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We found that nearly 800 young people left eight secondary colleges across the City of Whittlesea (including the Catholic college) in 1998 without completing year 12. The figure across the municipality shocked the Principals. They simply had no idea there were so many. Then we asked, where do these young people go? About one third went to other schools, one third had a job or training place to go to and the last third was listed as ‘unknown destination’. It was this last third who became the focus of our attention. In this process, we learnt an important element in effecting change. When we look at the impact of early school leaving across a community, when we aggregate data, we do two things. Each school or provider, in handing over the statistics to a trusted local source, has revealed their own performance, something which can motivate an organisation to stop and look again at what is done. The second is that aggregation of local data for local purposes means we focus on the needs of all young people in a community, not on the performance of an individual school or provider. We are asking community questions and we seek a community response. What is happening with early school leavers in our community? Can we do something about this collectively? |
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The Youth Allowance Impact Project had become the Whittlesea Youth Commitment by the end of the first twelve months of what became a two year financial commitment. How did this happen? I have mentioned the power of local data analysis. As the Youth Allowance Project unfolded, broader statistics gathered and analysed by Dusseldorp Skills Forum showed that some 114,000 people aged between 15 and 19 across Australia were not in work or education. This was coupled with the statistic that 75% of those who are long term unemployed young people are early school leavers. The link between choices to leave school early, the lack of community support and connection between agencies and the consequences for a swift slide into a marginal world was clear. It was not in fact that government programs did not exist, though they are stretched. It was more that finding them was a haphazard experience relying on a motivated and cluey young person, or their motivated and cluey family and friends. And those young people are usually at school, or in work the day after they leave school. Dusseldorp Skills Forum was impressed with the Nordic countries which had mandated local government to ensure that all young people up to 20 years old in their community were engaged in education or employment. While acknowledging the very different cultural, educational and political environment in Australia, they began to ask the question, which they have now answered in the affirmative, does Australia need a Youth Commitment? A guarantee that every young person would achieve Year 12 or an equivalent as a key underpinning of their future success in the labour market and thereby the opportunities to plan and secure a future? Was a local community interested and willing to have a go at developing that Commitment? |
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The Whittlesea Local Government Area has a history of collaboration between schools to meet local needs. This was fertile ground for Dusseldorp. Key leaders in our community met with people from DSF to discuss a collaborative project. These key people included two Principals, the Economic Development Manager for the Council, the Executive Officer of the Northern Area Consultative Committee, staff from NIECAP RMIT which hosted the Youth Allowance Project, a career teacher active in local politics who became Mayor soon afterwards, amongst others. All brought good networks and a history of commitment to innovation in their community. We agreed that we would engage with Dusseldorp to address the problems uncovered in the Youth Allowance Project. Dusseldorp made it clear that they were there as partners for practical not financial support – if we thought a pot of gold would emerge if we played the game, we would be disappointed. In the end, a small pot did emerge, at the time we needed it, on the basis of effective partnership which had built trust and commitment. We felt our way from there. The people around that table made a commitment to engage their networks in the venture, which was to see if we could do things differently. That leadership in the early stages was vital. You need to know what networks are there, who is a keen player for the common good at the early stages, who will play if the time is right and the task is well defined. We invited some 30 organisations working with young people such as school, Council and community welfare agencies, as well as Centrelink, Job Network and local employers to a meeting. At the meeting, which was well attended so had curiosity value at least, we painted a picture of our community, using data from the Youth Allowance Project and DSF supplemented by an Environmental Scan covering employment, education, training and social statistics about the Whittlesea LGA. The first was a picture of youth unemployment and disengaged young people across the nation. But the local picture is one we can work with, one which has names and faces. Again, the statistics and their analysis proved vital to motivating a suspicious and uncertain group to go beyond their institutional imperative, which is for the organisation, and the jobs in those organisations, to survive at all costs. We then spent twelve months in working groups and in larger forums reviewing progress towards identifying goals, working out how we might meet them, researching need and current activity which related to the goals, refining our ideas and, in the end, bringing it all together in a Spirit of Cooperation Agreement. The essence of this agreement is:
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The Spirit of Cooperation Agreement is a vital tool for gluing together the organisations participating. The content is important, of course, but it is the process of developing the Agreement which is far more powerful in the long run. We developed the Agreement collectively, bringing the various experiences and perspectives of different sectors to the table, discussing the differences we found in our understanding of the aspirations and situations of the same young people – the student, the worker, the client of an agency, were all the same person, but the stories about them from those working with them revealed more about the interaction of the organisation with each young person than it did about the person themselves. Either that, or many young people slip into multiple personalities at the drop of a hat. They certainly respond differently in different environments. The Agreement sets out commitments to act, to reflect, to review and to change on the basis of ongoing data collection which reveals where are successful, and where we are not, in meeting our goals. The Agreement itself is based on one familiar to Human Services providers who have a long history of collaborating to provide funds to different agencies on the basis of agreed partnerships and particular expertise relevant to the needs of individual young people. This approach, which focuses on what young people need rather than how a young person can fit into a program or institution, is a key idea – it provides a way of thinking about what we do now, how we allocate current resources, how we organise our schools and our agencies, which reminds us of what we are really there for. You are not just waiting for more money to solve the problem your organisation has. You are working with others to solve problems for young people and the funds will go to the most significant point of change. What changed for us? We identified the point of exit from schools as uncharted territory. We decided that the large number of people with an unknown destination would be our beginning point. The common exit form was introduced last year across eight Whittlesea LGA schools. Its commonality is in the kind of data it seeks, not in the form itself. We ask more questions about the destinations and intentions of exiting students. |
