Building better connections: Interagency work and the Connexions

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Building better connectionsInteragency work and the Connexions Service

Bob Coles, Liz Britton, Leslie Hicks

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Building better connections

First published in Great Britain in November 2004 by

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Bob Coles is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of York. Liz Britton is a

Senior Policy and Research Manager at the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion, London. Dr Leslie Hicks is a

Research Fellow in the Social Work Research and Development Unit at the University of York.

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ContentsAcknowledgements iv

1 Building Connexions: the joining up of the elements of youth policy 1Policy background to the research 1The different organisational layers within Connexions 3Interagency and multiagency working 4The design of the research 5The three research areas 6Change over time 9

2 Three case studies of work with young people 10Sal (Midland Connexions) 10Tariq (Northern) 13Sam (Metro Connexions) 17

3 Issues and challenges in interagency working 21Determining interagency networks 21The basis of effective intervention: building a relationship of trust 22Referral: procedures and processes 23What comes next? What do Connexions workers actually do? 25Summary 35

4 Building better Connexions 36Summary of the main findings from the research 36The changing policy contexts for the Connexions Strategy 41Rebuilding better Connexions 44

References 46Appendix: The (trans)formation of the three Partnerships 48

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The research team wish to acknowledge withthanks the assistance of Claire Heathcote andHanif Ismail in conducting and transcribing someof the interviews in the Northern ConnexionsPartnership and the help and cooperation it hasreceived from all three Partnerships areas inwhich the research was conducted. We wish tothank the members of the three PartnershipBoards, Local Management Committees and otherstakeholders who generously gave their time andshared their knowledge and expertise with us.We also thank the young people, theirConnexions Personal Advisers and otherprofessional workers involved in trying to helpand support them who have provided the casestudies which lie at the heart of this report.Unfortunately they cannot be named here as wepromised to preserve their anonymity.

We especially wish to thank the Chief Executivesof the Connexions Partnerships and the Head ofStrategy and Performance (Children’s Services)from one of the research areas, all of whom alsocontributed to the development of the researchand this report through membership of theAdvisory Group. This met on several occasionsduring the course of the research and improvedthe content and structure of this report with theircomments and suggestions. Other than the ChiefExecutives, the members were:

Ian ChapmanPaul ConveryAlan FranceDivander Kaur El-HartiViv McKeeTim ShilesJoyce Thacker

Acknowledgements

We wish to record our special thanks to CharlieLloyd, Senior Research Manager at the JosephRowntree Foundation, for his good-humouredsupport and wise comments throughout theresearch process.

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1Building Connexions:the joining up of theelements of youth policy

The research on which this report is based wasdesigned to examine interagency partnershipworking with young people. The encouragementof partnership working has been a hallmark ofnumerous initiatives developed since the 1997General Election. Indeed, one report suggeststhat there have been more than 5,000partnerships developed during the last six years(Skelcher et al, 2004). There is some confusion inthe literature about the use of these terms so weshould be clear about what we mean from theoutset (Atkinson et al, 2002). We use the termmultiagency to refer to situations where morethan one organisation has dealings across asingle issue and, perhaps, works with the sameclient. However, this does not necessarily implythat there is close or planned joint working.Interagency suggests that agencies are workingtogether, that mechanisms through whichdifferent roles are assigned, and that joint-working practices are agreed. The main aim ofthe research was to examine how, and in whatways, such interagency work was being designedand delivered both in theory and in practice.

This research chose one major initiative withinthe development of policies for children andyoung people – the development of theConnexions Strategy – to examine issuesinvolved in interagency work in some detail.Although the main research questions wereformulated in 2001 – around the time at whichConnexions Partnerships were being pilotedacross England – many of the issues examined inthis report have continued policy relevance. Suchissues lie at the heart of reconfiguration ofservices for children and young people, in thewake of the Green Paper Every child matters(DfES, 2004a), and the Children’s Bill which isbefore Parliament as this report goes to press.

