beyond describing the adolescent developmental process, the term 'youth development' is also used to refer to a field of human endeavour intended to positively support the adolescent developmental process. Like other forms of social intervention before it, youth development emerged as an appealing and theoretically useful idea, with practice moving rapidly ahead of its conceptual or evidential base. A parallel can be drawn between this situation and, for example, that faced previously by the prevention field.⁵ In about 1960, prevention became an approach that promulgated programmes, professions and professionals. Accountability issues emerged and the field is now being underpinned by a unifying prevention science. Youth development, it seems, is now at the crossroads faced by the prevention field decades earlier.⁶

The state of knowledge about positive youth development depends on your perspective.⁷ "On the one hand, from the perspective of commonsense, it is clear that active attention to a youth's developmental needs has a high probability of paying off in terms of increasing a youth's successes in life and decreasing his or her serious problems".⁸ On the other hand, the body of evidence about effective interventions is quite limited and one could contend that there "are many small studies, but few are large and methodologically stringent enough to persuade a sceptic".⁹ It is quite possible for someone to 'support' youth development but not be convinced that social programmes can do much to accomplish it.¹⁰

However limited the evidence base for youth development, considerable progress has been made since the above comments were made in 2000 and there is an accumulating body of evidence showing that individual social programmes can demonstrably facilitate positive youth development. There is also a limited but growing body of evidence about how to create effective programmes to support positive youth development. Arguably for the first time, it is now possible to analyse the youth development literature in a way that allows some conclusions, however limited, to be drawn about effective practice.

Review Findings - Facilitating Youth Development through Programmes

Programme Participants

All young people need access to the people, settings and experiences that facilitate positive development. The literature suggests that young people who live in settings that are developmentally opportunity-rich, even when they are deemed at-risk, experience greater positive development than those young people who live in communities that are poor in such supports and opportunities.¹¹ Youth development programmes have a role to play in both of these settings. In developmentally opportunity-rich communities, youth development programmes may supplement an existing, comprehensive array of developmental opportunities. In opportunity-poor settings, youth development programmes may well represent a primary source of positive developmental opportunities.

A key question to ask about MYD's SFYP fund is 'who is likely to make a poor transition to adulthood WITHOUT the intensive support provided by a structured youth development programme?'. This necessitates consideration of who is most in need of assistance and who is most likely to benefit from this kind of programme. In summary, it would seem the group most appropriately targeted for participation in programmes like NZCC and YSC are those young people who lack strong attachments to pro-social settings, who are disengaged or at risk of becoming disengaged from positive activities, and who need to develop foundational skills, attitudes, values and competencies in order to be able to successfully participate in educational or employment-related activities.

Goals and Outcomes of Youth Development Programmes

Providing young people with the opportunities and supports that foster broad, holistic development is the primary purpose of youth development activity. At the individual programme level, there will be extensive variability in the specific goals and outcomes set, reflecting both the variability in focus of different programmes and the lack of a unified youth development framework. Ultimately, all programmes should reflect some aspect of this overarching theme of broad developmental growth.

The stated aims and outcomes of the SFYP fund, and the NZCC and YSC programmes specifically, are consistent with the youth development literature. Having said that, the current conceptualisation of what constitutes appropriate youth development activity is so broad that very few things could actually be considered inconsistent or out-of-scope. While this breadth in aims and outcomes is arguably appropriate in respect of the SFYP fund, it seems less helpful at the programme level.

Having such broad programme aims and outcomes potentially encourages programmes to 'do everything' and 'be everyone' with young people. The risk, when this happens, is that very little is achieved because efforts are too dispersed and lack the intensity and/or the focus needed to facilitate specific outcomes. A single programme cannot undo all of the harm that some young people have already experienced nor accomplish what multiple institutions with infinitely greater resources have failed to do in the decade or more previously.¹² This review contends that a youth development programme like NZCC/YSC, targeting the kind of young person described previously, can most usefully contribute to young people's lives in the following way:

• by helping participants aspire to a life that includes positive and full economic and social participation
• by helping participants identify what their particular path to positive and full economic and social participation may look like, and the steps towards those goals
• by helping participants form ENDURING connections with positive people and settings that will help them to achieve positive and full economic and social participation BEYOND the duration of the programme
• by helping to instil the knowledge and basic practices necessary for them to successfully carry out their next steps
• by increasing young people’s motivation, confidence and self efficacy sufficiently in order for them to carry out their next steps.