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We want to identify those without a job or training place to go to. If the student exiting indicates that they have not secured a job or training place, they are offered the opportunity to speak to a Transition Broker. The Brokers, currently three for the eight schools, were originally brought in with a mix of funding from school and the Education Department, which funded one person, and then in October last year a significant financial contribution from Dusseldorp Skills Forum meant we had three brokers for eight schools for six months. We now have three across the eight schools until March 2002 funded through a new Victorian Government initiative called Managed Individual Pathways or MIPs, and we are hopeful that the MIPs funds will provide ongoing work for what is now an experienced team. The brokers work on a case management model, meeting individual young people, developing a plan, monitoring progress with the plan and arranging regular meetings. They take young people to agencies when necessary. They help them overcome that first hurdle of standing in the right queue at Centrelink. This hand holding should reduce over time if our theory is correct and each agency becomes more youth friendly and is more aware of the flow of young people to be expected- if we keep improving our connection person to person, team to team. You can be assured it is not all in place yet, but we think the theory holds up. Introducing a team of brokers, across the schools rather than belonging to one school, was an experiment – if we put more resources in, would it make a difference? If the workers were not teachers, but, in our case, are young people themselves who are trained in youth work and community development, does it help? The results showed it does - for example, we can identify a significant take up in TAFE. The team approach offers a professional environment necessary for working effectively in a school, as many youth workers will note from their lonely experience as one person on a short term project located in a school. Were young people interested? In the early days the brokers were contacting exited student who didn’t know them, who had left school before a broker was employed, but most who were contacted and who were not in work or study agreed to meet to discuss their situation. For those who were at school, we brought in a short survey for every Year 9, 10 and 11 students to complete. We asked ‘are you thinking of leaving school this year? and from this we had an initial case load of current students. Many, when contacted, had changed their mind. But what the survey did which had not been done before was identify those young people who no-one knew were thinking of other options. This universal approach, asking everyone rather than picking those who are obvious, has the benefit of avoiding stigma and of uncovering unmet need. I recommend it. We did this in every school at the beginning of Term Two this year and again, this provided a starting point for the brokers work for the year. We commit to contacting every early school leaver at least twice in the first twelve months after leaving school. The point of this is not just to improve our record keeping, though this is important. It is to offer those who, when contacted, are out of work or study, the opportunities to meet with a broker to discuss their options. Most will know their broker. But others left with a job or training place to go to and it didn’t work out. Not everyone wants to meet a broker. Some are working with an agency in the Job Network and can say so – again, we know more about the route travelled, we can start to see patterns of contact, we can start to map over time the impact on individual young people of the various agencies they work with. We have the start of an ongoing research project, one which will be built into our practice as our Five Year Plan has a Research goal. And as I have already said, solid, local data is in itself a great motivating force for change. The broker can identify personal issues impacting on education and employment and will refer to local community agencies. Again, this is the case management model familiar to community agencies, providing individual case plans which focus on a transition process which addresses issues one at a time and understands that it may take time for an ultimate goal to be achieved. |
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Last year our Community Team, which comprises operational staff in our member agencies, such as career teachers, case workers and council youth staff, developed a Passport for young people. The Passport itself contains the basis of a resume, education details and an action plan. It is designed to travel with the young people between agencies, lessening the dispiriting and frustrating experience of young people telling the same story over again to different people in different agencies. It is not the first school to work passport and it won’t be the last. What is important is not the passport itself, but its collaborative development. We had to sort out in the Community Team a range of problems including issues of confidentiality – we agreed on a concept of transferring the case management role from the broker to the next port of call, something valuable in theory but less obvious in practice. We just need to work on it more, reinforce it in each agency, remind ourselves of why we brought it in, ask new staff to read, think and comment and then to engage with it. This is the hard work of long term change and we could do better on that score. So I encourage you to review the resources you find around which seem to meet your needs and ask yourself – who else should see this material? Is there someone amongst from another sector who should contribute to a local version of this? You would do this to develop the right product. And you would do this because in the process you build the professional relationship of trust and knowledge which is crucial to an effective collaborative network. Again, despite severe competitive constraints, the community sector has a wealth of experience in addressing barriers between agencies and developing protocols which would be valuable for education staff to hear about. This year we endorsed a second Agreement and a Five Year Plan. The Plan provides a platform for long term change. We are now starting the more difficult process of implementing it in each agency. Without the work of two years of discussion and relationship building this would not be possible. We would not get past the door. Who are we, anyway, the Youth Commitment? We are only there to the extent that our members are there. Its success is the success of collaboration and commitment from each member, a willingness to take individual responsibility to achieve collective goals. It means changing some practices and some reorganisation. This is in your control. The timing of this is in your control. As is the outcomes for many young people who rely on our major community institutions to provide a supportive framework for them to achieve, and to make mistakes, and to start again as they establish themselves as active, independent citizens. This, in fact, is our key goal in the Youth Commitment. The rest, the passport, the Agreement, the working groups, the brokers, they are a means to that end and when they are redundant they should go. We have to focus on that goal. Developing the capacity of young people to be active independent citizens acting on their own behalf and wanting to contribute to their community.
Laila Fanebust December 2001 |
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