Research and analysis

Youth Worker Interactions with Other Sectors: Better understanding multi-agency working to support young people

Published 22 October 2025

Executive summary

Background to the research

1. Professional youth workers are qualified individuals who build voluntary, trusted relationships with young people, away from many of the other pressures they may be facing in their lives. They usually work with young people aged between 11 and 19, but may support young adults up to the age of 25 depending on their needs. Youth work needs professional youth workers (hence forth referred to as ‘youth workers’) to interact with other providers in the youth sector, as well as people working in allied sectors such as education, health, and social care. By interacting with other sectors, youth workers connect young people with suitable opportunities and services. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that integrated working between services is too often absent from the everyday experience of youth workers.

2. In September 2024, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) commissioned SQW (an independent research organisation) in partnership with UK Youth (the UK’s leading youth work charity) to undertake a research study exploring how, in practice, youth workers interact with other sector personnel/agencies. It was intended that the research would help DCMS to design future policy and programmes and may also inform future thinking about the National Youth Strategy and Young Futures Hubs. As such, in addition to the main body of this report, a ‘Suggestions for good practice’ section has been included in Section 9, which can be accessed as either a part of this broader research, or independently by practitioners and policy makers to guide the work that they do.

Methodology

3. The graphic below summarises the research approach. The primary data collection methods included case studies in six areas in England and an online survey of youth workers and allied professionals. The purpose of the case studies was to 1) explore and describe interactions within different delivery models, and 2) help identify what makes interactions between youth workers and allied professionals in other sectors effective. The purpose of the survey was to test and extend the case study findings with a larger number of professionals. The study ran for six months, from October 2024 to March 2025. UK Youth recruited a Cross Sector Advisory Group to ensure that youth and cross sector voices were at the heart of the research.

Figure 1: Overview of key research activities, October 2024 to March 2025

Scoping (October to November)

• Initial document review
• Discussions at the ‘Joined Up Summit’
• Cross Sector Advisory Group meeting

Case studies (December to January)

• Interview with youth workers and allied professionals in six case study areas (45 interview)
• Data Interpretation workshops
• Cross Sector Advisory Group meeting

Online survey (January to February)

• Online survey of youth workers and allied professionals (296 responses)
• Data interpretation workshops

Just One Question (February)

• Snapshot survey of youth practitioners (237 responses)

Analysis and reporting (February to March)

• Cross Sector Advisory Group meeting
• Draft report
• Final report

What multi-sector interactions take place and why?

4. Youth workers are connectors. The research uncovered extensive and purposeful interactions between professionals in the youth sector and other sectors. Youth sector professionals (including youth workers and other groups working in the youth sector) regularly interact with:

• services that are universally available including statutory services such as schools, colleges and GPs, and others including sports, arts and youth clubs, libraries and outdoor learning providers
• community organisations that include faith groups, community centres, local businesses, food banks and Family Hubs
• targeted services including children’s and social services, A&E, mental health, SEND, and school attendance support services as well as housing, youth justice (including the police) and Jobcentre Plus.

5. However, there are also gaps in connections. Almost a quarter (24%) of survey respondents stated that there were some organisations or sectors that they used to interact with but no longer do. For example, youth workers said they did not have good interactions with all schools in their area, fewer interactions between the youth sector and the social care and justice sectors were reported, and other gaps included interactions with fire services, libraries, and mental health support services. In some cases, this was because services were unavailable or stretched too far to have capacity to interact, in others it was due to a lack of understanding about what youth work is, and how youth workers can enhance service provision and meet the needs of young people.

6. The research uncovered that participants reported higher/improved levels of interactions within the youth sector where formal networks and alliance arrangements exist. Examples of these arrangements include the Blackburn & Darwen Youth Federation in Lancashire, the Youth and Play Alliance in Bristol, and the Derby Youth Alliance. Membership of a joint body encourages communication, joint funding bids and service delivery, and information-sharing across the sector. This in turn reduces duplication of work and service delivery, helps coordinate competitive bids for funding and ensures each organisation plays to its strengths.

7. Reasons why interactions occur are primarily to:

• Deliver services for young people by coordinating activities between youth service providers and other sectors, and providing effective referral routes
• Develop and sustain the sector, by sharing workforce development or resources for example, and co-ordinating bids for funding
• Coordinate service provision across a local area that is informed by young people’s views.

What benefits arise from multi-sector interactions?

8. Individual young people benefit from cross-sector interactions. Interactions create more effective referrals (because fuller information is brought to referral decisions), clearer engagement pathways (because there is more awareness of services and opportunities), and quicker responses (because there is trust between services). Interactions can help expand the reach of services to more or different groups of young people. Crucially this can make the difference between a young person being supported at an early intervention stage as opposed to a crisis stage.

9. Services for all young people are better designed when people from different sectors with shared purpose interact. Interactions create better intelligence about young people in a place, their needs and aspirations. Bringing diverse perspectives and information about all young people and their social, economic and health contexts should bring good insight when decisions are made about what can be delivered, where and for which young people. This builds a context in which individuals or groups of vulnerable young people are less likely to “fall between the cracks” of service provision. Multi-sector interactions also increase young people’s understanding of the type and range of support available to them, and increases their trust and confidence in this support. This results in better outcomes for young people.

10. The benefits for organisations include better information about the collective needs of young people in a particular area and more effective signposting and referral between services. More streamlined working also eases capacity pressures, reduces duplication and enables organisations to adopt a more strategic approach to supporting young people, which is crucial in a sector where funding is so constrained.

11. Greater interaction can put more strain on services. Communication between services needs to be purposeful and managed. Over a third of youth sector survey respondents (36%) said there were disadvantages of more frequent interaction. They stated that youth sector professionals are already under immense pressure, contending with the dual challenges of rising workloads and diminishing resources (which means there are more demands for youth sector involvement in partnership working with fewer people to meet those demands). This not only limits their ability to build and sustain interactions, but more collaboration heightens risk of burn out and distraction from service delivery.

How, and how often do multi-sector interactions occur?

12. For most youth workers, interactions occur in various forms, including in-person meetings, phone calls, video calls, emails and text messages. There is a preference for face to face, particularly where complex issues need to be discussed, or where young people need to be present. Virtual methods and phone calls were cited as being more time and resource efficient, and tended to be used for day-day communications. Secure communication systems were used for referrals and safeguarding.

13. While many interactions have formal elements, effective interactions combine both formal and informal. Reported interactions are rarely solely formal. Interactions build on connections made by youth workers who need to connect with a wide range of services to advocate for the diverse needs of the young people they work with. Youth sector respondents who had been in role for more than five years naturally accumulated relationships and reported more interactions per sector and more informal interactions than those who had been in role for fewer than five years. Although these relationships require significant time and resources to establish, they are effective in scenarios where staff teams are stable and long-standing. High staff turnover, however, exposes the fragility of individual relationships.

14. Co-location (for example having another service or professional regularly operating from within a youth centre) was regarded as valuable for facilitating both formal and informal interactions between different organisations, and between young people and different service providers.

One thing we’ve learnt is people can talk about agencies coming together but actually it’s people coming together […]. Within the space of six months, it only takes one person to leave their job and all of that corporate memory is for nothing and you’re back to square one ^{[footnote 1]}.

– Interviewee, Youth Organisation, Bristol

Which barriers prevent interaction?

15. There are a number of barriers which limit effective interactions between youth sector professionals and their counterparts in other organisations. These are associated with:

• Capacity constraints: in smaller organisations workers may need to choose between running a youth session or attending a meeting
• Staff changes that created discontinuity in communication flows, a factor exacerbated by short term funding and short-term employment contracts
• A competitive funding culture, that inadvertently sees potential collaborators displaying competitive behaviours
• A misalignment of working hours between youth work and other services
• Professional biases and misunderstandings about respective roles and ways of working, with a lack of parity of professional esteem felt by youth workers
• Risk aversion relating to sharing personal data, either due to assumed or actual data protection restrictions or concerns about how data might be used
• Other practical barriers such as geographic distance.

16. Where barriers to interactions are not overcome, the consequences for both young people and organisations that work to support them are associated with the inverse of the benefits of interactions.

What are the lessons for better interactions?

• Lesson 1: Effective interactions rely on good relationships between different professional groups, but these are bound by structural constraints such as frequent personnel changes
• Lesson 2: Where youth service structures are unstable, relationship-building and interactions suffer, often owing to a lack of adequate and sustained funding
• Lesson 3: Face to face interactions are key, recognising that effective interactions also use different modes of communication for different purposes
• Lesson 4: Group interactions can accelerate relationship building and enrich information sharing, particularly at regularly scheduled multi-agency meetings
• Lesson 5: Young people involved in multi-agency meetings and co-design of programmes benefit from experienced youth worker support 
• Lesson 6: Co-location requires more than just physical proximity but also strong relationship building, alignment around common objectives and service philosophies, and structured information sharing.

Implications and recommendations

17. The report concludes with a set of implications for practitioners:

• Build 1-2-1 relationships with key contacts
• Sustain organisational partnerships
• Use technology for efficient communication but don’t devalue face to face interactions
• Attend multi-agency meetings regularly
• Map out local services and referral pathways
• Develop a standardised referral process
• Use personal approaches to introduce young people into referral networks
• Follow up on referrals to ensure continuity
• Attend joint training sessions
• Offer briefings for allied professionals on youth work
• Shadow other professionals
• Embed regular evaluation and reflection sessions
• Advocate for youth work representation in decision-making bodies
• Encourage coproduction and ownership of provision
• Develop collaborative funding bids
• Champion youth voice in cross-sector meetings
• Develop agreements for safe data sharing
• Use common case management tools
• Create shared action plans for young people with high needs
• Advocate for co-location of services
• Adjust working hours to engage young people at key times.

18. It also lists recommendations for policy makers to:

• Establish national frameworks to guide local collaborations
• Provide clear guidance on data sharing
• Pilot different models of co-located services
• Invest in cross sector learning and development
• Embed partnership building skills into professional qualifications
• Streamline local service mapping
• Encourage long term funding for youth work and other preventative services
• Support common outcomes frameworks.

1. Introduction

Background to the research

1.1 In September 2024, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) commissioned SQW (an independent research organisation) in partnership with UK Youth (the UK’s leading youth work charity) to undertake a research study exploring how professional youth workers interact with other sector personnel. The study ran for six months, from October 2024 to March 2025.

1.2. The study was conceived as exploratory research to examine how, in practice, youth workers interact with other providers, as anecdotal evidence suggested that integrated services were too often absent from the everyday experience of youth workers ^{[footnote 2]}. Some existing government- led programmes for young people and their families incorporate a ‘joined-up’ approach to delivering local services, for example:

• Family Hubs ^{[footnote 3]}
• Supporting Families ^{[footnote 4]}
• SAFE Taskforces ^{[footnote 5]}
• Turnaround Programme ^{[footnote 6]}

Each of these programmes are different with their own aims and objectives, but they all have a multi-agency approach to reaching desired outcomes for young people. This study was designed to better understand how youth workers operate in multi-agency style services and systems.

1.3 The government recognises the importance of youth services. In November 2024, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy announced plans for a new National Youth Strategy to break down barriers to opportunity for young people. The Strategy, which is being co-produced with young people across the country, will prioritise delivering better coordinated youth services and policy at a local, regional and national level to ensure decision-making moves away from a one-size-fits all approach7. The Government has also committed to developing a national network of Young Futures Hubs to bring local services together, deliver support for teenagers at risk of being drawn into crime or facing mental health challenges and, where appropriate, deliver universal youth provision, with youth workers, mental health support workers, and careers advisers on hand to support young people78. It was intended that this research would help DCMS to design future policy and programmes and may also inform government thinking about the National Youth Strategy and Young Futures Hubs.

1.4 The research objectives were to understand:

• What interactions take place between personnel/agencies and why?
• What form interactions take - how formal or informal are they?
• The benefits of these interactions
• The barriers to greater interaction, and implications of not interacting
• What lessons can be learned about better multi-agency interactions?

1.5 UK Youth recruited a Cross Sector Advisory Group to ensure that youth and cross sector voices were at the heart of this research. The group met three times during the study, and helped refine the scope of the research and the research tools, promote the online survey, and reflect on emerging findings and key messages.

Research scope

Definitions

1.6 We used a broad definition of ‘interactions’ in this study, namely instances where youth workers and allied professionals from other sectors work together and / or liaise for the purpose of supporting a young person or young people.

1.7 The youth sector includes organisations that work primarily with young people, most often through youth work. Youth work is a practice that supports the personal, social, emotional and educational development of a young person to help them reach their full potential. It is often informal, voluntary and centred on building relationships in safe and supportive environments.

1.8 Professional youth workers are qualified individuals who build voluntary, trusted relationships with young people, away from many of the other pressures they may be facing in their lives. They usually work with young people aged between 11 and 19, but may support young adults up to the age of 25 depending on their needs. Professional youth workers hold a Level 6 qualification in youth work.

1.9 Allied sectors generally offer support for particular aspects of a young person’s life. Examples include the education sector (encompassing schools, colleges, and pupil referral units); social care (children’s services); health (primary, secondary, and community care); youth justice (including police, custody, and probation services); and housing.

1.10 A glossary of other key terms can be found in Annex A.

Research questions

1.11 DCMS’s brief for this research included a series of research questions, which are reproduced as follows:

• What are the potential agencies and organisations that youth workers could interact with in the course of supporting young people?
• What evidence is there that such interactions take place?
• What is the intended purpose of these interactions?
• What form do they take and how formal or informal are these interactions?
• What are the reported benefits or disadvantages of greater interaction, for young people and organisations delivering youth provision?
• What are the implications of not interacting for the organisations and young people?
• What barriers exist to greater interaction with improved results, and how can these be overcome?

Structure of this report

1.12 The structure of this report reflects the research objectives and is as follows:

• Chapter 2: Methodology
• Chapter 3: What multi-sector interactions take place and why?
• Chapter 4: What benefits arise from multi-sector interactions?
• Chapter 5: How, and how often do multi-sector interactions occur?
• Chapter 6: Which barriers prevent interaction, and what are the implications of not interacting? *Chapter 7: What lessons can be learned about better multi-agency interactions
• Chapter 8: Conclusions
• Chapter 9: Implications for practitioners and policymakers

Acknowledgements

1.13 This report has been written by Dr Jo Hutchinson, Izzy Hampton, Tom Boothroyd and Annie Finegan from SQW, and Jacob Diggle and Somia Nasim from UK Youth. Our research teams including Angela Stockman, Jacob Gower, Molly Dawson, and Cara Prince provided expert interview, survey and analysis support.

1.14 We are indebted to the youth workers and allied professionals who gave up their time to participate in our study, either through taking part in a case study interview, responding to our survey and/or answering our Just One Question. We want to extend our sincere gratitude to the following organisations for their outstanding support in facilitating this research: Trust for Developing Communities, Oxfordshire Youth, Sporting Communities, Creative Youth Network, Uniting Communities Organisation, and Soapbox Islington. 

1.15 We would also like to thank the members of our Cross Sector Advisory Group for their invaluable insights, expertise, and guidance. This includes our two youth panellists – Melvin Riley and Sophia Badhan – and representatives from National Youth Agency, NCS Trust, Frontline, Local Government Association, Oasis Academy Trust, Chance UK, Research Foundation, Place to Be, Kinetic Youth, and Think Ahead.