This chapter outlines the background to theresearch, the development of the ConnexionsStrategy, and some of the different ways in whichConnexions Partnerships have sought to developthat strategy. The research deliberately set out toexamine different approaches to partnershipdevelopment and these are briefly describedtowards the end of this chapter (pages 6-9) andin more detail in the Appendix. Chapters 2 and 3examine facets of interagency work in moredetail, with Chapter 2 being based arounddetailed case studies of young people thatexamine the interface of multiagency work withdaily lives. Building on these and other casestudies, Chapter 3 analytically examinesinteragency work around issues concerning:referral; assessment of need; roles;responsibilities and protocols of joint working;brokerage of services and advocacy on behalf ofyoung people; information sharing; and themanagement of partnership working acrossagencies. Finally, Chapter 4 returns to theimplications of the research for the current policyagenda, including the development of Children’sTrusts and subregional and local authorityservices and/or support for young people.

Policy background to the research

Announcing Connexions at London’s Centrepointon 16 December 1999, the Prime Minister, TonyBlair, made it clear that the Connexions Strategywas “our front line policy for young people”(DfEE, 2000, p 4). Since the first pilots in 2001,Connexions Services have been gradually rolledout nationally in three main waves so that, since2003, they cover all areas across England.Forward planning now contains a vision for thestrategy, taking it up to 2006 (Connexions,2002g). This latter planning document repeats the

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ambitious aim for Connexions to bring togetherexisting agencies such as “health services, policeand probation, youth services, social services,youth offending teams, drug action teams,voluntary and community organisations, careerscompanies and many more … to deliver aseamless support to all 13-19 year olds across allagencies”. From the outset the strategy wasintended to provide the means through whichgreater coherence could be developed withinservices for young people nationally,subregionally and locally, an ambitionemphasised by the fact that the first strategydocument was introduced by the PM and signedby no fewer that seven cabinet ministers. Avision to 2006 is also produced under eight,albeit more junior, ministerial signatures (DfES,2002). A recent review by the National AuditOffice (NAO) suggests that this degree ofauthority has provided a clear mandate to localpartnerships to seek and demand cooperationacross agencies and departments (NAO, 2004).Clearly multi- or interagency and cross-departmental collaboration is thus central to theConnexions Strategy and is the focus of theresearch.

The Connexions Strategy and ConnexionsService

At the heart of the Connexions Strategy is thedevelopment of the Connexions Servicedescribed in the initial prospectus forConnexions as, “a modern, public service thatworks in a completely different way”, forging anew enterprise from across different services andagencies (DfEE, 2000). The intention has alwaysbeen that the service would provide support toall young people through an allocated PersonalAdviser (PA) who would “provide a wide rangeof support to meet the young person’s needs andhelp them reach their full potential”. The helpprovided is planned to include “information,group work, advice, guidance, in-depth supportand access to personal and social development”(Connexions, 2002g).

Not in education, employment or training(NEET)

Despite being a universal service for allteenagers, the origins of the Connexions Strategyand service lie in a concern with the most

vulnerable young people, especially those mostlikely to become disengaged from learning,training or employment. Two left of centre think-tank reports had helped highlight attention tothose young people who left school at minimumschool leaving age but did not engage in post-16education, employment or training (Pierce andHillman, 1998; Bentley and Gurumurthy, 1999).Such young people, initially identified byacademic researchers under the label ‘status zero’(Williamson, 1997), later became more widelyknown in government publications by the term‘NEET’ (not in education, employment ortraining). The two think-tank reports were closelyfollowed by an official inquiry by thegovernment’s own Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) intheir fifth report Bridging the gap. This 1999report lamented the fact that an estimated161,000 young people aged 16-18 (9% of the agegroup) were disengaged and, in line with thepreviously published White Paper Learning tosucceed, announced a crucial attempt to remedythe situation, through a “single new advice andsupport service, in charge of trying to steeryoung people aged 13 and 19 through thesystem” (SEU, 1999). The report also emphasisedthat, although this was intended to be a universalservice for all those in the age group, it was alsoto be targeted at those most in need.