Characteristics of Effective Youth Development Programmes

One of the seemingly few explicitly articulated and agreed-upon elements of youth development practice involves the use of a strengths-based approach. Arguably, the use of a strengths-based approach is what makes it youth development practice at all as opposed to what makes it effective youth development practice; however, the absence of a strengths-based approach would certainly qualify as ineffective practice so it is worth including it here for that reason.

What constitutes a ‘strengths-based approach’ is not uniformly understood. The first three bullet points below represent consistently-agreed elements of a strengths-based approach; the fourth is the subject of some debate but is arguably the most useful of the conceptualisations provided in the literature:

• the use of a competence- rather than a deficit-based paradigm: young people are viewed as being 'at potential' rather than 'at risk' or as problems to be fixed
• taking a holistic view of young people
• taking an ecological view: recognising the influence of the different environments or settings that young people exist in
• taking a dual focus of enhancing young people's protective factors AND building their capacity to resist risk factors: ie, take a dual promotion and prevention focus.¹³

Beyond the use of a strengths-based approach, what constitutes an effective youth development programme (or even what constitutes a youth development programme as opposed to some other form of youth-focused programme) has yet to be agreed. The information below draws together existing conceptual and evidential information to describe what is currently believed to represent good youth development practice.

Choice of Activities

The activities included within a youth development programme are important because they are the way programmes attract young people. Activities are also important because they are the vehicle through which young people gain access to the people and experiences that facilitate desired developmental outcomes or assets. For positive youth development to occur, young people need a range of opportunities including opportunities to:

• experience supportive adult relationships
• learn how to form close, durable human relationships with peers that support and reinforce healthy behaviours
• feel a sense of belonging and being valued
• develop a sense of mattering
• develop positive social values and norms
• build and master skills
• develop confidence in one’s abilities to master one’s environment (a sense of personal efficacy)
• make a contribution to one’s community.

There is no such thing as 'the best' or 'most youth development-ish' activity; rather, activities may be considered more, less or equally relevant depending on their appeal to a particular group of young people, their ability to provide or create needed experiences, and the extent to which the experiences they provide can facilitate desired developmental outcomes. A combination of activities, rather than a single activity, appears the best way of responding to the breadth and diversity of young people's interests and needs.

How Activities are Conducted

The way in which an activity is conducted, and the nature of the setting(s) in which it is conducted, is more important to outcome achievement than the activity per se. Effective youth development programmes incorporate as many of the following features as possible:

• have high aspirations for, and expectations of, young people
• are well planned, with activities deliberately designed to progressively build on existing skills and competencies
• have high quality activities delivered by a skilled and confident workforce
• have skilled and empathetic staff who stay long enough to build trusting relationships with young people
• have a 'deliberate learning environment'
• have staff who interact with young people in a way that maximises opportunities for learning and growth
• meaningfully involve young people in choosing and designing activities
• have increasing opportunities for young people to make decisions and to take on leadership roles as they mature and gain more expertise
• structure that is developmentally, culturally and environmentally appropriate
• have clear expectations for behaviour
• provide emotional and moral support
• provide physical and psychological safety
• have strong links between families, schools, and broader community resources.

There are a number of other programmatic elements likely to influence a programme's effectiveness including programme duration, intensity and course size, as well as the inclusion and conduct of activities like assessment, goal setting and personal planning. The youth development literature provides relatively little discussion of, or empirical evidence on, the relative contributions of any of these elements or activities.

While the youth development literature quite strongly emphasises the value of longer programmes over shorter ones, the evidential basis for this assertion appears weak or nonexistent for most kinds of youth development programmes excepting mentoring where it does appear to hold true. The very limited information identified on programme intensity or 'dosage' lends some support to the value of greater rather that lower programme intensity levels. Optimal course size seems to be influenced by a number of factors including programme type, participant age and needs, staff ability, and programme resources; providers may well be best placed to determine what group size would be optimal for a given programme.¹⁴

While the literature emphasises the importance of programmes being responsive to participants' needs and building on their strengths, it provides very little specific comment on how individual needs, strengths or aspirations might be determined. Formal assessment, which can support this process, can be simple and conducted from a strengths-based perspective, however, the quality of any assessment activity is dependent on the ability of the assessor to elicit and interpret the information and then act on findings. This is likely to have training and resource implications for providers, and in turn, for programme funders. Further, there is no guarantee that even good assessment will reveal information relevant to participant safety or support needs.

