anticipated, including the need to reduce SCC’s budget by a further £40m in The national austerity programme has seen a significant scaling back of youth services across the country with some closing down altogether. However, SCC has continued to prioritise its services to young people and, whilst these have inevitably reduced since 2010, the council has sought to find innovative ways of protecting its youth provision, particularly for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged. At the same time, the council’s responsibilities for young people services have changed. For example the government transferred responsibility for the provision of careers guidance from local authorities to individual schools & colleges in 2012; policy making for youth services transferred first from the Department for Education to Cabinet Office and, more recently, to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport; the organisation of Youth Justice Services is under review; and DfE has narrowed its focus to one of requiring local authorities to improve the education, employment and training (EET) outcomes for 16-18 year olds in line with their obligations under the Raising of the Age of Participation legislation. As a consequence, the council needs to review how it commissions young people services from 2017. The Council still has a number of statutory duties to provide services to young people, notably: to support people to make a successful transition from school in to further education, training or employment at 16 to make its best efforts to ensure that all teenagers remain in education, training or employment between the ages of 16 and 18 to prevent crime and antisocial behaviour among young people to enable access to positive activities for all young people. What have we done to meet these challenges up to now? Targeted Support to Young People: in response to these financial and policy challenges, the council has, over the last six years, managed down the budget for services to young people by two thirds to a current spend this year of just under £4m. In so doing, SCC has stopped directly commissioning both universal school-based careers advice and universal positive activities and has, instead, increasingly targeted its resources towards vulnerable young people. Community Youth Teams: SCC has, by working with partners and through its contract with Sheffield Futures, created multi-agency Community Youth Teams, which successfully bring together youth workers, youth crime prevention staff and careers advisors, alongside police officers and health workers, to deliver, more efficiently, a range of services to vulnerable and disadvantaged young people.
challenges and the greatest risk of poor life chances. The partnership will use its collective, strategic influence to draw in additional external funding to the city in the pursuit of these goals, including the potential use of a social impact bond model and it will champion a Sheffield Pledge to Young People where the local authority, employers, schools, providers and youth organisations commit to helping improve the outcomes of the city’s young people through a range of initiatives. Community Youth Team It is proposed that SCC commissions, along with other agencies in the investment partnership, a new Targeted Community Youth programme to connect with those teenagers and young adults most at risk of behaviour that harms themselves or the communities in which they live, who are more likely to disengage from education, employment and training and, who need extra support to progress to independence and work. The service will be charged with building the necessary trust and relationships that these young people need and encouraging and supporting them in their chosen progression routes. This service will bring together, in a single commission, the highly successful engagement and intervention work of the existing Community Youth Teams. Delivery will be community-based and offer a range of approaches to support the progression of an estimated 1,500-2000 young people every year through a combination of group work, street-based interventions, engagement activities and one-to-one mentoring. SCC will invest in a five-year contract with the proviso that the partnership and its delivery agent will, together, secure external funds and social investment to match the council’s investment in targeted support. The new service will be subject to open tender using an outcomes-based approach that is informed by local intelligence, performance data and strategic priorities. The commission is likely to have TUPE implications relating to some staff that are currently part of the Community Youth Teams. TUPE regulations require that staff transferring from one employer to another have their existing terms and conditions protected in law. Any changes affecting existing staff in, or associated with, the Community Youth Teams would be subject to further detailed consultation with the affected employees and their representative trade unions. One Stop Shop for People Star House has been grown successfully as a city-centre location for advice, help and support to the city’s young people, particularly those who need these services most. A wide range of services for young people organised by the voluntary and community sector, the city council, health and South Yorkshire Police are delivered