The report outlined various known routes intodisengagement and the over-representation ofsome groups of young people including: thosewith special educational needs or disabilities;young offenders; care leavers; young carers; andyoung women who become pregnant or parents.Disengagement at the age of 16 was also shownto be associated with earlier forms of disaffectionand disadvantage: underachievement, truancyand exclusion from school, the subject of earlierSEU reports (SEU, 1998). Later research hasattempted to put a financial cost on thedisengagement of 16- to 18-year-olds (Coles et al,2002; Godfrey et al, 2002), confirmed by theNAO as over £1.4 billion in the long term. TheNAO estimate that the NEET group numberedaround 181,000 in 2002, but that reducing thisnumber by even 1% “would result in 1,700 youngpeople re-engaging in education, employment ortraining with economic savings of £165 million”(NAO, 2004). One of the main targets of theConnexions Strategy, therefore, is a reduction inthe number of young people categorised asNEET in 2002 by 10% by November 2004, and

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the NAO reports that many Partnerships are wellon their way to achieving this.

Personal Advisers and their location

From the outset there was an obvious tensionbetween the skills, training, resources andorganisational requirements of a universal serviceand the more specialist support designed for thedisengaged or ‘hard-to-reach’. Some servicespioneered by Connexions are provided centrallythrough Connexions Direct, a help and adviceservice accessed by telephone, text-messaging,e-mail or an Internet website. Other services are,however, dependent on face-to-face contactbetween staff (mainly Connexions PAs andyoung people). PAs may be located or based in avariety of different settings: One-Stop-Shops oraccess points on the high street; schools orcolleges; community-based provision; andvarious forms of outreach facilities, includingmobile provision designed especially for use inrural areas.

Although the budget for the Connexions Serviceis considerable at £450 million per year, evenwith nearly 8,000 successfully recruited PAs,difficult decisions have to be made about wherethey will be located, with whom they willpredominantly work, what sort of caseload theywill have and, because of this, the level ofsupport that can be offered. The NAO reportedthat, if Connexions PAs were working with thecaseload deemed manageable at the pilot stage,in excess of 15,000 PAs would be required. Withless than 8,000 recruited, difficult choices havehad to be made, and there is some evidence fromthe surveys conducted by the NAO andelsewhere that mainstream schools feel it is theirresource that has been squeezed at the expenseof efforts directed at trying to reduce the NEETgroup (NAO, 2004; OECD, 2003). Partnershipsare thus, potentially, at times the origins ofconflicts of interests as well as consensualcollaboration.

Universal and targeted service

As both a universal and targeted service, many ofthe planning documents for Connexions madeclear that different young people will needdifferent types of support, and that servicesshould be designed accordingly. Partnerships are

asked to identify the size and composition ofthree different groups of young people withdifferent ‘tiers of need’. Around 60% of youngpeople are thought likely to require only generaladvice and support and minimal help in seekinginformation and advice in reaching careerdecisions. At the apex of the tiers of need arearound 30% of young people who are anticipatedas needing in-depth support to reduce the risk ofnot participating in education and trainingeffectively, and up to a further 10% who mayrequire specialist support in facing substantialand multiple problems. Given the interest of thisresearch it is these top two tiers of need onwhich this project has focused attention as, forthem, PAs are more likely to have to ‘broker’ inspecialist services from a number of differentprofessions to help them overcome their barriersto learning or training in a coordinated way(Connexions, 2001a).

The different organisational layerswithin Connexions

Prior to December 2003, the Connexions Servicehad a National Unit (CSNU) responsible for thecoordination nationally of the service and locatedwithin the Department for Education and Skills(DfES). At the end of 2003, CSNU was replacedby the Supporting Children and Young PeopleGroup (SCYPG), although this had a much widerremit covering Youth Service programmes,volunteering programmes, aspects of the work ofthe Teenage Pregnancy Unit (formally part of theDepartment of Health) and the Children’s Fund(formally part of the Children and YoungPeople’s Unit). The delivery of the ConnexionsService is organised subregionally by 47Partnership Boards across England. The Boardsare drawn from a number of different agencies“which also include representation other keyplayers including Local Education Authorities[LEAs], schools, colleges, the Learning and SkillsCouncil (LSC) and Jobcentre Plus” (Connexions,2002g). The Partnership is also often supportedby a Chief Executive Officer of the Partnershipand a senior management team. Some subregionsare large and span up to 10 different localauthorities, with local managers responsible forConnexions development within each localauthority.

