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Save Targeted youth support (TYS): 'Discover' activities hints and tips
This section contains hints and tips supporting the activities in the 'Discover' stage of the targeted youth support (TYS) change process. The hints and tips come from partners in children's trusts who are redesigning their TYS.
The hints and tips are not exhaustive, and while they offer useful guidance and help to accelerate and deliver effective and sustainable change, there is no obligation to follow or implement them.
If you would like to add to this list of hints and tips, email writing@remodelling.org.
Click to go back to the 'Discover' 'Activities' page.
Conducting individual-focused interviews
- Ensure anonymity. Ensuring anonymity can be an important aspect of collecting views and opinions. People are often more open and willing to offer views if anonymity is preserved
- The content in focused interviews should be directed totally at the outcomes required for 'Decision Point 2'. Interviewers and interviewees should both understand this. It is easy to be drawn into conversations that are not totally relevant to 'Decision Point 2'. These conversations may be interesting, but do they contribute to the evidence required.
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Always agree ground rules before undertaking focused interviews. Being open about the set up, including confidentiality and openness, avoids misunderstandings and increases candidness.
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Collect quotes. This adds weight and credibility to the presentation at 'Decision Point 2'. Quotes can be anonymous.
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Give the interviewee the pen to complete some answers. Letting people write their answers can give them greater ownership.
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Once you have started your focused interview process do not change or adapt the focused interview format. It is vital to consolidate findings across all interviews. This is not possible if the format is changed during the interviewing process.
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It requires a degree of skill and experience to run focused interviews. Practice them with colleagues before conducting them for real.
Conducting group-focused interviews
- Start with a short but thorough session setting the context for the focused interviews. People at group focused interviews will have different levels of awareness about what is going on. Some people are likely to be attending on behalf of somebody else and may know virtually nothing.If no context is given, input may be limited and patchy.
- Where possible, conduct group focused interviews in the community targeted by the scope of the TYS project. This can increase ownership of the project.
- Focused interviews are more difficult with small groups of below seven or eight people, than with larger groups. People may feel more inhibited in smaller groups, and you could end up with more homogenous data.
- When conducting more than one group focused interview, save time by preparing a master set of brown papers and attach flip chart sized pages to them. The brown paper stays clean and can therefore be reused from event to event.
- To save time you can organise brown papers one on top of the other, with the one you are going to use last at the bottom in this way you can reveal each brown paper when it is required. This makes the running of the workshop more efficient and helps maintain pace.
Engaging young people, families and carers
- Choose facilitators for young people's workshops with care. Facilitators need to be experienced in engaging young people and have credibility. Young people may not contribute freely if they do not respect the facilitator.
- Ensure the methods you use to engage young people are effective. Young people are the central focus of the TYS change process and it's imperative that their voice is heard and acted upon.
- Consider as many methods of engaging young people as you can. Examples from the pathfinder authorities include interacting with young people on the school bus, focus groups, informal chats and in youth clubs. Other methods included flip chart or post-it sessions, and street engagement.
- Consider running a parents' group to obtain views of what it is like to live in an area. Be sensitive to the fact that some people may have problems, such as alcohol dependence, substance abuse, anger management and mental health problems. Have a minimum of two facilitators at these events. The style of the workshop needs to be tailored to the people who attend. Some groups may prefer much of the workshop to be in a written format, others verbal.
Holding a multi-agency workshop
- It can be useful to emphasise the political context at the start of the workshop, especially when elected members attend. This increases buy-in and contributions from elected members.
- Review the available wall space and room layout before drawing up brown papers. Many rooms are ideal for normal conferences, but contain little available wall space for brown papers.
- Debrief facilitators immediately after the event. Views and feedback are fresh in their minds and you obtain a richness of feedback that us lost at a later date.
- Following the multi-agency workshop, it can be useful to get young people to review the journey maps that were created in the workshop. Young people can add another perspective.
Click to go back to the 'Discover' 'Activities' page, or to go on to 'Deepen'.
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Last updated on 11/04/2009