2. Methodology

Overview of approach

2.1 Cross sector working provides a foundation for good youth work, because it brings together a wide range of services that support young people. Despite this, we also know there are challenges to effective interactions within the youth sector and between the youth sector and allied professions. The specific nature of those challenges, how they vary by sector and context, and how widely experienced they are and by who, had not hitherto been explored. When designing the methods and associated tools for this research, the following factors were considered:

• There is a great variety of delivery models for youth services that reflect commissioning decisions of local authorities and other partners, voluntary and community activities, and a range of legacy effects of infrastructure changes over the years. These include youth services that are predominantly local authority delivered, or where the local authority has commissioned one or many organisations to deliver on its behalf. Added to this may be services funded through the health, education and youth justice sectors, as well as via commercial ventures and private sector partnerships.

• Interactions take place between people working for different organisations. In local areas people may know each other because they have worked in the sector for a while and this relational basis for interactions might occur almost regardless of the organisational context. In addition, trained youth workers may have moved to other sectors where they bring their youth worker values to support young people in other roles. This concept of ‘hidden youth work’ might also affect the nature of interactions between people located in different sectors.

2.2 The tensions or synergies between interactions based on organisational relationships or personal relationships have not been conceptualised fully in the literature. We therefore used a case study based approach to create a framework for subsequent investigation at scale. This framework mapped the range of organisations involved in interactions, the intended purpose of these interactions, the format and formality of them, and benefits and barriers.

2.3 Findings from the case study research were then scaled up through a self-completion survey to the youth sector and allied professions. While the case studies explored individual and organisational relationships, the survey focussed just on individual actions and effective practice.

2.4 Figure 2-1 presents an overview of the approach and associated activities undertaken between October 2024 and March 2025. The remainder of this chapter describes each phase of the research in more detail.

Figure 2-1: Overview of key research activities, October 2024 to March 2025

Scoping (October to November)

• Initial document review
• Discussions at the ‘Joined Up Summit’
• Cross Sector Advisory Group meeting

Case studies (December to January)

• Interview with youth workers and allied professionals in six case study areas (45 interview)
• Data Interpretation workshops
• Cross Sector Advisory Group meeting

Online survey (January to February)

• Online survey of youth workers and allied professionals (296 responses)
• Data interpretation workshops

Just One Question (February)

• Snapshot survey of youth practitioners (237 responses)

Analysis and reporting (February to March)

• Cross Sector Advisory Group meeting
• Draft report
• Final report

(Source: SQW)

Scoping

2.5 The scoping phase began with an initial review of key documents recommended by DCMS and UK Youth. Annex B lists the documents reviewed. The review sought to answer four overarching questions regarding; 1) who youth workers interact with, 2) how often, 3) why and 4) with what effect.

2.6 The document review informed the focus of discussions at the Joined Up Summit in Birmingham on 7th November 2024 (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IjWSN7bcOnlCFKyH2TPZvG-Fezm4bG4C/edit#heading=h.g9c5wnc5uon)[^9]. The research team ran two focus groups at the event - one attended by youth organisations and the other by cross sector representatives - to explore what ‘good’ looks like when it comes to interactions, and what terminology should be used in research tools. The Joined Up Summit was also an opportunity to promote the research, and for youth organisations to express interest in taking part as case studies.

2.7 The first meeting of the Cross Sector Advisory Group, on 11th November, concluded the scoping phase.

Case studies

Six case studies based on youth providers (defined as organisations that offers services and support to young people) in different places across England were undertaken. The purpose of the case studies was to 1) explore and describe interactions within different delivery models, and 2) help identify what makes interactions between youth workers and allied professionals in other sectors effective. The case studies were in local authority areas in England: Brighton and Hove, Bristol, Derby, Islington, Lancashire and Oxfordshire.

Case study selection

2.8 The case study selection process was as follows:

• We analysed Section 251 data to categorise local authority areas by degree of funding cuts between 2011 and 2021, and prevailing spend per capita ^{[footnote 10]}.
• We identified local authorities that represented a variety of funding environments and a range of geographical contexts (e.g., regions, urban vs. rural) and compiled a long list.
• We held calls with interested youth organisations in the potential case study areas to map the areas against additional selection criteria (see Annex C) and finalise our selection.

2.9 The case studies were not intended to be representative; rather, they were selected to provide depth of insight across the wide range of funding environments, geographic and delivery contexts, historical norms and allied sectors.

Case study characteristics

2.10 Table 2-1 provides an overview of the six case study areas and the contexts in which youth worker interactions take place.

Table 2-1: Case study characteristics

Case study area: Brighton and Hove

• Youth service spend per capita (£): £140
• Geography: South East Urban

• Additional criteria:

  • Youth organisation that has a formal framework for interactions and strategic level interactions.
  • Youth organisation with youth workers physically embedded in another setting e.g. hospital, school
• Contextual information from the case study interviews: The majority of youth services are delivered by VCS organisations. Some VCS are commissioned by the local authority, other funding includes government, Sussex Violence Reduction Partnership (VRP), and/or independent charitable trusts to deliver specific programmes. Examples include the Turnaround Programme (funded by the Ministry of Justice) and the Brighton and Hove Hospital Youth Worker programme, which is funded by Sussex VRP and the Rockinghorse Children’s Charity to deliver preventative interventions and support to young people aged 11-17 admitted to the Royal Alexandra Hospital Children’s Emergency Department. Youth work holds a lot of social capital in Brighton and Hove and is generally quite embedded in local communities.

Case study area: Bristol

• Youth service spend per capita (£): £220
• Geography: South West Urban
• Additional criteria: Youth organisation that has a formal framework for interactions and strategic level interactions
• Contextual information from the case study interviews: Youth services in Bristol are heavily centred around commissioned and grant funded VCS and youth sector organisations, with the local authority delivering limited, targeted, work themselves. The model of commissioning youth work in the city has changed over time: until recently, one organisation had been commissioned to deliver youth work across the whole city; now circa 30 organisations have been commissioned to deliver youth work more locally across Bristol. Whilst this has pros and cons, the lack of a single referral / triage structure was noted by interviewees.

Case study area: Derby

• Youth service spend per capita (£): £70
• Geography: East Midlands, Urban
• Additional criteria: Youth organisation with no formal framework or contractual relationships
• Contextual information from the case study interviews: Youth work in Derby is predominantly commissioned. Services in Derby are striving towards a multi-agency approach to supporting young people. Open access complements detached targeted youth work, and both are delivered in partnership with other services, including the police, schools, housing services and the local authority. Organisations which support young people are part of a coalition called the Derby Youth Alliance Services, which triages young people to the right services, as well as providing networking opportunities and training. The Alliance helps coordinate responses to funding calls although there is still increased competition for funding in the city.

Case study area: Islington

• Youth service spend per capita (£): £480
• Geography: London Urban
• Additional criteria: Youth organisation that has a formal framework for interactions
• Contextual information from the case study interviews: Youth services in Islington are predominantly commissioned by the Local Authority’s youth department, Young Islington. Young Islington fully commissions three youth organisations and part commissions a further two to deliver provision. Young Islington also delivers a range of targeted services in-house to support young people. In Islington, there are strong examples of services co-locating to support varied provision and opportunities for young people in one place.

Case study area: Lancashire

• Youth service spend per capita (£): £130
• Geography: North West, predominantly urban
• Additional criteria: Youth organisation that has both formal and informal interactions
• Contextual information from the case study interviews: Historically, youth services in Lancashire were provided by the local authority; however, due to reduced funding, much of these services have been curtailed, and the VCS has increasingly taken on this role. Now the local authority’s main responsibility is targeted SEND work.  In recent years, a strong and collaborative VCS sector has emerged in Lancashire. Previously, organisations operated in silos as they competed for funding. However, more collaborative relationships and integrated working practices have been fostered through membership of Spring North, a charity confederation that facilitates joint funding bids.

Case study area: Oxfordshire

• Youth service spend per capita (£): £70
• Geography: South East Rural
• Additional criteria:
  • Youth services delivered by a local authority 
  • Youth organisation that provides a funded navigator service and has both formal and informal interactions
• Contextual information from the case study interviews: The local authority recently established a targeted youth service in Oxfordshire. All other youth provision is delivered by the VCS sector. This includes open access youth clubs, as well as some targeted provision that VCS organisations receive specific funding to deliver. Youth clubs in Oxfordshire have experienced challenges in rebuilding attendance numbers since Covid.

Source: SQW, includes analysis of 2021 S251 local authority expenditure data

Case study data collection

2.11 The case study research involved semi-structured interviews with youth workers (including both on the ground practitioners and youth work managers) and allied professionals from other sectors (e.g. health, social care, education, criminal justice etc). The interviews took place online via MS Teams and ranged in duration from 45 to 90 minutes. Most of the interviews were one to one; a handful were paired or in small groups.

2.12 The design of the interviews was informed by the concept of social network analysis, an approach that maps relationships between key individuals, groups and associations. The interviews commenced with brief introductory questions, exploring the interviewees’ role, organisation they worked for and nature of youth provision in the case study area. To ensure that we focused interviews on the regular practise of interactions between sectors, we conducted an interactive mapping exercise with interviewees using the digital collaborative platform Miro. Using a pre-populated template informed by insights from the initial scoping review (see Annex D), we mapped the organisations and individuals that interviewees had engaged with in the past year, visually depicting both the type and frequency of these interactions (see Annex E). During this exercise, we also enquired about the purpose and form of the interactions, how well they worked, what could be improved, and any changes over time.

2.13 Once the mapping exercise was complete, we asked the interviewees a series of follow up questions. These questions explored whether there were any organisations/personnel interviewees didn’t interact with but felt they should, or used to interact with and no longer did, and the barriers to greater interaction and how these could be overcome.

2.14 The first interview for each case study area was with a youth worker from a youth organisation, and started with a blank page to map their interactions. The youth worker then put us in touch with allied professionals from other organisations/sectors. We arranged interviews with these individuals, and integrated their interactions into the map to build a composite picture. It is important to note that the maps were intended to provide a partial snapshot of interactions in an area, not a comprehensive census.

2.15. Each interview was, with permission, recorded and comprehensive notes were taken. In total, 45 people participated in the case study research. The second meeting of the Cross Sector Advisory Group, on 14th January, concluded the case study research.

Online survey

2.16 The purpose of the survey was to test and extend the case study findings with a larger number of youth workers and allied professionals from other sectors.

2.17 The survey included a mix of closed questions (both single response and multi response) and open questions, the latter of which allowed respondents to provide more detail about the nature of their interactions within the last year.

2.18 There were two different ‘routes’ through the survey, one for people who worked in the youth sector, and one for allied professionals in other sectors. An overview of the types of questions explored during the survey are outlined in Table 2-2.

Table 2-2: Closed questions explored during the survey

Youth sector respondents

• Background and professional role
• Interactions within the youth sector and with other sectors and for each:
  • sectors interacted with,
  • purposes,
  • working arrangements
• About any experienced interactions:
  • format, and effectiveness of format
  • gaps in interactions
  • interactions that no longer happen
  • benefits of greater interactions
  • disadvantages and barriers
  • effective practices

Allied sector respondents

• Background and professional role
• Interactions within the youth sector and with other sectors and for these:
  • purpose of interactions
  • frequency,
  • benefits,
  • effective practices,
  • barriers and solutions

2.19 The survey was reviewed by the Cross Sector Advisory Group and piloted by members of the UK Youth Network before it was launched. The survey was hosted on Survey Monkey and was live for three weeks between 16th January and 6th February 2025. The survey was promoted through a combination of network wide engagement and specific targeted engagement.

2.20 The online survey received 296 usable responses.

Just One Question

2.21 Just One Question is a monthly survey run by UK Youth to understand the challenges, needs and concerns faced by those working with young people in the UK. The Just One Question for January 2025 was used to provide timely and focused feedback on a specific theme linked to this research study. The question asked was:

Based on your experience, what is the one change that would improve working together with the X sector(s) to achieve better outcomes for young people?

2.22 Respondents were able to select the sector they were referring to using a drop-down option. The Just One Question received 237 usable responses.

Analysis

Case studies

2.23 All case study interviews were written up, input to the qualitative analysis software MaxQDA, and thematically analysed by research question and emerging key themes.

2.24 The findings from the case study research were tested in a set of workshops, first internally with the research team, and then externally with DCMS.

Survey

2.25 In total 320 survey responses (both complete and partial) were extracted from the survey software and imported into Microsoft Excel for analysis. The data was cleaned before the analysis commenced. This involved the removal of one duplicate response and 23 partial responses where respondents had not answered questions about their interactions (i.e., they had only answered questions on their background and professional role). The cleaning process resulted in 296 useable responses.

2.26 respondents selected “other” for the sector they worked in. In nine of these cases, the responses were subsequently recoded to one of the existing sector categories. This resulted in 252 responses (85%) from youth sector professionals, and 44 responses (15%) from allied sector professionals.

2.27 As respondents were routed to different question loops based on the sector they worked in, we analysed the responses from those working in the youth sector separately to those from allied sectors. In terms of the analysis:

• We conducted descriptive analysis of closed questions.
• We conducted thematic analysis of open text questions using key words and concepts generated from a sample of responses and extended as necessary.
• We plotted the postcodes of respondents’ main location of work on a map to show the geographical context for responses and used different colours to indicate any variation by sector.

2.28 As with the case study analysis, the findings from the survey were tested in a set of workshops, first internally with the research team, and then externally with DCMS (see Annex F).

Just One Question

2.29 The Just One Question received 237 usable responses. The responses were thematically coded using an inductive approach. A coding framework was initially developed based on the categorisation and interpretation of a sample of 24 randomly selected responses. The framework was then reviewed and refined before being applied to the remaining responses. A final review of the emerging themes (ideas and solutions) and ‘other’ codes was conducted before the findings were written up.

Final meeting of the Cross Sector Advisory Group

2.30 The third and final meeting of the Cross Sector Advisory Group took place on 17th March 2025 to review the research findings in the round and refine the implications for practice in youth worker interactions with other sectors.

Data limitations

2.31 The study findings – presented in the following sections – should be interpreted with the following limitations in mind:

• Case study research was conducted in six (out of 148) local authority areas to explore interactions in different delivery contexts and in different geographies. They are not intended to be representative of youth worker interactions taking place across the country.
• With up to eight interviews conducted per case study, it was also not possible to capture all of the interactions taking place in each area. The maps are therefore a partial snapshot of interactions in an area, not a comprehensive census, and are not meant for comparison or judgement.
• All case study interviewees, survey and Just One Question respondents opted into the research – in other words, responses may be influenced by self-selection bias. Where possible we have triangulated findings across different data sources (quantitative and qualitative) to mitigate this.
• While the self-completion survey exceeded its target for usable responses, the data collected may not provide a comprehensive representation of the nature of interactions between the youth sector and allied sectors.
• There were two different ‘routes’ through the self-completion survey, one for people who worked in the youth sector, and one for people who worked in allied sectors. Given the range of different sectors within the allied category, and the lower overall number of responses from these professionals, it was not possible to conduct statistically significant analysis into the differences between youth sector and allied sector interactions.
• The self-completion survey included several open text questions which were analysed by theme and frequency. Our reporting provides a sense of scale of responses, but because these were open text questions rather than closed responses we have not undertaken frequency by characteristic analysis.
• Because funding for youth work has become more diffused, with local authority spending declining, youth workers have moved into roles in other sectors such as health, housing and education. Trained youth workers are likely to continue their work with young people applying youth work values and practises in other roles. While we recognised this concept of ‘hidden youth work’ we did not explicitly seek data to investigate its extent or significance.
• The quality of interactions is less easy to assess. A lack of interaction with some allied professionals prior to a crisis intervention can be problematic but frequency of interaction alone is not a good measure of quality, as time spent in regular partnership meetings that nevertheless achieve little is also problematic. Throughout the research, questions were posed about both the nature of interactions and their effectiveness to mitigate this.