Building Connexions

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To aid the organisation of Connexions withineach local authority, there are also LocalManagement Committees (LMCs) in each localauthority, each drawing its membership from arange of agencies across the authority.Representation on the LMC invariably includessenior managers from the Youth Service, YOTs,health services (such as primary care trusts), theLEA, schools, colleges, the careers companydelivering careers education and guidance, andthe voluntary sector. Many local authorities havealso developed a number of ad hoc committeesconcerned with day-to-day implementationissues, and designed to share and disseminategood practice. The organisation and managementof front-line workers (the PAs) depends on whichmodel of partnership development has beenadopted by the Partnership Board.

Models of partnership development

In describing different models of ConnexionsPartnership development, the NAO concentrateson only two forms. The predominant of these isthe so-called ‘subcontracting’ model with thePartnership based within a newly formedcompany, limited by guarantee. The Partnershipthen subcontracts with a number of differentproviders of front-line services, including careerscompanies, but also including at least 10% ofbusiness delivered through contracts with thevoluntary sector. Other contract holders ofteninclude the LEA, the Youth Service, and othermultiagency local partnerships such as YOTs orDrug Action Teams. It is also not unusual in thelarger partnerships for one careers company tohave contracts for the delivery of services acrossmore than one local authority (or LMC area), orindeed for a careers company to hold contractswith more than one Partnership. All Partnershipsalso offer funds through other grant-makingcapabilities for ‘capacity building’ or ‘servicedevelopment’ (particularly in the voluntarysector). Under the subcontracting model, aPartnership may have a complex array ofcontracts with a large number of serviceproviders. This has implications for the VAT costof such arrangements because of the largenumber of contracts, although it does allow formany organisations and agencies to regardthemselves as a genuine stakeholder within thePartnership (see below).

The second major model of partnershipdevelopment is variously described as the ‘directdelivery’ or ‘transmuted’ model. Here thePartnership is primarily based around an alreadyestablished careers company, or a merger ofcompanies, to which the extra functionsnecessary to fulfil the broader remit ofConnexions are added. The recent NAO reviewsuggests that, perhaps because the organisationalstructure of this model is more compact, thesePartnerships have been quicker to deliver onissues such as the extent to which diplomatraining has been completed by its PAs (NAO,2004). Partnership types, therefore, are likely tobring their own distinctive advantages.

The third model, outlined in the first OfSTEDreport on Connexions (but not covered by theNAO) is perhaps best seen as a variant of thesubcontracted model. In this third model,however, the newly formed Partnership is notitself the legal and accountable entity. Rather thisfunction is played by another ‘lead body’, such asa single local authority (OfSTED, 2002). Contractsand financial matters are thus handled by thelead body, rather than through the Partnershipitself. In some instances, the lead body is also themain employer, including the employer ofConnexions PAs other than those employed by acareers company. So, regardless of which settingthe PA may be working in, (s)he is a localauthority-employed PA. As well as beingpotentially attractive to PAs themselves, leadbody Partnerships are able to draw onestablished management structures (includingfinancial management expertise). Initially thismodel was not encouraged by the CSNU. Early in2004, however, Partnerships have had to seekmeans of reducing their VAT liabilities or savemoney elsewhere. The lead body model has thusbecome a more attractive proposition, if onlybecause it provides one way through which thenumber of contracts, and the consequent VATbill, can be reduced (A. Weinstock, letter toConnexions Partnership chief executives, 2004).

Interagency and multiagency working

There has been a growing literature on multi-and interagency working, some of which isfinding its way into the training material forConnexions PAs (Connexions, 2004). Theliterature distinguishes between different types ofmultiagency work. Atkinson et al (2002), for

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instance, describe five different models ofmultiagency working arranged along acontinuum from “decision-making groups, whereprofessionals from different agencies maintainedtheir distinct role” through to “operational teams,where professionals worked in close proximityand therefore merging roles was more likely”(Atkinson et al, 2002). This suggests that anotherissue adjacent to the distinction between inter-and multiagency partnerships is the notion ofmultidisciplinary teams. Many would see suchteams as desirable, and many ConnexionsPartnerships have aimed to build them. They do,however, present challenges associated withdifferences in professional cultures, practices andthe training that develops and sustains these. Intheir research on Multi-agency working, Atkinsonand colleagues do indeed further distinguishbetween different types of delivery models, andthe ways in which these are supported bycoordinated and multiagency consultation and/ortraining. As we will see, the various layers andlevels of organisation and working withinConnexions involve a range of different forms ofmulti- or interagency work, from needsassessment and service auditing, strategicdecision making, planning implementation at alocal level, through to service delivery. Giventhis, it is clearly important to distinguish betweenthe issues being faced by different levels of theorganisation that are charged with different tasks.

