Recorded Outcomes in Practice
Recorded Outcomes in Practice
Recorded outcomes sound very easy in theory – but sometimes it can be hard to integrate them into current practice. The following tips are taken from Credit Where Its Due – Frequently Asked Questions, NYA, July 05, and discussions with colleagues across the region.
a) How can I use recorded outcomes in a large, open access youth centre?
One of the biggest challenges to open access ‘traditional’ youth clubs in incorporating recorded outcomes is asking part time staff to take on additional admin, or form filling. In most open access clubs, staffing and resources are already much stretched and filling in extra forms could take away the time available to work with young people. Also, the process of recording outcomes implies an increased concentration on one-to-one work, as youth workers take time to explore with young people what their goals are, and what progress they are making towards them, and this can be difficult when the club is very busy.
Two suggestions to deal with this are, firstly, to introduce a system to record outcomes that requires the minimum of extra paperwork for frontline workers. A good example is the adaptations that Somerset County Youth Service have made to their existing sessional recording sheet (p16). This form was being completed at the end of every session anyway, so did not require any extra work for youth workers.
A second suggestion is to bring in volunteers to help with practical tasks such as the coffee bar, freeing up youth workers’ time. In Blandford YC in Dorset, they have made a success in integrating recorded outcomes to their practice by freeing up youth workers’ time in this way. Recording outcomes is seen as a priority for the youth centre, so they have also invested resources in bringing in a p/t worker one evening a week specifically to work on young people’s development.
b) How can I integrate recorded outcomes in detached work?
Credit Where It’s Due states that a recorded outcome can come about as a result of a decision made by a young person as a result of contact in a detached setting. The following provides an example:
In your detached work you have developed a relationship with a group of young people aged 13-16 who are engaged in a range of risky behaviour. One of the group has indicated that she/he is “sometimes scared” by what happens when the group has been drinking heavily. You talk to her/him about their concerns and agree to go with them to a local project that has a specialist health education worker.
A recorded outcome could be counted at the point where the young person is engaged/ involved with the project and has understood more about alcohol use/abuse and is able to identify personal strategies to cope with behaviour within the group.
The difficulty with recording outcomes in detached work is simply making sure that the worker makes a note of the progress made by the young person on their return to the office. Systems for monitoring recorded outcomes should be as simple as possible.
c) How can I use recorded outcomes in information and advice work?
Integrating recorded outcomes into this setting can be a challenge, but an advice session is likely to have notes attached to it and on which the worker can base decisions about evidence of outcomes. An outcome in relation to advice work is about a young person learning /discovering something that has made a positive difference to their life. This is a complex issue and the learning is evolving. There are some tools that can provide evidence on a sample basis; Youth Access are currently developing a tool to record the outcomes of advice work. For more information, contact : www.youthaccess.org.uk
d) How do recorded outcomes fit with the counselling service?
At the forefront of current debate and research is strengthening the evidence base for counselling services and looking at appropriate ways to identify outcomes.
Counsellors take careful notes of their meetings with young people and these are rightly kept entirely confidential. For the purposes of benchmarking it is sufficient to have a record that is coded or categorised in a way which enables the counsellor to know to whom it refers whilst maintaining the young person’s anonymity.
e) Is our local award a recorded outcome?
Criteria have been developed which identify the process and conditions for recognition of a local award as an accredited outcome. These criteria will be effective from April 2006 – see NYA publication (August 2005) ‘Local Youth Work Awards. (Establishing the criteria for recognition of local youth work awards as recorded and accredited outcomes)’.
Existing local award schemes cover a wide variety of programmes; some will sit readily alongside other awards that can be counted towards the youth service benchmark for accredited outcomes. Others fall more easily into the category that is recorded outcomes and some local awards will not meet the criteria for either a recorded or an accredited outcome. It is down to youth services themselves to make the decision as to whether a local award is an accredited or recorded outcome. This should be part of your self assessment and quality assurance process.