3. What multi-sector interactions take place and why?

Introduction

3.1 Partnership working requires interactions between sectors and is important for the youth sector. It is essential that youth workers interact with other sectors and providers to connect young people with appropriate opportunities and services. Partnership and other forms of interaction enable youth workers to access new expertise, facilitate more effective sign- posting and referrals and leads to the development of services that a single organisation could not deliver alone.

3.2 However, for a variety of reasons, this form of working is not straightforward. There are a number of challenges which limit effective interactions and partnership working between youth workers and their counterparts in other organisations. These include resource pressures, high workforce turnover, a mutual lack of understanding between roles, and differing priorities for young people ^{[footnote 11]}.

3.3 This section describes the types of services youth workers could interact with, provides evidence of these interactions, and explores the purposes of interactions.

Why interactions matter

3.4 Both the case studies and the survey explored reasons why people working in the youth sector interact with other partners. Table 3-1 summarises survey responses that list a wide range of potential reasons why cross sector professionals interact and who they interact with. As there were two routes through the survey, youth sector professionals and allied sector professionals (namely those who work in education, health, social care, youth justice, housing and other aligned sectors) were asked this question separately. In the youth sector survey, the question was posed for every sector with which respondents had interacted; allied sector respondents were only asked about the reasons for interacting with the youth sector. The number of respondents per sector interacted with is included in the table, acting as the base. Please note this was a multi-choice question, so respondents could select more than one reason for interacting per sector. 

3.5 The reasons for youth sector respondents’ interactions with other sectors varied depending on the sector they were interacting with. Interactions that related primarily to service delivery were associated with:

• Interactions involving the delivery of regular services to young people (most cited in the survey with respect to interactions within the youth sector, and with education, 76% and 69% respectively of youth sector respondents).

Typically, this entailed youth organisations partnering with other services to deliver regular youth provision, such as weekly sports activities in a local secondary school run by youth workers, open-access youth work provision based in local McDonald’s restaurants and mentoring services led by youth workers in a SEND sixth form.

I think with schools it works really, really well. I had a safeguarding issue from a session last night and couldn’t get hold of parents or carers, so I sent an e-mail to the school and probably within about two hours I got a call back.

– Interviewee, Youth Organisation, Oxfordshire

• Sharing general information to support young people (most cited with respect to interactions within the youth sector (77% of youth sector respondents), and with education, social care, and health - all 56%). For example, information sharing would raise awareness of the type of youth provision available and how it can be accessed.

• Referral of an individual / individuals and safeguarding (most cited with respect to interactions with social care - 74%). In some cases, information sharing about a young person helped inform decisions about which services a young person would be referred to. In other cases, information sharing, generally using an information sharing software, was intended to help “build a context for safeguarding” (i.e. to create a log of information about a young person) such that services can intervene at the point support is needed.

[The youth organisation] are one of the agencies we have pretty much weekly contact with […] so someone within my team will be speaking or emailing with a youth worker every day; the main point is either a referral because they know the young person doesn’t currently have a professional network, or information sharing to safeguard them because the young person already has a professional network.

– Interviewee, Crime Reduction Partnership, Brighton

• Setting up new initiatives such as a project, programme or pilot service, usually in cases where funding required a set timeframe for delivery. For example, one youth organisation delivered a safeguarding intervention in a local secondary school on the topic of sexual exploitation; another delivered a project with a local college to support young people to manage their mental health. In the latter case, college teachers and heads of department would identify young people struggling with their mental health and refer them to the service led by the youth organisation.

3.6 Whilst these interactions were intended to support the delivery of open and targeted services for young people, some also had more focused aims, intending to achieve specific outcomes for young people. For instance, one example of direct delivery intended to build young people’s trust in statutory services, whilst another intended to improve employability outcomes for young people.

3.7 The majority of youth sector respondents strongly agreed or agreed that the interactions with allied sectors met their intended purposes. Satisfaction ranged from 70% with respect to social care, to 89% for interactions with ‘other’ sectors, and 90% for interactions within the youth sector.

Table 3-1: Main purposes of interactions

(Source: SQW analysis of survey data. Please note respondents could select more than one response.)

Table 3-1 shows the main reasons youth sector survey respondents engaged with colleagues from their own sector and from the education, social care, health care and youth justice sector and other key sectors over the past year. The top three reasons why youth sector respondents interacted with people from their own sector were to share general information to support young people (77% of respondents), to deliver regular services for young people (76%), and to share advice and guidance to support young people (70%). The top three reasons why youth sector respondents interacted with people from the education sector were to deliver regular services for young people (69% of respondents), to share general information to support young people (56%), and to attend multi-agency meetings (50%). The top three reasons youth sector respondents interacted with people from the social care sector were to refer an individual / individuals (74% of respondents), to act on a safeguarding concern or support relating to an individual / individuals (69%), and to share general information to support young people (56%). The top three reasons why youth sector respondents interacted with people from the health care sector were to share general information to support young people (56% of respondents), to share advice and guidance to support young people (55%), and to refer an individual / individuals (49%). The top three reasons why youth sector respondents interacted with people from the youth justice sector were to attend multi-agency meetings (55% of respondents), to share general information to support young people (54%), and to refer an individual / individuals (52%). The top reasons why youth sector respondents interacted with people from other key sectors were to share general information to support young people (53% of respondents), to attend multi-agency meetings (50%), and to deliver regular services for young people and to share advice and guidance to support young people (both 49%). The table also shows the main reasons allied sector survey respondents interacted with youth sector professionals over the same period. The top three reasons were to deliver special events for young people and to share general information to support young people (both 53% of respondents respectively), and to share advice and guidance to support young people (51%).

3.8 Interactions were also important to achieve strategic objectives. These occurred between youth organisations and other services and generally involved senior personnel. Case study evidence showed these strategic interactions took place in a variety of contexts:

• With the Local Authority to discuss future funding, as well as possible approaches to tackling issues concerning young people:

At the moment, we’re revamping our education strategy and [the youth organisation] is involved in that, ensuring that the youth sector as a whole can have a steer on what that strategy should look like.

– Interviewee, Local Authority, Brighton

• With targeted services, such as youth justice (specifically the police) or SEND services, to inform strategies to support young people:

We have a strategic meeting every month which is led by the council, discussing the SEND provision in Blackburn and Darwen and their SEND strategy, looking at how we can improve that and embed youth provision.

– Interviewee, Youth Organisation, Lancashire

• With alliance organisations to support the coordination of local youth provision:

At the moment, youth services in Derby City are coordinated through the Youth Alliance. It is a coordinated, centralised approach. Young people are referred to us, and we refer young people to other services, including youth services, through the Youth Alliance.

– Interviewee, Housing Service, Derby

3.9 The overarching purpose of strategic interactions was to improve services for young people by involving different expertise and insights.

3.10 Interactions at an organisational level also involved:

• Training and professional development. Examples included a training package delivered by the Education Endowment Foundation, local safeguarding process training by an alliance organisation, and mental health training for youth workers by mental health support services. Interviewees also noted interactions between youth organisations and local universities, where youth organisations hosted student placements to support the youth workforce pipeline.

• Contract performance updates. This was in cases where the youth organisation had received funding to deliver a particular provision.

Which sectors interact to support young people

3.11 Scoping and case study research took the most comprehensive list of potential partners listed in the evidence base ^{[footnote 12]}(https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IjWSN7bcOnlCFKyH2TPZvG-Fezm4bG4C/edit#heading=h.qythw929vfxm) and developed it further as:

• Community support services, which are services designed to support individuals and families within local communities, some of which are available to young people
• Universal services, which are services available for all young people
• Targeted services, which are services available for some young people, for example, with specific circumstances or additional needs.

3.12 Figure 3-1 lists the agencies/organisations within these categories and includes some additional partners that were mentioned in case study research.

Figure 3-1: The potential agencies / organisations youth workers could interact with

Community support

• Voluntary and community sector organisations
• Faith groups
• Community centres
• Local businesses
• Food banks
• Family hubs

Universal services

• Youth organisations including sports, arts and youth clubs
• Schools and colleges
• Outdoor learning providers
• Universities
• GP surgeries
• Libraries

Targeted services

• Children’s and social services
• A&E departments
• Mental health services
• SEND support services
• School attendance and exclusion support services
• Housing services
• Police, probation and prison services
• Jobcentre Plus

(Source: SQW review of documentation and primary research)

3.13 Across the case study interviews we found multiple examples of interactions between youth sector and other partner sectors. The maps (see Annex E) show how extensive connections are between organisations providing youth services and their partners. Across the six case study areas we spoke to a total of 45 people, who were able to name 272 different connections. The most frequent (c. 83 connections across the six case study areas) were connections between youth organisations and other partner sectors. Table 3-2 lists the type of organisations and roles that were connected in the case study areas.

Table 3-2: Types of organisation and personnel mentioned in case study interviews

Types of organisation

• Schools and colleges
• Youth organisations
• VCS organisations
• County council / Local Authority
• Children’s services
• Mental health services
• Local businesses
• Youth organisation network/Alliance organisation
• SEND support services
• Faith groups
• Youth justice (including police and custody and probation services)
• Family hubs
• GPs
• Housing services
• A&E departments
• Libraries
• Crime Reduction Partnership
• Food banks
• University
• Community centres
• Community Safety Partnership
• Funding organisations
• Integrated care board / Integrated care systems
• Investment consortiums

• NHS England

  - Primary Care Networks

• Substance misuse services
• Government departments
• Early Years
• Hospital trusts
• Jobcentre Plus
• Law firms
• School attendance and exclusion support services
• Student groups

Types of personnel

• School leaders (heads/deputies)
• Youth workers
• Police officers
• Social workers
• Safeguarding leads
• Youth work managers
• Teachers
• Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs)
• Mental health practitioners
• Head of service / service managers
• Pastoral leads
• Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCOs) (in schools)
• Support worker
• School nurses
• Case workers / managers
• Youth engagement officer (police)
• Solicitors
• Social work managers
• Nurses
• Leaving Care personal advisors
• Housing officers
• Faith leaders
• Doctors
• Councillors
• Business owners

3.14 The survey categorised the organisations with whom the youth sector interacts into five primary sectors of interest to DCMS, but the reality is much more complex.

Interactions within the youth sector

3.15 The survey analysis revealed that there were a high number of interactions within the youth sector in the past year, with 93% of youth sector respondents reporting they had engaged with other organisations working in the youth sector. Case study research revealed that in several areas interactions within the youth sector are managed through formal networks or alliance arrangements. Examples of alliance or consortium type bodies were discussed in Bristol, Lancashire and Derby, and interviewees highlighted that these had helped to connect VCS and youth organisations. Membership of a joint body encourages communication, joint funding bids and service delivery, and information-sharing across the sector. This in turn reduces duplication of work and service delivery, helps coordinate competitive bids for funding and ensures each organisation plays to its strengths.

• In Lancashire the Blackburn & Darwen Youth Federation, provided by the non-profit organisation Spring North, comprises VCS sector organisations delivering youth services in the area. They hold monthly meetings with members to ensure frequent interactions, and facilitate funding bids for organisations, which helps to reduce competitiveness within the sector. Additionally, the Youth Federation is able to engage with regional and national level organisations, such as the Integrated Care Board and Integrated Care System, the police, and NHS, representing its members and the sector at a strategic level.

They oversee that provision and try and bring that funding in to spread within the partnership. Spring North is the thing holding us all together. For example, they won the neighbourhood youth contract from the Local Authority and they spread it to four of us in that consortium. So we run two or three provisions, another partner runs two or three.

– Interviewee, Youth Organisation, Lancashire

• In Bristol the Youth and Play Alliance comprises around 50 organisations across the youth and play sector in Bristol. Unlike Lancashire, it has no formal structure or written constitution, with no one organisation taking the lead. The Alliance has a shared strategy, and meets on a regular basis. It represents its members at strategic meetings with local government and statutory organisations, and collaborates with funders to identify funding priorities (in line with the priorities identified in the Alliance strategy). The Alliance has been able to work with funders to ensure that funding deadlines are staggered, making it easier for bidding organisations and ensuring consistent funding throughout the year. It also runs a training programme for organisations ensuring its content aligns with specific Bristol processes, such as safeguarding procedures, and maintaining consistency across organisations. Additionally, they facilitate information sharing through an e-bulletin, WhatsApp group, meetings, and emails for members and other interested parties.

• In Derby the Youth Alliance is a coalition of youth sector organisations. It comprises a steering group that meets bi-monthly to discuss local trends and themes in the city, establishing collaborative actions to reduce harm and risks to children and young people. Community Action Derby, a charity, serves as an overarching, independent body. The alliance functions as a triage system, receiving referrals and directing them to the most relevant partner organisation for appropriate support. Additionally, it proactively delivers city-wide projects for young people based on intelligence from member organisations.

The Youth Alliance is currently a youth provision in Derby provided by a wide range of organisations of varying sizes and expertise who work with young people. The idea is it brings these organisations together in an alliance rather than working in silo or in competition. In Derby they try to have some strategic coordination to best use resources that come into the city to enable services for young people – instead of competing, they combine their strengths to do the best they can for young people.

– Interviewee, Youth Organisation, Derby

Interactions by youth sector partners with other sectors

3.16 Youth services interact with universal services such as schools and colleges, general healthcare services (GPs), libraries and outdoor learning providers. They connect young people to those services, or reach young people through them.

We’re in regular contact with GPs, helping our young to be supported to register and connect with their GPs…It can be around medication or mental health, which is a big one… so we do a lot of liaising with the GPs on a daily basis.

– Interviewee, Youth organisation, Oxfordshire

3.17 The case study interviewees also mentioned their connections with services that provide specific support to targeted groups of young people. Interviewees reported regular levels of interaction with mental health services, youth justice (police in particular), children’s services and SEND support services. There were also some examples of interactions with A&E departments and Jobcentre Plus.

There is a detached youth work offering, [they] operate in a particular area of the city which is known as somewhere that young people congregate and has a reputation […] for substance misuse, drinking, those kinds of things. [The detached youth workers] liaise pretty closely with people like the police to make sure that they’re sharing information where it makes sense.

– Interviewee, Local Authority, Brighton

We collaborate with CAMHS. If their waiting list is too long, we’ll be that bridge until they [young people] get access. CAMHS will also send us referrals to help young people engage in activities that are good for their mental health.

– Interviewee, VCS Organisation, Derby

3.18 Youth sector workers are often well connected to community support services. Interviewees reported frequent levels of interactions with VCS organisations and local businesses, as well as interactions with faith groups, Family Hubs and food banks, which tended to be less frequent and dependent on characteristics of the area they were in, such as community demographics and the availability of these services.

Faith groups definitely, we’ve done a lot of project delivery work in local mosques around Blackburn and we’re very well linked with them.

– Interviewee, Youth Organisation, Lancashire

We do a bit of work with Family Hubs – at the moment we’re talking about how we publicise our youth offer … so people who go to family hubs can see what’s available for young people.

