The Review

Purpose

The purpose of this review is to provide the evidence base that MYD requires in order to effectively assess the continued relevancy and adequacy of NZCC and YSC for the current environment and to make informed future programme purchasing decisions. This review is not a critique or evaluation of either NZCC or YSC and the task of actually comparing this evidence against the current models of the two programmes sits largely, although not entirely, outside the scope of this review. Identification of the implications of evidence for MYD is within scope.

Methods and Data Sources

The review draws primarily on existing, published literature about young people, their needs, and how best to intervene with them. NZ-based literature is used where available, although most is international, and all is drawn from a range of disciplines. Because of my lack of familiarity with the youth development literature, staff from MSD's Centre for Social Research and Evaluation and main library, along with Ministry of Youth Development's research specialist, were enlisted to locate articles on areas identified as key to the review. Their formal searches were supplemented by the provision of literature by other MYD staff who possessed specialist expertise of relevance to the review. Drawing on the knowledge of youth development specialists was a deliberate action taken to ensure my lack of familiarity with the literature did not result in significant texts being excluded from the review.

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. Regular discussions with MSD/MYD staff also enabled me to test out my initial impressions and understanding of key issues and literature; again a deliberate action to ensure my lack of familiarity with the youth development area did not unnecessarily negatively impact of the review. Throughout the report, I have endeavoured to make the source of information on any given area clear, particularly where it is a result of my own analysis and thinking.

How the Evidence Base has Shaped the Conduct of the Review and Final Report

In many disciplines or fields of social service, the provision of a knowledge base would equate simply to the conducting of a comprehensive literature review or a systematic review. In this case, however, it has meant something quite different.

The field of youth development, both in terms of its theoretical underpinnings and its evidence base, is an 'emerging' one. This means some of the ideas that inform its theory and practice have yet to be formally articulated, or have only been articulated in part (and sometimes not in a published form). This is particularly true when attempting to 'drop down' from the high level depiction of youth development, as articulated in documents like New Zealand's Youth Development Strategy Aotearoa (YDSA),¹ to establish what 'youth development' actually means at a practical level.

'Emerging' also means that the evidence base around intervening contains a lot of gaps, which is in no way a criticism of the value of the work, both theoretical and applied, that has and is being done. This situation is also true with respect to MYD, which has yet to fully and explicitly articulate its own view on what youth development means in practice in the context of its own activities.

This situation meant that, in the conduct of this review, I went 'broad and back to basics', drew on the practical wisdom of youth development specialists,² did a lot of my own analytic work, and spent much more time than anticipated 'proposing' rather than 'describing' conceptualisations of key concepts and ideas. Within the report, this approach is evident in the considerable time and space given to 'unpacking' core or fundamental youth development terms and concepts and re-articulating them in hopefully straightforward and informative ways. The report spans a broad range of subject areas, trading off depth, in some cases, in order to provide the fuller picture necessary to make sense of the 'world' of youth development. Throughout I have also included a lot of my own ideas (most often, although not only, in those areas that seemed weakest in the literature), as well as many of the ideas gleaned from speaking with people working in the field. While I hope that it has broader application, the way in which youth development is conceptualised in this report is ultimately a personal view developed for the purpose of this review. I do not purport to have 'defined youth development' on behalf of the sector.

Report Structure and Audience

There are two broad audiences for this report, with quite different information needs. The first is senior policy decision makers who need information about key policy and operational policy issues; the second is those officials who will be responsible for progressing any future development of the NZCC and YSC programmes. This latter group need to 'delve into the detail' of different aspects of youth development and programme design in general, in order to decide how to identify the target participant group, how particular needs should be addressed, how to design the overall shape of the programme(s) to be purchased, how to support providers to deliver the programmes in the most effective way, and how to monitor and report back to government on their effects.

Rather than create two separate reports, I have created a single report that addresses policy and operational policy issues of relevance to both audiences. The first part of the report sets out what the literature tells us about different areas of relevance to youth development activity; the second part discusses the ramifications of that information for MYD. This latter section, along with the more detailed information provided in the appendices, is of most relevance to staff who will progress any possible redesign work.

This review is intended to provide a basic platform of information to help facilitate a common language and shared understanding of terms, concepts, ideas and knowledge about youth development and 'what works' that can be used, together with people's own knowledge, to further develop the activities that MYD purchases through a subset of the SFYP fund. I do not expect the ideas proposed here will be accepted without debate or alteration: I think this review is more usefully conceived of as a starting point or an input into further thinking rather than an end product.

Footnotes

¹ Ministry of Youth Development, 2000, op cit

² The term ‘practical wisdom’ is used throughout the literature to refer to the body of knowledge derived from practical experience and so, for consistency, I have used it in this report