This blog, focused on mental health and wellbeing in Youth Social Action (YSA), is part of a learning series produced as part of the #iwill Fund Impact Evaluation and Learning Contract (IELC). We specifically look at four themes that can better understand how quality principles apply to different aspects of YSA and in different context – these are: mental health and wellbeing, equity and antiracism, youth-led design and accessibility in YSA. It is hoped that by reading this it will raise awareness of mental health among young people taking part in YSA activities, which ultimately helps children and young people to have a thriving future.
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This blog, focused on anti-racist practice in Youth Social Action (YSA), is part of a learning series produced as part of the #iwill Fund Impact Evaluation and Learning Contract (IELC). We specifically look at four themes that can better the quality of YSA practice – these are: mental health and wellbeing, equity and antiracism, youth-led design and accessibility in YSA. It is hoped that by reading this it will raise awareness of anti-racism within YSA activities, which ultimately helps all children and young people to have a thriving future.
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This blog was written by two members of the Young Evaluators Network – Thomas Williams and Irys Chick and contains some of their reflections on how to encourage youth participation in evaluation.
The Young Evaluators Network (YEN) aims to investigate how youth voice practices and disciplines are embedded into the #iwill Fund. The evaluation is conducted by a consortium of organisations - Dartington Service Design Lab, Renaisi-TSIP,YMCA George Williams College, and Ipsos. The work of the YEN is centred around analysing lots of data from #iwill Fund funded projects to better inform youth voice practices, grant-giving, and decision-making processes in the #iwill Fund.
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UK Youth’s Thriving Minds Fund, which spans from 2022-2025, set out to support 99 charities and not-for-profit youth organisations to investigate best practices around mental health and wellbeing support for children and young people. A key ambition of the Fund was to enable and strengthen connection and learning between those working within the youth sector.
As the Learning Partner on the Thriving Minds Fund, we’ve been working with UK Youth and grantees to generate evidence about what enables the sector to work better together and share knowledge around best practices to support young people experiencing mental health challenges.
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For 10 years, Lambeth Early Action Partnership (LEAP) has funded and supported more than 20 local services to meet the needs of families through pregnancy and the early years of childhood with the aim of giving thousands of children aged 0-3 a better start in life. Now, a decade on, Dartington Service Design Lab is proud to present this new report, sharing the findings from a comprehensive evaluation of the programme. This report explores how place-based systems change can improve outcomes for children and families.
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Led by the Dartington Service Design Lab’s Lambeth-based community research team, eco-mapping was used to explore how (and if) systems of social support (like LEAP) influenced families within the nuance of their local social, economic, and cultural contexts. We wanted to share the learning to help others looking to transform their services and community offers to better help families and children.
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As part of our commitment to sustainable and participatory approaches to evidence, we wanted to promote the learning from the work co-designed by our three Community Researchers living and working in Lambeth, working with us to evaluate the Lambeth Early Action Partnership (LEAP) systems change project. Using this method helps unpick complex, place-based systemic problems and can support tailoring services to better serve communities. We are sharing these insights to support others in the research and evaluation community who are thinking about or already undertaking community-led research, particularly in the early years sector.
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With a change in government and one committed to taking a “preventative approach” to social issues, more than ever, Dartington Service Design Lab’s work is needed.
We’ve not only been reflecting on what this change means for children and young people, but by harnessing the evidence and our expertise, we have identified five ways to turn government rhetoric on prevention into reality.
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In 2023, four of the UK’s leading children’s and young people’s cancer charities joined forces with Dartington Service Design Lab to create a shared, evidence-based understanding of what is needed to build a better future for children and young people with cancer. We surveyed more than 1,500 young people with lived experiences to support the findings and help address gaps in the system.
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AI is all around us, from text prediction in WhatsApp to generating all kinds of things via ChatGPT and other such tools. It's certainly not going away and is playing a significant role in not just our lives but the lives of children and families. So, what does this mean for AI in the youth sector? And what could it do for your work and organisation? Dartington Service Design Lab has been at the forefront of progressive applications of research for over fifty years, and we’re intrigued by the advances in artificial intelligence (AI), which is already changing the way we develop, deliver and evaluate services for children, young people and families – bringing a wealth of opportunities and challenges to navigate.
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As we began the year, we set out our strategic priorities, with a core focus on the early years, mental health and safety for children, young people and families. Our work is increasingly concerned with systems change; working with partners to challenge and disrupt the conditions, structures and power that uphold inequalities in outcomes and experiences for children and young people.
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This year we’re doubling down to catalyse systemic change and tackle inequalities in three main areas. One key strategic priority that we are committed to focusing on is to promote children’s and young people’s health and wellbeing, using our collective knowledge, skills, and resources to navigate and better understand the role of local partnerships in making the prevention of poor health outcomes a reality.
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In 2023, we launched the start of an incredible partnership with leading children and young people’s cancer charities Young Lives vs Cancer, Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group, the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust and Teenage Cancer Trust, to apply an Integrated Approach to research and systems change with children and young people with cancer experience.
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In 2024, you’ll hear less about the ‘how’ and a lot more about the ‘why’. As a team, we’ll be steadfast and focused on tackling inequalities in the outcomes and experiences of children and young people and doing so via equitable approaches to advancing systemic change.
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Throughout our partnership with Inclusion as Prevention we’ve engaged with 98 young people to design and improve services, and early intervention for young people with experience of the justice system. It is estimated that a further 300 also participated through surveys and attending workshops. We’ve tackled challenges, overcome barriers, and learned together as a team to understand the system in South Lanarkshire, to ensure young people aren’t just supported when they enter the justice system, but that the services are there to prevent them from doing so.
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We are now delighted to bring these tools and ways of thinking to a wider audience via a new suite of training and learning opportunities. This includes an engaging, online introductory system thinking course; a bespoke, in-person training for teams or partnerships; and an applied, cohort-based learning journey programme where folks can bring a systemic challenge to be worked through in practice (in cohorts or teams, with training inputs, peer-to-peer learning, coaching, and learning resources).
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Dartington Service Design Lab partnered with University of Cambridge Centre for Research in Play in Education Development and Learning (PEDAL) to develop new virtual ways to support parents and children to engage in book sharing, which has traditionally been done face-to-face . We are now releasing the final report from this work and sharing our learning for others to put into practice.
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This blog is the first in our series on systems thinking. In this blog we explore one of the systems dynamics tools we use called goal-gap structures to help us understand people’s different motivations for change. We will be launching a systems training programme this autumn where you can learn more about these approaches!
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At the Lab, we’ve been developing and refining our approach to facilitating systemic change, by generating and integrating diverse evidence of what children and young people need and want. We have had varying degrees of success. We’re releasing our report from the Early Action Project in Renfrewshire to both reflect on our experiences of trying to bring about systemic change in children’s services and encourage others to learn from our approach, to support the long-term sustainability of systems change that is both wanted and needed.
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Over the last five years we have been working to change the systems of support for young people who come into conflict with law in Scotland. We’ve been doing that through co-production with young people to re-imagine the kinds of supports that help keep them included in their communities and in the supports on offer to them. Too often young people are excluded from systems of support when they come into conflict with the law. This project fundamentally reframes the work of prevention and early intervention to be young-person centred and inclusive of their diverse experiences and needs.
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