– Interviewee, Local Authority, Bristol

3.19 Survey data provides an elaboration of the reach of interactions between the youth sector and professionals in allied sectors. The majority of youth sector respondents (91%) said they had engaged with the education sector in the past year; there were also high levels of reported engagement with social care (70%), health care (66%) and ‘other’ sectors, which included councils and local authorities, housing, local businesses, and organisations with a specific focus such as employability, sports and arts and asylum seekers/refugees (62%). Interactions with the youth justice sector were notably lower than the other sectors, with 44% of the youth sector respondents stating they had interactions with this sector, however considering the scope of the youth justice sector, a lower number of reported interactions is not necessarily an undesirable outcome.

3.20 The survey also corroborated case study findings that the youth sector not only interacts with many sectors, but that each youth sector organisation interacts regularly with several. Nearly three quarters of youth sector respondents who answered all questions relating to their interactions reported engaging with at least four other sectors in the past year. In terms of the particular sectors that appeared in conjunction, the most striking pattern was that respondents who stated that they interact with any of social care, healthcare, or youth justice, almost always interacted with the education sector as well (>95%). Conversely, any combination of sectors was least likely to contain the youth justice sector.

Interactions by allied sectors with the youth sector

3.21 The majority of respondents from allied sectors (90%) said they had interacted with personnel, agencies or organisations in the youth sector in the past year. For the allied sectors, interaction with the youth sector seem to be driven by delivery elements of services for young people, sharing information, advice and guidance, as well as delivery of training and professional development. The allied sectors most common purposes of interacting with the youth sector were:

• Delivery of special events for young people - 53%
• Sharing general information to support young people - 53%
• Sharing advice and guidance to support young people - 51%
• Delivery of regular services for young people – 49%
• Delivery of training and professional development – 47%
• Delivery of new/ pilot services/ intervention - 47%

3.22 The least selected purpose for the allied sectors was fulfilling a contract or performance updates (19%) and no respondents mentioned that receiving funding from the youth sector was the main purpose of their interaction with them.

3.23 The majority of allied sector respondents (93%) strongly agreed or agreed their interactions with the youth sector met their intended purposes

Interactions with young people

3.24 There were several instances within the case study discussions – and the open text survey responses - where interactions with young people were part of the strategic conversation about youth services in local areas. For example:

• In Lancashire, there is a Central Youth Forum where young people can share their concerns with a “Youth MP” who then raises them with the local council.
• One of the youth organisations in Bristol is part of a multi-agency strategy board focused on violence prevention. The board comprises professionals from the education, health, and justice sectors, as well as different council departments. The youth organisation represents youth voice at these meetings, and regularly brings young people along to the meetings to speak for themselves.
• The CEO of a youth organisation in Brighton sits on the Brighton and Hove Education Partnership Board. On a quarterly basis, they contribute the perspectives of young people (as well as the youth sector) to discussions about the vision and strategic direction for education within the city. The Board recently developed a strategy for addressing disadvantage in the city; as part of this the youth organisation CEO helped facilitate a consultation with young people, enabling them to directly contribute to the strategy.

Summary

3.25 Many sectors have a shared interest to support young people to have a happy, healthy, and fulfilled childhood and adolescence. We found lots of interactions within youth services, between youth services and education providers (particularly schools). There were fewer interactions between the youth sector and the social care and justice sectors.

3.26 Within youth services some areas developed alliances, networks or ‘federations’ of providers to foster co-operations and sector development.

3.27 The purpose of these interactions were primarily to:

• deliver services to young people by coordinating activities between youth service providers and services offered through other sectors:
• sustain the youth sector, for example for workforce development or sharing resources
• ensure services were strategically coordinated, and informed by the perspectives of young people

3.28 The pattern of interactions varied greatly between different areas to reflect how different services have evolved, and the geography of need in particular places.

4. What are the benefits of multi-sector interactions?

Introduction

4.1 This section examines the benefits of multi-sector interactions, for both the organisations delivering youth provision and for young people. This section draws on the case study evidence to explore benefits for young people and both case study and survey evidence to explore organisational benefits and disadvantages.

4.2 The survey response to the question ‘What, if any, have been the key benefits of greater/more frequent interaction with other sectors, for young people and your organisation, in the last year?’ provides a useful introduction to benefits. Youth sector professionals were asked this question; their responses are summarised in Figure 4-1. This shows that the majority of youth sector respondents thought enhanced service delivery to be a key benefit; other most frequently cited benefits included specific aspects of service delivery. Building the capacity of the sector through professional development ^{[footnote 13]}(https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IjWSN7bcOnlCFKyH2TPZvG-Fezm4bG4C/edit#heading=h.xytt7bfci0dn) advocacy and leadership ^{[footnote 14]}(https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IjWSN7bcOnlCFKyH2TPZvG-Fezm4bG4C/edit#heading=h.cpt456bj5780) were only mentioned as key benefits by up to one in five respondents. Furthermore, only 7% of respondents cited access to venues and facilities as a key benefit, suggesting that interactions are more about people than places.

Figure 4-1: Key benefits of greater/more frequent interaction with other sectors

Benefits	Proportion of respondents (N=196)
Enhanced service delivery	63%
Young people supported to engage with other services	47%
Expanded reach to more or different groups of young people	41%
Referral of young people	33%
Increased access to resources	24%
Capacity building and professional development for staff/volunteers	18%
Strengthen advocacy and influencing public policy	18%
Reduce duplicated efforts or services	17%
Increased understanding of other sectors	13%
Collaboration and development of future leadership	10%
Access to venues / facilities	7%
Research and evaluation opportunities	3%
No benefits of greater intercation	3%

(Source: SQW analysis of survey data. Multi-choice question answered by youth sector respondents who were asked to select their top three benefits)

Benefits for young people

4.3 Multi-sector interactions increase practitioners’ access to different support mechanisms and activities, thereby broadening the offer available for young people. This helps practitioners make more appropriate referrals and increases the likelihood that a young person will be supported by the right services and by the right professionals with the right skills and knowledge. Access to a wider youth offer was reported by interviewees to be particularly beneficial for young people from marginalised groups, such as young people with SEND. Allied sector survey respondents reported that interactions with the youth sector resulted in a more ‘holistic support system’ for young people that meets the full spectrum of their needs, from education and housing to mental health and employability.

4.4 Multi-sector interactions also enable services to respond proactively and rapidly to a young person in need. Crucially, this can make the difference between a young person being supported at an early intervention stage as opposed to a crisis stage. Youth sector survey respondents also highlighted that a quicker response is important during key transition points, such as the transition from teen years into adulthood. Both result in better outcomes for the young person.

4.5 The co-location of services was reported to accelerate the speed at which a young person can access support. For instance, in Bristol there is an established partnership between a mental health support service and a local youth organisation. As part of this, a wellbeing worker from the mental health support service is based in the youth organisation on a full-time basis, and can provide immediate support:

It’s instant support for young people which is what they need – and we can identify where kids need extra support and we can refer in to them [the mental health support service] […] it’s about identifying those early signs of mental health - preventing things from getting to a crisis.

– Interviewee, Youth Organisation, Bristol

4.6 Better integration or service pathways. Another benefit mentioned by interviewees is that multi-sector interactions reduce the likelihood of a vulnerable young person “falling through the cracks” between services. This is because organisations can take a more joined up approach to that young person’s support and concerns can be raised, cross referenced across organisations and actioned at earlier opportunities. Youth organisations were also described by interviewees as an important “safety net” for young people who are on long waiting lists to access specialist support:

We collaborate with CAMHS. If their waiting list is too long, we’ll be that bridge until they [the young person] get access to the intervention.

– Interviewee, VCS Organisation, Derby

4.7 Demonstrating inter-service trust. Finally, multi-sector interactions were reported to foster trust between young people and services (both statutory and VCS). When mentioned during the interviews, this was often the result of professionals from other agencies dropping in to youth centres on an informal basis, for instance police officers calling in to play pool or football or taking part in community football competitions. This was reported to help break down barriers and, where interactions between young people and the police had been exclusively negative before, introduce a new more positive dynamic:

When we did the recent football game, what they [the young people] were saying about the police before [was different] compared to afterwards, I think there was one [comment from a young person] of ‘you’re actually sound’ which was quite funny.

– Interviewee, Youth Organisation, Oxfordshire

4.8 The co-location of the wellbeing worker at the youth organisation in Bristol was also cited as helping to increase trust between young people and mental health services. The familiarity and informal relationships that the young people had with the wellbeing worker was said to foster an environment where they felt more comfortable to seek support if needed.

Because it’s full time they [the young people] can build up a relationship [with the wellbeing worker] when they don’t need it, so that when they do need it they already know the person they’re going to be talking to.

– Interviewee, Youth Organisation, Bristol

4.9 Creating holistic support for young people. Youth workers seek to support young people by considering all aspects of their lives, including their family, friendships, their mental health and wellbeing, their education and so on. Interactions with other sectors help to build specialist support around them. An interviewee based in a hospital explained how this works in their context:

In the emergency department, we basically do a holistic psychosocial approach and sort them out. For instance, if a young person has come in with a broken hand having punched a wall, we can sort out the fracture and then we sort out the reasons why they might have punched the wall.

– Interviewee, Youth Worker based in A&E, Brighton

4.10 Better outcomes for young people. Both interviewees and survey respondents stated that multi-sector interactions improve overall outcomes for young people, as the interactions lead to a greater variety of provision, better designed and tailored provision, and young people being supported at an early intervention stage. Multi-sector interactions also increase young people’s understanding of the type and range of support available to them, and increases their trust and confidence in this support.

Benefits for organisations

4.11 In addition to the benefits associated with inter-youth work alliances (see chapter 3) case study data and survey provide further elaboration of the organisational benefits of multi- sector interactions. These include:

• Better information about the collective needs of young people in a particular area. Interviewees said that understanding young people’s needs on a population level is particularly beneficial for identifying priorities and helping to provide more targeted and appropriate support for young people, to address their immediate needs as well as to help them during key transition points, such from teen years to adulthood.

No one service/sector can effectively meet the needs of young people - we need to collaborate to enable young people to achieve good outcomes.

– Youth sector survey respondent

• More effective signposting and referral between services. Better understanding young people’s needs, challenges and circumstances on an individual level helps with tailoring support. More streamlined working eases capacity pressures, reduces duplication and enables organisations to adopt a more strategic approach to supporting young people, which is crucial in a sector where funding is so constrained.

The landscape is changing all the time, especially with young people. It’s about how you as an organisation can evolve and grow, it’s reviewing and making sure you’re supporting the needs of those you’re working with, that’s why partnership is so important – we’re not experts in everything and we can’t support everyone but it’s knowing we can pass them on and they will be in safe hands.

– Interviewee, Youth Organisation, Lancashire

4.12 Greater clarity enhances awareness of the different types of support available for young people, which organisations are best placed to provide that support, and how it can be accessed.

Disadvantages of greater interaction

4.13 Over a third of youth sector survey respondents (36%) felt there were disadvantages of more frequent interactions.

4.14 Challenges of more interactions in an already overstretched sector. Respondents stated that youth sector professionals are already under immense pressure, contending with the dual challenges of rising workloads and diminishing resources. This not only limits their ability to build and sustain more interactions, but more collaboration could heighten their risk of burn out.

This collaborative work is often unfunded but takes plenty of time (and emotional labour) to build and sustain relationships.

– Youth sector survey respondent

4.15 Challenges in coordination. Some youth sector respondents, reflecting on their personal experiences, said that increased interactions do not always lead to more effective practices. For instance, they noted that certain multi-sector meetings they had been involved in lacked clear objectives, were “unproductive talk shops,” and failed to achieve genuine joined-up working. Additionally, meetings were frequently cancelled due to scheduling conflicts, resulting in disruption.

4.16 Some youth sector respondents pointed out potential disadvantages for young people. They noted that increased interactions between organisations could lead to a higher number of services reaching out to a young person, potentially causing them to feel overwhelmed. This could negatively impact trust, as the young person may feel deterred by the involvement of numerous services and have concerns about confidentiality.

Summary

4.17 The youth sector interacts within its own delivery infrastructures and with a wide range of other organisations. These interactions deliver benefits that are either associated with:

• the delivery of Youth Services open to all young people, or specific targeted groups
• adapting and developing the sector so that it can deliver those services or building more effective infrastructure for service delivery
• connecting services that young people need.

4.18 The benefits for young people include: opening up opportunities that already exist for young people, providing rapid and targeted response to more vulnerable young people helping them with through different services and building their trust between services ultimately leading to better outcomes.

4.19 Benefits for youth organisations include: better area level information about young people, better information to target and signpost, young people able to access a wider offer.

4.20 More interactions do not necessarily lead to proportionate increase in quality of service or range. Interactions need to be purposeful and managed. Care also needs to be exercised to manage the impact on individual young people.

5. How, and how often do multi-sector interactions occur?

Introduction

5.1 This section explores the dynamics of multi-sector interactions, considering their different forms, levels of formality and frequency. The survey findings offer context as they show the extensive use of different forms of communication. Figure 5-1 reports answers to the question “thinking about all the interactions you had with people from other sectors in the previous year, what was the format of these interactions?”. Youth sector respondents stated that their interactions in the last year had occurred in various forms, including via email (reported by 88% of respondents), video calls or phone calls (87%), in person (84%) and via text or WhatsApp (45%).

Figure 5-1: Format of interactions with allied sectors

Format	Proportion of respondents (N=247)
Video calls or phone calls	87%
Email	88%
In-person	84%
Text or WhatsApp	45%

(Source: SQW analysis of survey data. This question was answered by youth sector respondents.)

How multi-sector interactions occur

Mode of communication

5.2 Interactions occur in various forms, including in-person meetings, phone calls, video calls, emails and text messages. There were also a handful of examples cited by case study interviewees of interactions occurring through different means, such as via shared electronic platforms like CPOMs (a safeguarding and pastoral management system predominantly used by schools and colleges), shared working documents, online referral forms, and WhatsApp groups.

We [the youth organisation] share information with local schools through a software called CPOMS: we both input information about the young person into CPOMS, meaning that all the information about the young person is in one place.

– Interviewee, Youth Organisation, Derby

5.3 Just under two thirds of survey respondents (62%) identified in person as the most effective form of communication. Interacting face to face was said to allow people to interact more freely and on a “more human level”, and was emphasised by interviewees as being crucial for building trust and relationships.

5.4 In-person interactions tended to occur when:

• Organisations and services were co-located, or located very near to each other (e.g. within walking distance or a short drive)
• The nature of the conversations was more serious (e.g. about a young person at immediate risk)
• When a young person was involved in the interaction

We meet in-person to discuss a case about a young person. If a young person needs to be there it is better for it to be face to face, because then it’s more meaningful and interactive and it’s more impactful for the worker and the other members of the network to be able to be there with the young person.

– Interviewee, Local Authority, Islington

5.5 Virtual methods and phone calls were cited as being more time and resource efficient, and tended to be used for day-to-day communications, with the latter utilised by professionals when a quick answer or response was required.

5.6 WhatsApp groups were typically set up by youth organisations to coordinate funded projects and specific aspects of provision (e.g. outreach), and were used by youth alliances for general information sharing. One interviewee in Bristol described WhatsApp groups as a “gamechanger” for increasing multi-agency communication because of its accessibility and immediacy:

People from different agencies are in their own little groups now so there’s more communication – we had a WhatsApp group when there was a young woman missing with all the supporting organisations.