A key aspect in the design and delivery ofConnexions Services is the deployment of front-line PAs. Although, as we will see below, thedevelopment of Connexions Partnerships hastaken a different form in different parts of thecountry, in addition to their own specialisttraining (in careers education and guidance oryouth work, for instance), professional workerstaking on the role of PAs are required toundertake a nationally designed, diploma coursetraining. The training material for ConnexionsPAs devotes one of its five modules to ‘Workingwith other agencies and the community’. TheCSNU has also jointly produced a number ofbooklets on Working together, outlining therequirements and options surrounding jointworking with a number of partner agenciesincluding, for instance, youth justice services,teenage pregnancy workers, the statutory YouthService, voluntary and community organisations,youth homelessness agencies, and social servicesdepartments including work with care leaversand asylum seekers (Connexions, 2002a-f,

2003a). These are based on a numberoverarching principles concerning: theidentification of the most appropriate worker toact as PA; information sharing between workers;ensuring consistency, continuity, accountabilityand quality assurance; and rationalising contactand avoiding duplication of effort. Both the PAdiploma course and the more generally available‘Understanding Connexions’ module also drawsspecific attention to some of the major barriers toeffective partnership, includingmiscommunication, poor coordination, culturaldifferences in the working practices betweendifferent agencies, a lack of equality and respectbetween agencies, or a history of conflict ormisunderstanding. Clearly, although partnershipand interagency working sound like commonsense, in practice they may take a huge amountof concerted effort to achieve.

The design of the research

There have been numerous research projectsabout Connexions despite the service andstrategy still being in the early stages ofdevelopment. Much of the research, however,has relied on quantitative methods only – inparticular, extensive surveys. These have,necessarily, relied on simple questionsadministered by questionnaire or telephoneinterview to large numbers of people. Surveyshave been conducted on both ‘stakeholders’ –some of the main partners on Partnership Boardsand on LMCs – and on ‘customers’ – youngpeople – the recipients of Connexions Services(DfES, 2004).

The research reported here has employedintensive qualitative methods. The projectincluded around 300 hours of semi-structured,audio taped interviews, conducted over a periodof two years. The interviews were ‘semi-structured’ so that the researchers could exploreissues in depth. Through these we sought theviews of ‘stakeholders’ within the PartnershipBoards and LMCs, as well as exploring the viewsof young people about the various forms ofprofessional intervention in their lives and thoseof the workers concerned. In order to explorethe various layers of multi- and interagency workwe examined three different levels of working:

• within the Partnership Board;• within LMCs and managers of local agencies;

Building Connexions

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• front-line work: this was done through a seriesof case studies of individual young people,both from the perspective of the young personand that of the various professionals withwhom they have been involved, includingtheir Connexions PAs.

We tried to examine the relationship betweenthese three levels to focus on both policy intent(as derived from documentary sources such asbusiness plans and by key stakeholders) androutine and actual practices (as described to usby PAs, other professional partners, and by theyoung people with whom they were working).The case studies were broadly the same in allthree areas in order to allow the research toexamine how Connexions and associatedpartners worked with young people in similarsituations. They included:

• a young person in Years 9 or 10 who isthought to be at risk of (or is) excluded (orself-excluding) from school;

• a young person (Year 12) with a statement ofspecial educational need;

• a young person (Year 11 or older) ‘looked-after’;

• a young person involved in the youth justicesystem;

• a young person who is not living in theparental home;

• a young woman who is either pregnant oralready a mother;

• a young asylum seeker;• a young person disengaged from education,

employment and training at age 16 or 17(different subgroups were also covered for thiscategory);

• someone disengaged from education,employment and training at age 16 or 17 butrecruited from a voluntary sector orcommunity-based agency.

In practice, many of these categories overlapped.Many of them also fell into the main Connexionspriority group, either being NEET, at risk of beingNEET, or having been NEET in the past. The casestudies thus allowed us to examine howConnexions was working with its key prioritygroup in partnership with other professionalworkers. Detailed illustrative descriptions of threeof the case studies can be found in Chapter 2. Itis, however, also important to the design of theresearch that the case studies were examinedwithin specific ‘contexts’. To do this the design of

the research took a vertical slice through theConnexions Partnership, from strategy andplanning through to service delivery.