The review contends that comprehensive personal planning, incorporating meaningful goal setting activities, is a critical element of a structured youth development programme. Ultimately, successful youth development means that young people are engaged in positive settings and activities over the long term, not just the short term, and programmes have a contribution to make beyond simply an initial post programme placement. A programme may achieve the target of 70% ETE post programme placement in the absence of personal planning activities, (a sympathetic labour market or good contacts with training organisations should suffice), but failure to help young people think about their longer term aspirations and the steps necessary for goal actualisation not only represents a wasted opportunity, it also means longer term success is left to chance more than is necessary.

Fit between Youth Development and ETE Programmes

NZCC and YSC seek to establish in young people a core platform of practices, competencies, values, resources and so forth necessary not only for successful adult economic and social participation but also seemingly for successful participation in training, education and employment. Viewed in this way, they sit lower on a 'staircasing' framework than ETE programmes and complement, rather than replicate, ETE activities. A portion of NZCC/YSC graduates would, for example, be directed into the kinds of programmes being proposed under the newly-approved Youth Guarantee policy.

Conclusions

The evidence reviewed demonstrates that effective youth development programmes can have a positive impact on youth development. As it current stands, however, the evidence does not appear to live up to the considerable enthusiasm that proponents of the youth development field express for it. When done well, the impact of youth development programmes appears positive but modest.

There are two points that need to be made in respect to this conclusion. The first is that this picture of programme accomplishment seems largely consistent with the accomplishments of other disciplines or fields of practice that seek to effect change in the lives of young people. The literature suggests ETE programmes have had modest effects on employment levels and earnings of young people. Areas like youth justice and offending have similarly struggled to develop programmes where positive gains in areas like motivation, efficacy and pro-social behaviour are maintained post programme or even generalised back into young people’s settings where those programmes are residential.

The second, and arguably more important point, is that youth development is still in its infancy. Knowledge of 'what works', although increasing, remains limited and the application of that knowledge within the sector appears variable at best. What seemingly represents a modest contribution today may in time deliver more substantial returns, especially as the quantity and quality of evaluation and synthesis work increases and that knowledge is more consistently translated into practice.

The challenge for MYD is ensuring the programmes it funds reflect current knowledge of 'what works', and more broadly, ensuring sufficient standardisation occurs across the programmes to support accountability and efficiency, whilst still allowing providers enough flexibility to be able to respond to the divergent needs of different localities and of individual participants. There is clearly an inherent tension between flexibility and standardisation. On the one hand, a 'one size fits all' programme will never meet the needs of all young people and providers must be able to adapt their activities to reflect the particular young people that are participating in their programme at any one time. On the other, programmes need to consistently reflect what is known about effective youth development practice and consistently achieve what was intended with the public money that funds them, which implies a degree of standardisation alongside comprehensive, effective monitoring processes.

Regardless of the challenge involved, there is now enough known about best practice in youth development work to make the application of that knowledge in practice a reasonable expectation. This review would contend, in fact, that anything less that full application of that knowledge could open the sector and the Ministry to charges of negligence in respect to the value that is expected to be derived from public money. At the same time, it is recognised that a gap does exist between best practice and what is practiced currently by some in New Zealand's youth development sector. This gap, which in some cases may be quite substantial, will take time and effort to close.

Recommendations

MYD has an important role to play in facilitating the application of best practice across the youth development sector. The changes needed to support effective practice are twofold. Action is needed to ensure best practice principles for youth development are consistently applied by those receiving MYD funding. More fundamentally, action also appears necessary to ensure the programmes designed and subsequently purchased by MYD are consistent with more generic principles of effective programme design and delivery.