– Interviewee, Youth Organisation, Bristol

5.7 Unsurprisingly, it was reported that in-person interactions had declined since the pandemic, with a general shift towards virtual communications. However, there were some examples of areas consciously reinstating in-person meetings, in recognition of their intrinsic benefits. For example, the Brighton and Hove Education Partnership Board, which brings together schools, colleges, and other educational settings along with representatives from the Council and local youth organisations, meets quarterly in-person to set the vision and strategic direction for education within the city. The different organisations represented on the board take it in turns to host the meeting, to help build relationships:

We always rotate round, so sometimes we have it at the university, sometimes we have it at a primary school, sometimes we have it in the Council, so we always try to ‘force’ people to see each other’s culture. If you’re trying to develop a really in-depth relationship, I believe it has to be face to face.

– Interviewee, Local Authority, Brighton

Formal interactions

5.8 As well as the mode of communication, the research also explored how formal or informal interactions were. Formal interactions were considered to comprise things like a written agreement, such as a grant, contract or Memorandum of Understanding; regular and planned interactions such as partnership meetings; other structured ways of working, or routine sharing of information and resources. Informal interactions were those that were characterised by ad hoc interactions; with unstructured ways of working and sharing of information and resources.

5.9 Case study evidence emphasised formal structures and ways of working. Interviewees mentioned several examples of formal interactions, such as those involving grants or contracts, established partnerships, and multi-agency boards or forums. These types of interactions were more frequently mentioned by senior interviewees compared to those working directly with young people.

• Spring North is a vehicle for convening youth and VCS organisations in Lancashire, identifying funding opportunities and managing bids and contracts on behalf of providers. Providers meet monthly to discuss opportunities and collaborate on bids, as well as to provide updates as part of a performance management of service delivery process.
• In Lancashire, the local council convenes Transforming Lives, a strategy meeting which reviews caseloads across Blackburn and Darwen and acts as a triage service for young people. This weekly meeting is attended by representatives from the youth sector, as well as other sector organisations to discuss and refer to the most appropriate forms of support for young people.
• In Brighton, senior representatives from a local youth organisation regularly attend policing and partnership meetings, such as the Brighton and Hove Partnership Tactical Tasking Group, the Joint Action Group, and the Violence Reduction Partnership. The local youth organisation also has a data sharing agreement in place with the Brighton Crime Reduction Partnership (BCRP). This allows the BCRP to share real-time intelligence - gathered from local businesses and inputted into a secure platform that feeds directly into police 101 (the designated contact method for non-emergency police inquiries) - with the youth organisation, enabling them to identify and address safeguarding concerns at an earlier point.
• In Oxfordshire, youth workers attend “Team Around the Family” (TAF) meetings, which take place when a concern identifies the need for a multi-agency response. TAF meetings bring together young people, parents and practitioners to discuss how additional needs can be met and what services can support this.

5.10 Interactions can sometimes be one way, for example a youth worker might share information about a young person’s needs with, or make a referral to, a statutory service and not hear anything back. Interactions in some areas took the form of regular newsletters or email updates as a form of information dissemination.

5.11 Survey responses showed that those who had been in role for over 5 years reported having more formal interactions with healthcare, youth justice and ‘other’ sectors, whilst those who had been in their role for less than 5 years reported having more formal interactions with the education sector. This may reflect the career trajectories of youth workers who move from core youth work through to roles with different sectors, or more senior roles which involve strategic cross-sector working.

Informal interactions

5.12 Survey analysis revealed that most youth sector respondents interacted using a combination of both formal and informal communication with other sectors. A lower proportion of respondents said their interactions were solely formal; although most people who interacted with the health sector did so formally. Figure 5-2 reports answers to the question “thinking about the personnel, agencies or organisations in X sector you have interacted with in the previous year, what are your working arrangements?”.

5.13 Youth sector respondents who had been in role for more than five years reported more interactions per sector, and more informal interactions, than those who had been in role for less than five years. Furthermore, practitioners who had been in role for more than five years were more likely to state they had informal interactions, compared to leaders who had been in role more than five years (51% versus 35% of their total interactions being informal).

Figure 5-2: Formality of interactions

(Source: SQW analysis of survey data. Question answered by youth sector respondents.)

Figure 5-2 shows the proportion of youth sector survey respondents’ interactions with various sectors classified as solely formal, solely informal, or a combination of both. The chart shows that 48% of youth sector survey respondents’ interactions with the education sector were a combination of formal and informal, 38% were solely informal, and 11% were solely formal. 45% of youth sector survey respondents’ interactions with the social care sector were a combination of formal and informal, 43% were solely informal, and 9% were solely formal. 38% of youth sector survey respondents’ interactions with the health care sector were solely informal, 35% were a combination of formal and informal, and 25% were solely formal. 46% of youth sector survey respondents’ interactions with the youth justice sector were solely informal, 40% were a combination of formal and informal, and 12% were solely formal. 56% of youth sector survey respondents’ interactions with other organisations in the youth sector were a combination of formal and informal, 33% were solely informal , and 11% were solely formal. 47% of youth sector survey respondents’ interactions with other key sectors were a combination of formal and informal, 30% were solely informal, and 21% were solely formal.

5.14 Case study interviewees generally discussed maintaining individual relationships with allied professionals from other sectors, as opposed to institutional relationships. People who have been in a particular role or area for a while naturally accumulate networks of individual relationships. Although these relationships require significant time and resources to establish, they are effective in scenarios where staff teams are stable and long- standing. High staff turnover, however, exposes the fragility of organisational partnerships based on individual relationships:

One thing we’ve learnt is people can talk about agencies coming together but actually it’s people coming together […] The minute you start to change those personnel over, that corporate memory is gone. Within the space of six months, it only takes one person to leave their job and all of that corporate memory is for nothing and you’re back to square one.

– Interviewee, Youth Organisation, Bristol

5.15 Figure 5-2 charts the formality of interactions against the sector with which the respondent interacts. Figure 5-3 charts formality against the purposes of the interaction. First, note that when questioned on the format of their interactions, respondents were most likely to reply that the interactions with a given sector, for almost any purpose, would be a combination of formal and informal. This was the case almost half of the time (48%). The only purposes in exception to this generalisation were ‘sharing advice and guidance to support young people’ and ‘acting on safeguarding concerns or support relating to an individual / individuals’, where informal interactions were slightly more common.

5.16 Given that the combined format is the norm, the following analysis considers when interactions are more likely to be purely informal or purely formal. Figure 5-3 divides the quantity of formal interactions by the quantity informal interactions. These ratios are all below one, so it is immediately clear that informal interactions are more common across all purposes. Where this ratio is higher, such as for ‘delivery of regular services for young people’, formal interactions are only half as common. However, where the ratio is lower, such as for ‘delivery of training’, formal interactions are much less common – in this example, the interactions were six times more likely to be informal than formal (yet still more likely to be combined).

Figure 5-3: Ratio of formal to informal interactions

Interaction	Ratio
Delivery of regular services for young people (n=77)	0.49
Delivery of special events for young people (n=31)	0.42
Referral of an individual / individuals (n=32)	0.38
Delivery of new / pilot services / intervention (n=30)	0.37
Sharing resources (n=16)	0.34
Sharing information to support young people (n=45)	0.32
Sharing advice to support young people (n=31)	0.28
Attending multi-agency meetings (n=35)	0.27
Acting on safegurading concerns (n=16)	0.17

(Source: SQW analysis of survey data)

Interactions in co-located spaces

5.17 Co-located services were reported across several of the case study areas. These mostly took the form of having a service or professional operating from within a youth centre for a fixed number of days each week, or in some cases a more informal co-location of services, for instance services coming in to the youth centre to engage with young people and build relationships. There were also some examples of co-location in non-youth spaces (e.g. youth workers embedded in A&E departments).

5.18 Co-location was regarded as being valuable for facilitating interactions both between different organisations, and between young people and organisations.

• For young people the physical proximity to services makes them more easily accessible than services which may require young people to navigate public transport to different locations. Co-location also facilitates informal interactions between young people and services, which enables young people to build trust with staff in support services. This established familiarity with those responsible for providing support when it’s not needed, meaning that if it is needed, young people are more likely to feel comfortable asking for support.

• For organisations co-location with other services results in more frequent face to face interactions, which enables greater trust and understanding between organisations, and therefore more effective interactions.

Work alongside each other and so they get to know each other’s roles and they get to understand how each other work. …. It’s being able to produce situations where you can have those conversations in a way that’s a bit more human.

– Interviewee, Local Authority, Brighton

Frequency of multi-sector interaction

5.19 With regards to the frequency of interactions, nearly a quarter of professionals from allied sectors (23%) reported interacting with the youth sector more than once a week, whilst a third engaged at least once a week. 44% of respondents reported engaging once a month or less frequently (Figure 5-4).

5.20 Respondents who stated that their main purposes for interaction were for ‘delivering training’ or ‘delivering special events’ were less likely to be in the group reporting more frequent interactions (once a week or more). Conversely, those stating ‘delivery of regular services for young people’ or ‘sharing advice and guidance to support young’ as their main purposes were more likely to be in this frequent-interaction group.

Figure 5-4: Frequency of interactions

Frequency	Proportion of respondents (N=43)
More than once a week	23%
Once a week	33%
Once a month	23%
Once every 3 months	16%
Once every 6 months	2%
Once every year	2%

(Source: SQW analysis of survey data)

Summary

5.21 Interactions use a broad range of communication tools including electronic means (Teams calls, shared portals), telephone and face to face. Most people interacting across the various sectors use a range of different means of communication, although there is a preference for face to face particularly where complex issues need to be discussed, or where young people need to be present.

5.22 There are many examples where formal interactions are used to achieve a particular purpose. These might be referral cases to health care teams that need to be securely and systematically documented, or partnership meetings where transparent decision making and record keeping is essential.

5.23 Interactions across a wide range of different purposes with different sectors combine both formal and informal modes of interaction. Where this is not the case, informal communication is the norm. Interactions therefore are rarely solely formal.

5.24 Both formal and informal interactions can be enhanced by co-locating service delivery which has benefits for young people and for professionals working in different organisations.

6. Which barriers prevent interaction, and what are the implications of not interacting?

Introduction

6.1 This section explores the barriers to multi-sector interactions. Drawing predominantly on the case study insights, it introduces the common barriers across all organisation types, and the barriers experienced by youth organisations. Additionally, this section identifies gaps in interactions highlighted by interviewees and instances where survey respondents reported discontinued interactions. It concludes with a summary of the implications of not interacting, for youth organisations and for young people.

Common barriers experienced by all organisation types

Capacity

6.2 Time constraints, workloads, and capacity within organisations were the most common barriers to interactions reported by case study interviewees. This relates both to the capacity of youth workers, but also to the capacity of those in other organisations, including statutory and targeted services. Interviewees commonly reported that they would like to interact with other organisations, but that this could be a time consuming process, and that they didn’t have the time to make or maintain those connections.

6.3 This was particularly challenging where youth services were being delivered by voluntary and community sector organisations. With less funded hours than commissioned or local authority funded workers, VCS sector organisations often have less time to interact with other organisations.

6.4 This results in a reduced availability of services for young people. Where a youth worker doesn’t have an interaction with another service, they are less likely to refer or signpost young people to that service.

Everyone wants to do well for these young people, that’s the beginning, we want to do this. The problem is that everyone’s overloaded.

– Interviewee, Youth Organisation, Islington

6.5 Risk aversion among organisations was also reported. Interviewees said that organisations sometimes feel that, given their busyness, the perceived risk of working with a new organisation was not worth the rewards, nor the time investment.

6.6 Similarly, there is also often a misalignment of working hours between youth work and other services. In many cases youth work takes places after hours, on evenings and

6.7 weekends, whilst many services that young people might benefit from are often open during the day. This falls outside of many youth worker’s working hours, and is often when young people are at school. As a result, interactions with youth workers often cannot take place without youth workers committing unpaid time, and interactions between services and young people cannot occur whilst they are at school.

6.8 Poor communication was also mentioned by several of the survey respondents as a barrier, in response to an open text question. Not all respondents provided details on what made the communications poor. Where they did, explanations included: a lack of mutual respect and understanding of the youth sector leading to lack of communication generally; a lack of effective communication between sectors; and responses to communication being slow due to administrative requirements and bureaucratic processes.

Staffing changes

6.9 Interviewees highlighted the importance of personal relationships in interactions between organisations. This is linked with three barriers that interviewees reported:

• Staff turnover in organisations. Interviewees noted that specific organisations such as schools, police, and local businesses often have higher staff turnover, and that generally, less experienced staff were more likely to leave. Anti-social behaviour by young people towards members of staff was identified as one driver of staff turnover in local businesses in Brighton.
• Inconsistencies in individuals involved in interactions. Interviewees reported that often those attending regular meetings from organisations were different from week to week.
• Short term projects. Similarly, some activities are commissioned for limited periods and interviewees reported that individuals may interact only for a limited period whilst they are funded to deliver work, but that these relationships stop when the funding finishes.

6.10 In such instances, the lack of consistency over time acted as a barrier to interaction, impeding the ability for individuals in each organisation to develop and maintain relationships.

In the school we have a good relationship, but teachers can leave so quickly that we have a relationship with one teacher and they know exactly what we do and to refer young people. But as soon as they leave we have to rebuild the relationship.

– Interviewee, Youth Organisation, Oxfordshire

6.11 This had implications for young people. In particular, reducing the ability of organisations to build trust between staff and young people, which was cited as important in ensuring young people feel comfortable accessing support from other organisations. Consistency of engagement with individuals in these organisations helps to ensure this trust.

6.12 Changes in staffing involved in interactions similarly reduce retained knowledge about a young person, which may result in gaps in understanding of that young person’s story and their needs, as well as creating a situation whereby the young person feels that they must repeat their story to each new individual they encounter – something that erodes trust.

Partnerships need to be formed out of real relationships. It is very difficult to start with the big picture. There has been a lot of continuity in staff on both sides, which… allow[s] the relationship to develop. Sometimes when people leave organisations that person is a key gatekeeper because of their professional network and they can be signposted to so many people. And when that person is taken out, it can be a challenge.

– Interviewee, Higher Education Organisation, Derby

Data sharing

6.13 Risk aversion relating to information sharing between organisations was a particular issue. Interviewees reported that a fear of breaching GDPR rules meant that in some cases organisations opted not to interact. This was a particular issue for sensitive information sharing between statutory or targeted services and VCS / youth sector organisations, though all organisation types said information sharing was an issue. Administrative processes such as attaining a Data Sharing Agreement between organisations are necessary but time intensive and can require specialist knowledge. Without these in place, information sharing between organisations can be more limited, or non-existent. In both cases, the implication is that the services supporting young people are less joined up in their working and do not have a full picture of their needs.

People don’t share things because they think it’s going to impact the referral or you know the judgement of the young person that we won’t take them on… The lack of sharing of information impacts the support that’s provided. And managing the risks. So, it has such a knock-on effect and I just don’t think services are that open to sharing information.