Because this research adopted an ‘intensive’design, it could not be an extensive study of alarge number of Partnerships. Instead theresearch concentrated on only three, and withintwo of these, on only one LMC area. The threePartnerships were chosen to reflect the threedifferent models of partnership development:subcontracting, direct delivery and lead body.They were also selected for the reason of beingsocio-geographically varied with the threecovering part of a large, multiethnic, metropolitanarea, multiethnic cities and towns, and two of thethree also covering extensive rural areas. ThePartnerships were also at different stages ofdevelopment, having commenced operations atdifferent phases of the national roll out. A briefsummary of the areas is given below and furtherdetail can be found in the Appendix. Thedescriptions are based on around 90 hours oftaped and transcribed interviews and the study ofvolumes of planning documents produced by thePartnerships.

The three research areas

The names of the three Partnership areas, andthose of all those interviewed during the courseof the research, are referred to by pseudonymsonly. The first, Midland Connexions, was one ofthe early pilots and started operating in spring2001. The second, Metro Connexions, hadpiloted some aspects of Connexions in separateboroughs in 2001-02, but did not start as a fully-fledged Partnership until the summer of 2002.The third, Northern Connexions, started inOctober 2002. Although Metro Connexions andNorthern covered a large number of differentlocal authority areas, we examined the planningand implementation of services in only one ofthese. In Metro Connexions we refer to theborough covered as Metborough, and theMetropolitan District in Northern we identify asNortown.

Midland Connexions

Midland Connexions was the smallest of thethree Partnership areas, covering just over 81,000young people aged 13-19 from just two local

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authority areas. The area covered by thePartnership included one medium-sized city anda shire county, with a number of small- tomedium-sized market towns. MidlandConnexions Partnership was part of an economicand regeneration company, limited by guarantee,which directly employed most of the staffworking for Connexions.

At strategic level, Midland ConnexionsPartnership Board was large compared with theothers. At the outset, it was thought important forthe Board to be as inclusive as possible in orderto reassure potential partners of the importanceof their role within the Partnership. Because theBoard covered only two local authorities,originally there was a matching representationfrom each. When the Partnership became moreestablished, the frequency of meetings wasreduced and was described as having turned intoa consultative forum supporting a more activeExecutive Group. The two LMCs of city and shirecounty were originally part of the organisationalstructure. These were not as large as thePartnership Board, and the frequency ofmeetings was also reduced over time. Liaisonwith the local authorities was carried out throughinformal meetings held around every two monthsbetween the Chief Executive Officer ofConnexions, the local authority Chief ExecutiveOfficers, and the chief officers or deputy fromeducation and social services.

As a direct deliverer of services, approximately78% of resources were committed to servicedelivery itself. Many, but by no means all, of the316 staff were previously employed by twocareers companies (which ceased trading in April2002) covering the two local authorities. Serviceswere based on those provided to ‘clients who arein education’ or those who are ‘out of education’.Specialist staff did outreach work to specificgroups, for example, drug users, young offendersand so on. Other staff were located withinpartner agencies, such as the voluntary sectorand YOTs. There was a policy of siting bothConnexions and partner agency staff in the samelocations. There were 35 Connexions sites acrossthe region, including three One-Stop-Shops and,in total, around 165 PAs. One form of specialistprovision was from a Learning Gateway Project,based at the Local Learning and Skills Council(LLSC). This had eight PAs, six of whom werebased with life skills providers. This continued

after the Learning Gateway was replaced by Entryto Employment (E2E) in the summer of 2003.

Senior managers of Midland ConnexionsPartnership told us that they had long recognisedthat building an effective team was notsomething that was achieved overnight. Itneeded concerted effort at a number of differentlevels within the organisation and on a numberof different fronts. They were also clear about theimportance of political negotiation during theearly stages of the development of thePartnership. They aimed to ensure that keystakeholders did not feel threatened bydevelopments, but rather to recognise theadvantages to be gained through cooperation;and managers were convinced that the effortinvolved was worthwhile. Most of this wasachieved in individually tailored meetings ratherthan through discussion or debate withinboardrooms. As well as this horizontal level ofpartnership formation, senior managers were alsoconcerned that they had a responsibility to workvertically within the organisation and tocommunicate the company vision. Seniormanagers addressed this on a number of fronts:selling the vision; investment in training;rewarding innovation and progress; and buildingself-belief, pride and morale.