In terms of the generic programme design and delivery issues, MYD needs, firstly, to clarify its own expectations regarding various aspects of programme design and delivery and, secondly, to align its own practices with those expectations. Specific actions MYD can undertake include:

• confirm the intended programme participant group and communicating this information to providers¹⁵
• more narrowly define the areas of young people's lives that MYD's structured programmes are expected to effect change in
• explicitly articulate the logic by which the programmes are expected to achieve intended outcomes and communicate this logic to providers to help guide their choices of activities
• ensure that programme deliverables, including outcomes at programme exit and at three months, reflect this scope and logic
• provide rationales for the programme deliverables outlined in service contracts to help providers understand why they are being asked to perform particular activities and to guide their choices of related activities
• improve the tools MYD requires providers to use for individual deliverables¹⁶
• build a monitoring framework, together with meaningful measures, that reflects the intended programme scope and deliverables, desired activities and practices, and intended outcomes.

In terms of the application of best practice youth development principles, MYD can:

• encourage providers to use a wider or different range of activities, taking account of appeal to young people, ability to provide or create needed experiences, and the limited information that is known about their ability to facilitate desired developmental outcomes
• require providers to conduct activities that will build participants' connections with positive people that endure beyond the duration of the course
• require providers to conduct activities that will help participants identify and move towards their longer term goals, rather than simply their short term goals
• require providers to demonstrate both conceptually and practically how their activities provide meaningful developmental opportunities
• require providers to demonstrate both conceptually and practically how their service projects benefit the community
• require providers to demonstrably incorporate into their programmes features of activities/ settings associated with effective practice
• require providers to articulate and apply a model of practice that optimises the learning and growth that occurs from activities
• consider alternative models to the current standard 20 week programme model
• consider providing additional assistance to those young people who remain unsupported in their natural settings at the end of the main programme.

Footnotes

¹ Report to the Minister of Youth Affairs (March 2003), Vote Youth Development: Fiscally neutral amendments. Ministry of Youth Development, p7

² McLaren, K (2002), Building Strength: A review of research on how to achieve good outcomes for young people in their families, peer groups, schools, careers and communities. Wellington: Ministry of Youth Affairs

³ Throughout this report, I use terms like 'positive' or 'successful' youth development, 'doing well' and so forth, alongside terms like 'struggling'; terms I am aware are both vague and highly subjective. In the context of this report, I draw on Eccles and Gootman’s (2002) conceptualisation of 'positive' or 'successful' development to mean that the young person is headed on a positive trajectory towards finding a meaningful and productive place within their cultural milieu; where I use terms like 'struggling', I mean that the young person is on a trajectory that is not likely to lead to this outcome or is experiencing considerable challenges in progressing along this positive trajectory.

⁴ Ministry of Youth Development (2000), Youth Development Strategy Aotearoa, Wellington, NZ

⁵ Benson, P. L. and Saito, R. N (2000), The scientific foundations of youth development, 123-147. In Public/Private Ventures (Ed), Youth development: Issues, challenges and directions, Philadelphia, PA: Public/Private Ventures

⁶ Ibid

⁷ Public/Private Ventures, 2000, op cit, p7-16

⁸ Public/Private Ventures, 2000, op cit, p12

⁹ Public/Private Ventures, 2000, op cit, p13

¹⁰ Public/Private Ventures, 2000, op cit

¹¹ See Eccles, J. and Gootman, J. A [Eds], Committee of Community Level Programs for Youth (2002), Community programs to promote youth development: Report on the Committee of Community Level Programs for Youth, National Research Council and Institute of Medicine. Washington, DC: National Academy Press

¹² Higgins, J (2003), Labour market programmes for young people: A review. Youth Transitions Report Series 2003. Wellington: Ministry of Social Development

¹³ It is sometimes argued that a strengths-based approach involves a sole focus on building strengths or protective factors, with the amelioration of specific problems or risks the domain of prevention-focused activities

¹⁴ Moore, K. A. with Bowie, L., Garrett, S. B., Kinukawa, A., McKinney, K., Redd, Z., Theokas, C. and Wilson, B. (2006). Program implementation: What do we know? Child Trends. www.childtrends.org, retrieved May 2009

¹⁵ Whether this reflects the profile outlined in the current report or some other sub-group

¹⁶ For example, the goal setting and personal planning tool

¹⁷ Activities do not need to be conservation- or outdoor-based to be developmentally useful

¹⁸ Especially in terms of how they increase aspirations, build enduring connections, and better-place them to carry out activities beyond the duration of the programme

¹⁹ Given there seems no evidential reason to endorse this particular model over others