– Interviewee, Youth Organisation, Oxfordshire

Barriers experienced by youth organisations

Competing for resources

6.14 Competition for funding between different youth and VCS organisations is a significant barrier to cooperation, reported by multiple youth organisations and youth sector survey respondents. The youth sector is operating within a context of limited core funding and multiple other potential funding schemes. A lot of provision is now delivered through VCS organisations who are reliant upon grant funding or bidding for commissioned work. As a result, many organisations may be competing for the same commissioning and funding calls. This leads, in some places, to competitive rather than collaborative relationships between organisations, with organisations not wanting to engage for fear of advantaging the other organisations in these funding competitions. This may manifest as information not being shared between organisations, or even not letting young people know about other organisations. This has implications for both organisations and young people. Organisations have restricted access to information which may be beneficial to the care of young people, and young people have less access to support and activities that might benefit them.

If [other youth organisations are] trying to go for a particular pot of funding and we’re trying to do the same it can be seen as competition and they play their cards close to their chest. In some funding bids you have to hit criteria of working with a certain number of people so they’ll try to keep their young people to themselves.

– Interviewee, Youth organisation, Lancashire

6.15 Youth sector survey respondents also highlighted that short-term funding cycles do not align with long-term planning, creating further challenges in sustaining effective collaborations.

Funding pressures mean services are stretched too far to consider new partnerships, even when they recognise this as an investment in the future. Short-term, three-year funding for youth provision does not fit with council five and ten year plans.

– Youth sector survey respondent

Parity of esteem

6.16 A lack of understanding, and a lack of respect for the role of youth workers was reported as a barrier to interaction between youth workers and those in other sectors. Youth worker interviewees reported a lack of respect for their profession from some personnel in other sectors, who dismiss youth work as being “just table tennis”. They perceive that this misrepresentation, and consequent undervaluing of their role, means personnel in other sectors are less inclined to engage with them.

Some statutory sector agencies do not think of youth sector agencies as professional and I think that more needs to be done to differentiate between agencies opening to offer activities for young people and agencies being run and supported by qualified youth workers- the youth work qualification should be given equal weighting to a social work qualification, but with the expertise of engaging young people in adolescence specifically.

– Youth sector survey respondent

6.17 Similarly, personnel in other agencies reported that youth workers had less training and worked to different standards. There was also a perceived lack of accountability which meant they were less willing to interact with them.

Youth workers don’t tend to get an invite or are not prioritised in the same way as statutory services. The absence of a youth worker in meetings about a young person or when a youth worker is not involved in information sharing about a young person can be potentially life changing in a negative way (e.g. they may become socially excluded, they may see themselves in opposition to statutory services). Youth workers need to be there as part of the team around the child and youth workers often know the young person and their lives the best; they can share key information which would inform next steps. Joined up thinking involving youth workers is essential.

– Interviewee, Higher Education Organisation, Islington

Culture mismatch

6.18 Different cultural values. The different approaches of youth workers and VCS organisations, and more targeted services such as social services, mental health support, or youth justice (specifically the police), often impedes interactions. Youth workers see young people as the experts in their own lives and see their role being to support and facilitate learning and development informed by the young people’s interests, experiences and concerns. Targeted services on the other hand are bound by statutory obligations to offer prescribed services to young people meeting an eligibility threshold. These two cultural perspectives can operate in tension (for example where youth services advocate on behalf of a young person to access services that they may not be eligible for), or they can mean that interactions are more limited (because the two sectors either mistrust or are unaware of each other).

6.19 Lack of collaboration. Some survey respondents mentioned there is some gate keeping of information and resources among allied sectors. Others felt that different frameworks utilised by different sectors, siloed working, and that engaging the youth sector at short notice and not including them in the initial conversations make interactions difficult.

Barriers experienced by allied sectors

6.20 Just over three quarters (76%) of youth sector respondents stated that there were barriers to achieving good quality interactions. The most frequently cited barriers included: limited resources; differing priorities and goals; communication barriers and organisational culture. These were similar to the barriers experienced by allied sector respondents with regards to their interactions with the youth sector, which are presented in Figure 6-1. Conversely, 24% of youth sector respondents and 19% of allied sector respondents reported that they had not experienced any barriers to interactions.

Figure 6-1: Barriers to interacting with the youth sector

Barriers	Proportion of respondents (N=43)
Limited resources	56%
Organisational cultures	42%
Communication barriers	37%
Differing priorities and goals	28%
Geographic distance	14%
Unaware of youth sector organisations in the area	12%
Stakeholder engagement	9%
Sustainability and ownership of relationship	7%
Coordination and decision-making	7%
No barriers	19%

(Source: SQW analysis of survey data. Question answered by allied sector respondents.)

Gaps in interactions

6.21 Interviewees provided specific examples of ‘gaps’ in their interactions, namely organisations they did not engage with. These organisations included: 

• Fire service
• Schools, colleges and higher education
• Libraries
• Local businesses
• Primary care
• Mental health support / CAMHS
• Youth justice including police and probation services
• Social workers
• SEND services

6.22 Almost a quarter (24%) of the respondents stated that there were some organisations or sectors that they used to interact with but no longer do. The reasons for interactions ceasing tended to relate to funding or capacity (this was mentioned by over half of the respondents). Respondents indicated that more funding and more capacity are important components in enabling interactions, and that the funding cuts in the past several years have made it harder for organisations to maintain and / or prioritise them. Also, a lack of continuous funding creates instability that damages longer term relationships. A minority of respondents talked about funding related to specific sectors, such as the underfunding of youth justice (specifically the police, relating to youth work) or the particular rules around finances for academies, or other issues around funding.

6.23 With regards to capacity, respondents mentioned insufficient staffing or time to meet demand. This is also related to funding instability and meant interactions were difficult to prioritise. The sectors mentioned and reasons why interactions had changed included:

• Youth justice (including police, custody and probation services)– administrative barriers, coupled with a wider hesitation within the youth justice sector to engage with the youth sector beyond specific initiatives, made interactions difficult to sustain.
• Youth sector – youth sector organisations cease to interact for a range of reasons including: when funding shifts organisational focus (for example to work exclusively with a younger age group), closure of organisations or substantial decline in services due to funding coming to an end, and a lack of consistent funding.
• Health – issues around capacity and turnover of staff had halted interactions.
• Education – some youth sector respondents said their education partners had given increasingly less focus or attention to their interactions over time.

Implications of not interacting

6.24 The implications of not interacting with other organisations were largely the inverse of the benefits identified in chapter 4, and included:

For Organisations

• Organisations are more likely to be working in silos rather than collaboratively.
• Reduced understanding of the support available from other organisations means organisations are less likely to refer or signpost young people to the correct organisations to support their needs.
• Work is more likely to be duplicated by multiple organisations in the same area where it could otherwise be jointly delivered, resulting in an increased workload, and the inefficient use of resources.
• Reduced information sharing between organisations means there is a worse overall knowledge and understanding of a young people’s needs.

If you don’t interact with someone, how do you know as much as you should know? How do you know there’s not an opportunity that you’re not hearing about that you could be sharing with people? How do you know you’re not missing something?

– Interviewee, Local Authority, Brighton

6.25 The implications of not interacting are also specific to the type of organisation. For instance, a lack of engagement with the fire service meant that a youth worker had not been able to provide activities around fire safety for young people. Another youth worker said they hoped that local businesses would provide careers advice and work experience, but a lack of interaction meant this was not available in some areas.

One service is GP services. We’d like to interact more because we recognise that young adults who aren’t accessing other services might be accessing GP services; it could be a good referral point for us.

– Interviewee, Employment Support Service, Islington

For young people:

• A reduced range of support available, and less accessibility to services which may be of benefit.
• Young people are less likely to be accessing the most appropriate range of support when they need it.
• Support is more reactive to the needs of young people as those needs become more acute, as opposed to being available preventatively.
• There is reduced advocacy for young people in the decision making processes and design of services which support them and fewer youth voices being heard in strategic meetings.

Summary

6.26 Barriers that prevented effective interactions were associated with;

• Capacity constraints, including different demands on people’s time
• Staff changes that created discontinuity in communication flows
• Professional biases and misunderstandings about respective roles and ways of working
• Systems that work within an organisation that bring challenges when applied between organisations
• Sharing data, either for GDPR restrictions or to pre-empt concerns about how data might be used
• A competitive funding culture, that inadvertently sees potential collaborators displaying competitive behaviours
• Practical barriers associated with geographic distance, or different working hours.

6.27 Where barriers are not overcome, the consequences for both young people and organisations that work to support them are associated with the inverse of the benefits of interactions.

7. What lessons can be learned about better multi-agency interactions?

7.1 This section outlines key lessons learned about how to enhance interactions and multi-agency working, drawing on insights from interviews, survey respondents, and Just One Question participants from across the youth and allied sectors.

7.2 Lesson 1: Effective interactions rely on good relationships between different professional groups, but these are bound by structural constraints. Interviewees highlighted the importance of inter-personal relationships in establishing and maintaining effective interactions between organisations. This relationship building was supported by more frequent interactions, which helped to build trust and understanding between organisations, and foster effective interactions going forwards. Frequent interactions enable a greater understanding of roles and responsibilities across different organisations. This can help to reduce the duplication of work by ensuring services understand which personnel and organisations are best placed to support young people’s needs. Ensuring that the same people in different organisations are involved in these interactions is challenging in places with frequent staffing changes and while it can increase the benefits it also makes the partnerships more vulnerable to disruption following personnel changes.

I think the local forums that do work well, it’s because you have mostly the same people in the room every time. We know each other. We don’t need to spend the first 10 minutes of every meeting doing introductions and saying this is what the purpose of the meeting is. You can just crack into it and also once you’ve got to know each other a bit, you can have more challenging conversations, you can challenge each other or try and pin each other down and have more robust conversations where you have a bit more of a personal relationship with people. I think that’s really important.

– Interviewee, Local Authority, Brighton

7.3 Lesson 2: Where youth service structures are unstable, relationship-building and interactions suffer. Adequate and sustained funding for youth work helps to overcome barriers to effective interaction because it enables networks to be built, trust developed and interaction to grow. Constrained resources are associated with:

• Part time staff and those working voluntarily have limited time for interacting with others
• Staff turnover where funding is tight, contract-based, and reliant upon voluntary workers
• Creating competition and associated behaviours between organisations
• Misalignment of hours between youth workers and other organisations: part time or volunteer youth workers often work evenings only creating difficulties scheduling meetings or calls

For us it goes back to funding because we don’t have a full-time lead, that’d help us as an organisation – having more capacity. We’re a smaller organisation.

– Interviewee, Youth Organisation, Lancashire

7.4 Lesson 3: Face to face interactions are key recognising that effective interactions also use different modes of communication for different purposes. In-person interactions help to establish trust between personnel in different organisations more quickly than would be possible through digital communication alone. Youth sector survey respondents said that having consistent and well documented communication facilitates the building and maintenance of relationships, and that once relationships are established a combination of in- person and digital communication works well. Digital communication, in particular WhatsApp, is considered to be useful for multi-agency working at a faster pace for time sensitive issues such as safeguarding concerns. Where the purpose of the interaction is to distribute information, email is effective, whereas secure portals need to be used for sharing safeguarding or referral purposes.

If you’re trying to develop a really in-depth relationship I believe it has to be face to face. It’s getting to know someone as a person. It’s about how do you engender trust? You have to trust someone and you’ve got to trust what they’re about. That’s what working together means. It’s building up trust.

– Interviewee, Local Authority, Brighton

7.5 Lesson 4: Group interactions can short-cut relationship building and information sharing. Youth worker presence at regularly scheduled multi-agency meetings can improve communication and information sharing, understanding of different roles and responsibilities across organisations, and can act as a triage service, ensuring that young people are supported by the most appropriate services. Youth sector survey respondents emphasised the important role of a chair in multi-agency meetings to ensure all professionals contribute effectively. They also highlighted the importance of Memorandums of Understanding, service level agreements or similar, in providing clarity on roles, responsibilities, aims and objectives. Some youth workers reported that they are invited to participate in a large number of multi-agency meetings and they need to prioritise.

We’re lucky we have a monthly meeting called the Joint Action Group meeting which is led by Sussex Police and the Safer Communities team. And that meeting is for any partner and any agency in the city to come together to bring any emerging issues. And then basically it’s a place for partner agencies to go, ‘oh, I can help with that. I can support with that’. And that’s been a fantastic tool to bring agencies together who may not have come together and can build those links. So I think if there is ever a missing link, it’s normally found within that meeting and then you can build those relationships

– Interviewee, Crime Reduction Partnership, Brighton

7.6 Lesson 5: Youth services are effective at interacting with young people and supporting them to contribute to multi-agency meetings and co-design programmes. This not only ensures that their voices are heard and that they feel empowered but helps allied sectors to better understand the importance of working together to meet young people’s needs and how different sector expertise can benefit them.

7.7 Lesson 6: Co-location can foster effective interactions alongside service alignment. Youth sector survey respondents stated that co-located services can provide a space from which to deliver a diverse range of services, that also creates conditions for effective regular and informal interactions. However, successful co-location of services requires more than physical proximity but also strong relationship building, alignment around common objectives and service philosophies, and structured information sharing.

8. Conclusions

8.1 Youth workers are connectors. People working in the youth sector have the skills, motivations and experience to interact with other sectors involved in supporting and developing young people. They have extensive and purposeful connections in many local areas that can be harnessed by local policy makers wishing to support young people, and their families, in their local communities. These connections are not however comprehensive as there were gaps in sector interactions reported, which varied between different areas reflecting their history of service provision and socio-economic contexts. As well as individual organisational barriers to sector interactions such as time, resources and capacity, there are also structural sector barriers, for instance a competitive funding environment, data sharing, systems misalignment and professional biases.

8.2 Interactions are relationship based but can be enhanced. While many interactions have formal elements, effective interactions combine both formal and informal. Reported interactions are rarely solely formal. Such interactions build on connections made by youth workers who need to connect with a wide range of services to advocate for the diverse needs of the young people they work with. People working for more than five years in their role reported more informal interactions, reflecting the cumulative experiences. Both formal and informal interactions can be enhanced by co-locating service delivery and more structured organisational-level partnerships, which have benefits for young people and for professionals working in different organisations.

8.3 Effective interactions need to be cultivated. Opportunities for relationship building, information sharing and decision making can be proactively engineered. Networks of youth service providers can be established and supported to create a more coherent sector voice and a more efficient way to capture and disburse resources.

8.4 Individual young people benefit from cross-sector interactions. Interactions create more effective referrals (because fuller information is brought to referral decisions), clearer engagement pathways (because there is more awareness of services and opportunities), and quicker responses (because there is trust between services). Interactions can help expand the reach of services to more or different groups of young people.

8.5 Services for all young people are better designed when people from different sectors with shared purpose interact. Interactions create better intelligence about young people in a place, their needs and aspirations. Where young people are involved in intelligence creation through attendance at key meetings or other forms of engagement that further enriches conversations to inform strategic decision-making. Bringing diverse perspectives and information about all young people and their social, economic and health contexts should bring good insight when decisions are made about what can be supported, where and for which young people.

9. Suggested good practice for effective interactions

9.1 By making some practical changes, youth workers can enhance the financial sustainability of their work, build mutually trusting partnerships with allied professionals, and improve outcomes for young people. Policymakers can also make changes that will facilitate better multi-agency working and improve outcomes for young people. This section elaborates some of the suggestions for good practice that emerged from interviews with youth workers and allied professionals in both the case studies and the individual interviews. Please note the implications for practitioners are in no particular order of priority. Additionally, we acknowledge that organisations are at different stages of maturity - some have established interactions and infrastructure to support these, while others are still developing in this space.

Implications for youth practitioners

Strengthening communication and networking

9.2 Build 1-2-1 relationships with key contacts – Pro-actively developing strong, personal connections with professionals from schools, social services, healthcare, youth justice, and housing sectors makes it easier to collaborate when urgent support is needed. A simple introductory email, attending local events, via alliance organisations or asking trusted partners for introductions to their contacts can lay the groundwork for future cooperation. This work requires more time than often assumed and youth work funders should prioritise dedicated funding for senior staff time to work on this local bridge building.

9.3 Sustain organisational partnerships – Personal relationship building is important for establishing new partnerships but they can be fragile and easily fall apart if individuals change. Converting personal ties into more structured organisational-level partnerships should be prioritised. This can include signing a partnership agreement or Memorandum of Understanding that sets out the objectives that organisations share, agreed ways of working, agreed outcomes for the work and how any conflicts will be resolved. These agreements should include records of key contacts, outline of strategic focus and roles and responsibilities to ensure continuity when staff change. Having standardised templates for partnership agreements or Memorandum of Understanding would be beneficial for the youth sector to access and use.

9.4 Use technology for efficient communication but don’t devalue face to face interactions– Set up messaging groups on platforms like WhatsApp  or email chains with key contacts to share quick questions, updates, and concerns. This helps reduce delays and ensures smoother collaboration when young people require multi-agency support. However, face to face interactions are most effective for building trust and deepening partnership working. Holding regular in-person meetings and periodically visiting each other’s sites can be invaluable.

9.5 Attend multi-agency meetings regularly – Being present at local safeguarding boards, crime prevention meetings, or local consortium discussions ensures that youth workers stay informed about local developments and can advocate for the youth sector’s role in these partnerships. Local authorities can be important facilitators for these types of interactions. 

Improving referral and support processes

9.6 Map out local services and referral pathways – Understanding what support services exist and how to access them ensures youth workers can signpost young people effectively. Creating a shared directory of services helps ensure that referrals are made efficiently but these can be resource intensive to maintain. 

9.7 Develop a standardised referral process – Partners working at different points in a referral chain should work towards having the same forms, consent processes and follow-up protocols to ensure relevant information is shared between all partners and individual young people do not get lost in the system.  Working with partners to streamline this process makes it easier to guide young people through the process.  

9.8 Use personal approaches to introduce young people into referral networks.  Initial in-person meetings to introduce young people to a key worker in a network can increase the likelihood that referrals are followed through (compared to reliance just on information sharing or providing a leaflet).

9.9 Follow up on referrals to ensure continuity – When a young person is referred to another service, check-in to ensure they attended the appointment and received the help they needed. If they did not, find out why and offer additional support to encourage engagement. This referral follow-up should be built into staff resource planning and service protocols, rather than being carried out ad hoc.

Enhancing multi-agency training and development

9.10 Attend joint training sessions – Taking part in training in topics of mutual interest (e.g. safeguarding, fundraising, mental health, first aid, trauma-informed practice) alongside allied professionals fosters mutual respect and a shared understanding of each sector’s work. This type of joint training can also reduce duplication and cost across the whole system supporting young people.

9.11 Offer briefings for allied professionals on youth work – Many professionals misunderstand the role of youth workers. Running training sessions or providing resources that explain the youth work approach can help bridge this gap and increase respect for the profession. Regular inductions or refreshers will help to maintain this cross-sector understanding despite personnel changes. This may contribute to existing resourcing pressures, so it should be considered in the planning process.

9.12 Shadow other professionals – Spending a day with a social worker, probation officer, or school safeguarding lead can help youth workers better understand their processes and challenges. This work can also deepen inter-personal relationships and mutual trust building.

9.13 Embed regular evaluation and reflection sessions – To foster effective collaboration and sustain strong partnerships, it is essential to allocate time and space for reflection and learning through an agreed-upon evaluation approach. Where possible, this reflective work should be done jointly between youth workers and allied professionals.

Embedding youth work in strategic decision-making

9.14 Advocate for youth work representation in decision-making bodies – Ensuring youth work representation in Integrated Care Boards, community safety partnerships and the like gives youth workers a voice in shaping policy and service delivery. This advocacy can be done by individual youth organisations but there is also an important role for regional and national infrastructure organisations in making the case for this work.

9.15 Encourage coproduction and ownership of provision – Encouraging youth and allied professionals to co-produce and own the design and delivery of the intervention/support or to reach joint decisions on potential changes required for young people in the service design. This should be based on a shared understanding of local need, collated from relevant information from youth sector and consultation with young people, families and communities about their experiences and needs. This will help to strengthen commitment and buy in among the professionals.

9.16 Develop collaborative funding bids – Rather than competing for the same limited funding or primarily viewing interactions with statutory agencies through a transactional lens, youth workers can work alongside allied professionals to submit joint funding applications. This encourages partnership working and ensures sustainable service delivery. However, these joint funding bids are much more likely to be feasible if there is already a strong set of personal relationships and track record of local collaboration.

9.17 Champion youth voice in cross-sector meetings – Where possible, youth workers should ensure young people are given opportunities to contribute to decision-making. This could include inviting young representatives to strategic meetings or collecting feedback from young people to present on their behalf. Memorandums of Understanding between youth work organisations and their partners in other sectors should include agreements about approaches to youth voice and power sharing with young people.

Improving data sharing and collaboration tools

9.18 Develop agreements for safe data sharing – Many youth workers struggle to access information due to concerns around data protection. Establishing formal agreements with other services about what can and cannot be shared, and under what circumstances, upfront ensures young people receive timely support and reduces administrative burden.

9.19 Use common case management tools – If possible, youth workers should use the same data systems as health or education providers (or develop ways to integrate them). This ensures better coordination and tracking of young people’s progress. Funding for access to these systems and training to ensure that they are used effectively should be built into funding for partnership working.

9.20 Create shared action plans for young people with high needs – When working with vulnerable young people, having a documented support plan that is accessible to all relevant services (e.g., school, social services, youth justice) helps ensure a consistent approach and reduces the burden on young people to repeatedly explain their needs and preferences. Wherever possible, young people should help design these plans and there should be transparency about who will have access to them.

Addressing practical challenges in service delivery

Advocate for co-location of services – Placing youth workers inside schools, hospitals, or employment services can make it easier for young people to access support in familiar environments. Co-location can also foster stronger relationships between professionals if there is time invested in trust building and clearly articulated roles and responsibilities. Joint reflective practice sessions and briefings on profession-specific roles can help to improve this. Co-location does not always require youth workers to embed themselves within other services. Joint operations from neutral community spaces or embedding allied professionals within youth work spaces (e.g. youth clubs) can be just as effective. Detached youth work (e.g. in parks, fast-food restaurants, shopping centres) improves engagement with those who may be disengaged from other services.

9.22 Adjust working hours to engage young people at key times – Youth work often takes place in the evenings and on weekends, whereas many statutory services operate 9-5. Agreeing mutually convenient times for professionals to meet is a simple but often over-looked enabler of collaboration.

Recommendations for policymakers

9.23 Establish national frameworks to guide local collaborations – It can be helpful for local organisations to base their partnership agreements on standard templates or follow sector- specific guidance developed nationally. For example, DCMS and Department for Education publishing a joint framework to guide educational enrichment partnerships between formal education and youth work sectors.

9.24 Provide clear guidance on data sharing – Develop and disseminate best practice guidelines on data sharing between youth work, education, healthcare, and social care sectors to reduce compliance concerns, and improve information flow while ensuring compliance with data protection regulations.

9.25 Pilot different models of co-located services – As part of the Young Futures Hubs programme, test and evaluate different models of co-located working that integrate youth workers with professionals from other allied sectors to enhance service delivery.

9.26 Invest in cross-sector learning and development – Fund and promote joint professional development programmes that equip youth workers and allied professionals with the skills and knowledge to collaborate effectively. These programmes should emphasise evidence- based approaches to supporting young people and create shared learning environments that foster mutual trust and understanding.

9.27 Embed partnership building skills into professional qualifications – Ensure that qualifications for youth workers, teachers, social workers, and healthcare professionals include mandatory training on multi-agency collaboration and partnership development.

9.28 Streamline local service mapping – Local service mapping exercises can be invaluable, but they can place a high administrative burden on stakeholders. National requirements for service mapping (e.g. statutory guidance for youth services); Young Futures Prevention Partnerships; Youth Guarantee implementation) should seek to build on existing data (such as National Youth Sector Census) and use common service typologies/ data definitions to reduce duplication.

9.29 Encourage long-term funding for youth work and other preventative services – Promote sustained, long-term funding settlements for youth work and other early intervention services to ensure stability, continuity, and effectiveness in service delivery.

9.30 Support common outcomes frameworks – Develop and adopt shared outcomes frameworks across youth work, education, social care, and healthcare to align priorities, measure impact consistently, and improve accountability in multi-agency collaboration.

Annex A: Glossary of key terms

• Allied sectors - allied sectors generally offer support for particular aspects of a young person’s life. Examples include the education sector, social care, health, youth justice, and housing
• Co-location – organisations or services that are located in the same physical space, though not necessarily fully integrated with one another
• Detached youth work – youth work which takes place outside of youth centres and in settings where young people are, for example in community spaces such as parks or housing estates
• Interactions – instances where youth workers and allied professionals from other sectors work together and / or liaise for the purpose of supporting a young person or young people
• Open access provision – youth provision that is open to any young person regardless of their needs or background – also known as ‘universal’ provision
• Professional youth worker – professional youth workers are qualified individuals who build voluntary, trusted relationships with young people, away from many of the other pressures they may be facing in their lives. They usually work with young people aged between 11 and 19, but may support young adults up to the age of 25 depending on their needs. Professional youth workers hold a Level 6 qualification in youth work 
• Targeted provision - specialist youth provision that supports young people on the basis of specific needs or personal characteristics, such as ethnicity, special educational needs or risk of violent offending
• Youth alliance - network of youth organisations in the voluntary, community, and social enterprise (VCSE) sector, often working to grow the infrastructure and profile of youth work within the local area and support the workforce with training, guidance and opportunities to collaborate
• Youth sector - includes organisations that work primarily with young people, most often through youth work
• Youth sector professionals − comprises youth workers and other individuals working in the youth sector
• Youth provider − organisation that offers services and support to young people 
• Youth work - a practice that supports the personal, social, emotional and educational development of a young person to help them reach their full potential. It is often informal, voluntary and centred on building relationships in safe and supportive environments.

Annex B: Documents reviewed during scoping

Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Department for Education (2022) Early Help System Guide: A toolkit to assist local strategic partnerships responsible for their Early Help System.

Local Government Association (2017) Partnership approaches to improving health outcomes for young people.

National Youth Agency (2023) Better together: Youth work with schools.

Ofsted (2015) Youth workers in social work pods having a positive impact on young people’s outcomes: Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead.

SQW (2024) Youth provision and life outcomes. A study of the local impact of youth clubs. Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

SQW (2024) Youth enrichment. Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

The Centre for Education and Youth, UK Youth, NCS and The Duke of Edinburgh (2024) Education and Enrichment.

The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care (2022) Final research report.

UK Youth (2024) Cross-sector partnerships. Unpublished

UK Youth (2022) The economic value of youth work.

Youth Futures Foundation (2024) Learning from funding Connected Futures: End of Phase 1 report.

YouthLink Scotland (n.d.) Professional Learning Resource: Developing Youth Work and School Partnerships.

Annex C: Case study selection criteria

C.1 Primary selection criteria

• Sizeable change in S251 expenditure on services for young people, 2011-2021 (adjusted for inflation) (reduction of 51-80%)
• Local authority expenditure per capita

C.2 Additional selection criteria

• Youth workers in an organisation that is physically embedded in another setting e.g. hospital, school
• Youth workers in an organisation that has a formal framework for how they interact with other professionals and services
• Youth workers in organisations with no formal framework or contractual relationships
• Youth services delivered by a local authority (do youth workers interact with services that are technically part of the same organisation?)
• Youth organisation that provides a funded navigator or social prescribing service (helping young people to navigate other systems)
• Youth organisation focused on the strategic level e.g. integrated in ICB (how does this impact on practitioners’ day to day work on the ground?)
• Youth organisation run by volunteers e.g. in the uniformed or arts space (are these organisations seen differently by services because they are volunteer led?)

C.3 Other considerations

• Geography (region; urban vs rural)

Annex D: Template used to map interactions

Figure D-1: Miro template

(Source: SQW)

Figure D-1 is a Miro template used to create case study maps, featuring example organisations and professionals from community support, universal, and targeted services that youth workers may engage with. Users can drag and drop these elements - along with lines representing interaction types and frequency - into a dedicated space to build their case study map.

Annex E: Case study maps

Below is a series of maps showing youth worker interactions in six areas: Brighton and Hove, Bristol, Derby, Islington, Lancashire, and Oxfordshire.

Annex F: Survey analysis

F.1 1. This annex provides survey results not included in the main report.

Table F-1: We know your work may not fit neatly into one sector. However, which of the following best describes the sector you work in?

Sector	Number of respondents (n)	Percentage of respondents
1. Youth including youth clubs/organisations, infrastructure organisations	252	85%
2. Education including schools, further education, PRUs	8	3%
3. Social care including children and social services	1	0%
4. Healthcare including GPs, mental health services, Accident and Emergency	10	3%
5. Youth Justice e.g. police, probation and legal services	5	2%
6. Housing including housing associations	2	1%
7. Other (please specify sector)	18	6%
Total	296	100%
No response	0
Base	296

(Source: SQW analysis of survey data. Question answered by both youth sector and allied sector respondents)

Table F-2: If you answered ‘youth’ to the previous question, which of the following categories best describes your organisation?

Organisation type	Number of respondents (n)	Percentage of respondents
Charity	187	75%
Community Interest Company	27	11%
Faith Group	1	0%
Unincorporated association	2	1%
Local Authority Youth Service	24	10%
Part of other statutory service or public body	2	1%
Private sector business	4	2%

(Source: SQW analysis of survey data. Question answered by youth sector respondents)

Figure F-1: What is your organisation’s total number of employees (i.e. paid staff)?

Number of employees	Proportion of respondents (N=292)
0 employees	7%
1 to 9 employees	30%
10 to 49 employees	41%
50 to 249 employees	14%
250 or more employees	8%

(Source: SQW analysis of survey data. Question answered by both youth sector and allied sector respondents)

Figure F-2: Please provide the full postcode of your main location of work

(Source: SQW analysis of survey data. Question answered by both youth sector and allied sector respondents Basemap source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v.3.0. Note there were 10 respondents whose main location of work was outside of England.)

Figure F-2 is a map of England displaying survey respondents’ main work locations. Includes a zoomed-in section highlighting the London area. The map illustrates that survey respondents were distributed across the country, with notable clusters in and around Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and London. In contrast, there were fewer respondents whose main work location was in the South West, East Midlands, or East of England.

Figure F-3: Thinking about where you do most of your work, which of the following statements best describes the area where you work?

Work area	Proportion of respondents (N=296)
Urban	67%
Both	25%
Rural	8%

(Source: SQW analysis of survey data. Question answered by both youth sector and allied sector respondents)

Figure F-4: Which of the following best describes your main role?

Role	Proportion of respondents (N=296)
Leader	57%
Practitioner	36%
Volunteer	5%
Commissioner of services	1%

(Source: SQW analysis of survey data. Question answered by both youth sector and allied sector respondents)

Figure F-5: Approximately how long have you been working in this role? If you are unsure, please give your best estimate.

Time period	Proportion of respondents (N=296)
Under 1 year	5%
Between 1 and 3 years	21%
Between 3 and 5 years	13%
Over 5 years	61%

(Source: SQW analysis of survey data. Question answered by both youth sector and allied sector respondents)

Figure F-6: Thinking about your overall interactions with personnel, agencies or organisations in the youth sector over the previous year, how far do you agree or disagree that your interactions with the youth sector met their intended purposes?

Time period	Proportion of respondents (N=43)
Strongly agree	30%
Agree	63%
Neither agree nor disgaree	7%
Disagree	0%
Strongly disagree	0%
Don’t know	0%

(Source: SQW analysis of survey data. Question answered by allied sector respondents who said they had had interactions with youth sector personnel in the last year)

Table F-3: In the previous year have you interacted with X sector to support young people?

Sector	Percentage
Education	91%
Social care	70%
Health care	66%
Youth justice	44%
Other organisations working in the youth sector	93%
Interactions with any other key sectors	62%

(Source: SQW analysis of survey data. Question answered by youth sector respondents)

Figure F-7: Thinking about your interactions with personnel, agencies or organisations in the X sector over the previous year, how far do you agree or disagree that your interactions met their intended purposes?

(Source: SQW analysis of survey data. Question answered by youth sector respondents who said they had had interactions with the named sector in the last year)

Figure F-7 is a chart showing the proportion of youth sector survey respondents who strongly agreed/agreed, were neutral, or disagreed/strongly disagreed that their interactions with various sectors met their intended purposes. The chart shows that 90% of youth sector survey respondents strongly agreed or agreed that their interactions with other organsations in the youth sector met their intended purposes, whist 9% were neutral and 2% disagreed or strongly disagreed. 81% of youth sector survey respondents strongly agreed or agreed that their interactions with the youth justice sector met their intended purposes, whilst 16% were neutral and 3% disagreed or strongly disagreed. 78% of youth sector survey respondents strongly agreed or agreed that their interactions with the education sector met their intended purposes, whilst 18% were neutral and 3% disagreed or strongly disagreed. 71% of youth sector survey respondents strongly agreed or agreed that their interactions with the health care sector met their intended purposes, whilst 22% were neutral and 8% disagreed or strongly disagreed. 70% of youth sector survey respondents strongly agreed or agreed that their interactions with the social care sector met their intended purposes, whilst 22% were neutral and 8% disagreed or strongly disagreed. 89% of youth sector survey respondents strongly agreed or agreed that their interactions with other key sectors met their intended purposes, whilst 10% were neutral.

Table F-4: Please indicate your three most frequent purposes of interaction with the X sector in the last year.

(Source: SQW analysis of survey data. Question answered by allied sector respondents who said they had had interactions with the youth sector in the last year, and by youth sector respondents who said they had had interactions with the named sector in the last year. Please note respondents could select more than one response)

Table F-4 shows the three most frequent purposes of respondents’ interactions with various sectors over the past year. For allied sector survey respondents, the most frequent interactions with the youth sector were to deliver regular services for young people (44% of respondents), to share advice and guidance to support young people and deliver special events for young people (both 35% respectively). For youth sector survey respondents’ interactions with the education sector, the most frequent interactions were to deliver regular services for young people (63%), to share general information to support young people (38%) and to deliver a pilot service / intervention and attend multi-agency meetings (both 28% respectively). For youth sector survey respondents’ interactions with the social care sector, the most frequent interactions were to refer an individual / individuals (57% of respondents), act on safeguarding concern or support relating to an individual (55%) and to share general information to support young people (44%). For youth sector survey respondents’ interactions with the health care sector, the most frequent interactions were to share advice and guidance to support young people (45% of respondents), to refer an individual / individuals (41%) and to deliver regular services for young people and share general information to support young people (both 35% respectively). For youth sector survey respondents’ interactions with the youth justice sector, the most frequent interactions were to refer an individual / individuals (45% of respondents), to attend multi-agency meetings (43%), and to deliver regular services for young people and share general information to support young people (both 34% respectively). For youth sector survey respondents’ interactions with other organisations in the youth sector, the most frequent interactions were to deliver regular services for young people (55% of respondents), to share general information to support young people (32%) and to share advice and guidance to support young people (30%). For youth sector survey respondents’ interactions with other key sectors, the most frequent interactions were to deliver regular services for young people (43% of respondents), to share advice and guidance to support young people (34%) and to deliver a pilot service / intervention and attend multi-agency meetings (both 31% respectively).

Figure F-8: Thinking about all the interactions you had with people from other sectors in the previous year, which of these was most effective format of these interactions?

Format	Proportion of respondents (N=216)
Video calls or phone calls	26%
Email	13%
In-person	62%
Text or WhatsApp	4%

(Source: SQW analysis of survey data. Question answered by youth sector respondents. Please note respondents could select more than one response)

Figure F-9: Are there organisations or sectors where more interaction would be beneficial for young people?

Sector	Proportion of respondents (N=204)
Education	75%
Youth	66%
Health care	65%
Social care	57%
Youth injustice	55%
Housing	46%
None	12%
Other	4%

(Source: SQW analysis of survey data. Question answered by youth sector respondents. Please note respondents could select more than one response)

Figure F-10: Are there disadvantages of more frequent interaction, for young people and organisations delivering youth provision?

Answer	Proportion of respondents (N=197)
There are no disadvantages to greater/more frequent interactions.	64%
There are key disadvantages.	36%

(Source: SQW analysis of survey data. Question answered by youth sector respondents.)

Annex G: Just One Question analysis

Introduction

G.1 Just One Question is a monthly survey run by UK Youth to understand the challenges, needs and concerns faced by those working with young people in the UK. The Just One Question for January 2025 was used to provide timely and focussed feedback on a specific theme linked to this research study. The question asked was:

• “Based on your experience, what is the one change that would improve working together with the X sector(s) to achieve better outcomes for young people?”

G.2 Respondents were asked to select from the following sectors: Education, Social Care, Healthcare, Youth Justice and Housing.

G.3 The Just One Question received 237 useable responses.

Key findings

G.4 Figure G-1 highlights the sectors where respondents felt change was needed to improve outcomes for young people. More than half (51%) of practitioners selected all five sectors, indicating a strong recognition of their interdependence. The most suggested change was enhancing collaborative working across sectors, as many respondents noted inefficiencies and poor outcomes due to fragmented services.

Figure G-1: Sector/s where change was required to achieve better outcomes for young people via partnership working

Sector	Proportion of respondents
Housing including housing associations	9%
Youth Justice e.g. police, probation and legal services	15%
Healthcare including GPs, mental health services	16%
Social care including children and social services	20%
Education including schools, further education, PRUs	39%
All of the above	51%

(Source: UK Youth)

G.5 Education (39%) came out as the most frequently selected individual sector where change was required. Schools and education establishments are often the first point of contact for identifying young people in need of additional support, whether this is due to safeguarding concerns, mental health or being at the risk of exclusion.

Practitioners recommended the following changes for the education sector to improve cross- sector collaboration and achieve better outcomes for young people:

• Improve communication and partnerships for a more cohesive approach.
• Integrate outdoor learning, mentoring, after-school clubs, and support from non-teaching staff, to create a more enriched learning experience for young people.
• Strengthening connections between schools, healthcare, and social care to address mental health challenges.

G.6 A further 20% of the respondents highlighted that change was needed in the social care sector. They identified the struggle with high caseloads in social care and said that this makes collaboration with youth work, schools, healthcare providers, and justice organisations difficult. Some changes that were suggested included:

• Establish shared budgets, facilities and management structures to create a more united approach to supporting young people.
• Have trust-based systems for sharing information across sectors to provide better tailored support for vulnerable young people.

G.7 A lack of early intervention often leads to young people entering the justice system instead of receiving necessary support. Recommended changes for youth justice included:

• Shift towards preventative approaches rather than reactive interventions.
• Strengthen partnerships between youth justice, voluntary youth organisations, and community services.
• Improve rehabilitation and reintegration programs for young offenders, which involve youth workers throughout.

Insights into the changes needed across different sectors

G.8 Collaboration across sectors is essential. Respondents emphasised that better communication and structured partnership working between education, social care, healthcare, youth justice, and housing would lead to more effective support for young people.

G.9 Key recommendations included:

• Recognising youth workers as essential professionals alongside teachers and social workers, with resources dedicated to improving mutual trust and understanding.
•  Embedding multi-agency teams within schools (including social workers, youth workers, and mental health professionals) to address issues early.
• Improving data-sharing mechanisms to prevent loss of key information due to staff turnover and fragmented services.
• Enhancing post-custody support for young people transitioning back into education, housing, and employment.
• Securing ring-fenced funding for alternative education settings and youth intervention programs.

G.10 There is a need for better data-sharing mechanisms and regular inter-agency meetings to prevent the loss of key contacts due to staff turnover. Education, social care and youth justice should have access to shared case management tools to improve coordination between professionals.

We often work in isolation because there’s no clear way to share information between schools, social services, and healthcare—everyone is working on different systems.

– Just One Question respondent

G.11 Many respondents noted the challenge of “firefighting” within their sectors, where overwhelming workloads prevent the development of meaningful inter-agency relationships. Addressing this issue requires dedicated resources, staff, and time to build effective cross- sector partnerships.

Ensure that youth workers are valued as professionals and youth work is valued as a profession and given the same level of respect as other professionally qualified workers/services.

– Just One Question respondent

Education

G.12 Education emerged as the primary sector engaged in multi-agency collaboration. However, only 8% of respondents reported integrating education with social care, despite schools frequently supporting vulnerable children. Even fewer (4%) included partnerships with healthcare and youth justice. The lack of collaboration increases the risk of missed opportunities for early intervention by social care, healthcare, or justice services. While schools play a crucial role, they often face resource constraints and insufficient training to effectively support young people in need.

G.13 Some of the changes recommended for the education sector were:

• Offer more support to families to help parents and care givers recognise and address issues before they severely affect their children.
•  Creating a more structured partnership approach that includes youth workers, schools and support/family services to reduce family breakdown and school exclusions.
• Have a greater understanding and provide better resources for neurodiverse young people.
• Promote pathways for social mobility and economic opportunity to raise young people’s aspirations.
• There is a call for ring-fenced funding to ensure that alternative education settings such as PRU’s and additional services are supported.

Consistent funding and recognition of alternative education providers, ensuring that students placed in non-traditional settings receive the same level of investment and opportunities as their mainstream peers.

– Just One Question respondent

• Youth workers should be consulted and engaged early to ensure that young people are supported across both their educational and personal development needs.

… ‘professional services’ asked about what youth club and what young people attend at initial interviews and engage with youth practitioners much more early on when carrying out interventions. Utilise the Trusted Adults that youth workers are to enhance support for young people. We are here, ready to work with you!

– Just One Question respondent

Healthcare

G. 14 Healthcare responses highlighted the need for better referrals, strong partnerships with the voluntary sector, and improved information sharing. Healthcare needs sustainable and regular funding to support community based preventative care. This would help to reduce pressures on NHS services.

To establish a framework for social prescribing for CYP nationally with a clear outcome model and sustainable funding.

– Just One Question respondent

G.15 Some of the changes recommended for the healthcare sector include:

• Implement mandatory training programs to enhance expertise and foster stronger collaboration between statutory and third-sector services.
• Prioritise early intervention to manage mental health and physical health issues before they escalate.
•  Reduce silo working and enable better integration of healthcare and community-based support.
• Establish a framework for social prescribing for children and young people, which will have clear outcomes and sustainable funding.

Social care

G.16 65% of social care professionals reported working mainly within their own sector, with only limited integration with other services. Their most common partnerships included: youth justice (18%), healthcare (12%) and housing (6%).

G.17 Respondents called for easier access to relevant social care funding. These respondents also called for shared budgets, shared facilities and shared management structures to improve relationships between services.

G.18 Some of the changes recommended for the social care sector included:

• More consistent and long-term funding for youth services, early intervention programmes, and community organisations who can provide holistic support to young people.
• Sharing detailed and relevant information across sectors (whilst remaining privacy and safeguarding protocols) to offer the most appropriate, tailored support.
• Creation of user-led support networks and services that are tailored to the unique needs of young people. This could include addressing challenges such as neurodiversity, social isolation and family challenges.

Youth justice

G.19 Respondents reported very little cross-sector collaboration involving youth justice, with only 18% of respondents reporting working with social care and 10% with housing.

G.20 Respondents called for more youth justice funding to provide adequate rehabilitation and reintegration support for young people, with the emphasis on resources before and after custody. They also felt that young people should be more involved in decision-making processes. Overall, there was frustration that the justice system remains reactive rather than preventative, engaging mostly when young people have encountered a legal issue or within the system already.

G.21 Some of the changes recommended for those in the youth justice sector were:

• Have better communication methods with other sectors to ensure a clear point of contact when working together.
• Ensure a wider range of support programmes are accessible and beneficial to young offenders.
• Increased funding for trusted providers that focus on prevention activities and help young people engage with positive community activities.

Housing

G.22 Despite its importance in providing stability and support for young people, very few responses highlighted strong partnerships between housing and other services.

Young people leaving care or the justice system are at huge risk of homelessness, but housing isn’t always included in multi-agency meetings.

– Just One Question respondent

G.23 A number of responses highlight challenges that young people face regarding housing instability and the need for better joined-up support systems, such as:

We work closely with housing associations to deliver community-based play and youth work initiatives, improving community cohesion and reducing isolation for children in vulnerable housing situations.

– Just One Question respondents

Our team has experience supporting young people at risk of homelessness, providing early intervention and support services to prevent housing instability.

– Just One Question respondents

Through community engagement projects, we bridge the gap between housing providers and residents, ensuring that young people and families have access to essential services and opportunities for social mobility.

– Just One Question respondents

1. The Joined Up Summit was hosted by UK Youth, with support from Youth Futures Foundation, Prudence Trust, NCS, Osborne Clarke, Big Change Charitable Trust, Blagrave Trust and KKR. More than 500 leaders and decision makers from the worlds of youth work, education, employment, health, social care, criminal justice, business and government, alongside 16-25-year-olds, attended the event, which aimed to break down barriers between different sectors and promote better multiagency working to support young people. ↩

2. DCMS (2024) Invitation to Tender. Youth Worker Interactions with Other Sectors: Better Understanding Multi-Agency Working to support Young People, unpublished. ↩

3. For more information see government Family Hubs and Support ↩

4. For more information see government Guidance for Supporting Families ↩

5. For more information see government Guidance on SAFE taskforces ↩

6. For more information see government Guidance on Turnaround Programme ↩

7. This data collected by the Department for Education and is available through the Department for Education’s Official Statistics. For more information see the government’s Data Catalogue ↩

8. UK Youth (2024) Cross-sector partnerships. (unpublished) ↩

9. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Department for Education (2022) Early Help System Guide: A toolkit to assist local strategic partnerships responsible for their Early Help System ↩

10. Respondents who had been in their role for less than a year were almost twice as likely to nominate ‘capacity building through professional development’ as the other respondents (31% versus 17%) ↩

11. 40% of leaders and 59% of practitioners reported ‘support for young people to engage in services’, as a benefit. ↩