Metro Connexions and Metborough

Metro Connexions covered a number ofboroughs across a very large city containing over100,000 young people aged 13-19. The boroughsvaried considerably in their demographiccomposition. Metborough was ethnically mixedwith over a hundred different languages spokenin its schools and more than a thousand refugeesin its secondary schools (around 12% of theschool population). One very distinctive featureof Metborough involved the mobility of itsinhabitants and the sharp contrasts of wealth andpoverty in close proximity. Post-16 educationprovision in the borough was covered by sevencomprehensive schools, two Further Educationcolleges, and many young people crossedborough boundaries both pre- and post-16.There were also 11 independent schools in theborough. Work-based learning was restricted tothe two colleges and only one private trainingprovider, although there was a range of otherproviders in adjacent boroughs within reasonabletravelling distance.

Building Connexions

8


Reaching agreement to bid to be a lead bodyConnexions Partnership was a major achievementgiven such a large number of local authoritiesinvolved. The boroughs differed greatly in theproblems they faced, their political complexion andtheir reputations for public services. The chiefexecutive (appointed in the summer of 2002) was alocal manager of one of the pilots that took placein the separate boroughs in 2001-02. He wastherefore very knowledgeable about the areas inwhich the Partnership operated.

Like the other models, Metro Connexions had aPartnership Board and several LMCs coveringeach of the local authorities. One key feature ofMetro Connexions that received favourablecomment from stakeholders was the way inwhich service planning was based on ideasdeveloped by each of the area LMCs and thestrong links between these and the centralstrategic Partnership team. This central team wasalso supported by the lead body authoritythrough service level agreements with its keydepartments. Apart from these agreements, MetroConnexions contracted for front-line serviceswith a number of different providers. In thissense it was a variant of the subcontractingmodel rather than a direct delivery model ofPartnership delivery. The main contract holdersincluded career companies delivering mainstreamcareers education and guidance services toschools and colleges, as they were doing prior tothe arrival of Connexions, together with theconstituent local authorities.

In Metborough there were 14 PAs employed bythe careers company and a further 22 employedby the local authority Youth Service. According toestimates of the size of the cohort, this gave ahigher PA to young person ratio than in either ofthe other two areas covered by the research. InMetborough the ratio averaged around 1:300,compared with 1:455 in Midland Connexions and1:550 in Nortown.

During the course of the research, and followinga consultant’s report, the PAs not employed bythe careers company became reorganised intothree discrete teams, each with a managerresponsible for the day-to-day supervision andsupport of the team. One of the teams offeredextra support to schools, another supported theOne-Stop-Shops and the third was a group of sixPAs operating in a number of specialist settings:City of Metborough College, the Housing

Assessment and Advice Centre, Medical CentreChildren with Disabilities Team, the YOT, aLanguage Support Unit, and the Leaving CareTeam in the social services department. Startingin 2004, Metro Connexions began a specialproject funded by the European Social Fundaimed at reducing the number of young peoplewho were NEET. This enabled access to specialfunds of up to £1,000 per person on the projectto help overcome barriers to work or training.There are similarities between this and theparticipation trial operating in Northern (seebelow).

Northern Connexions and Nortown

Northern Connexions Partnership was large,complex and covered around 180,000 youngpeople aged 13-19 drawn from a number ofdifferent local authorities. The chief executivewas appointed in the spring of 2002 and thePartnership started operating for the first time inthe autumn of the same year. Nortown wasconsidered by the Chief Executive Officer ofNorthern Connexions as one of the biggestchallenges. It had around 50,000 teenagers,spread across a large city, a number of smalltowns and a large rural area – three quarters ofthe district was classified as rural. The district hadclusters of young people from minority ethnicgroups, constituting around one third of theschool population. Nortown also had one of thelowest educational achievement rates in thesubregion and some of the highest NEET rates.

The Partnership was seeking to promotemultiagency work across the subregion throughthe issuing of multiple contracts to a variety ofdifferent service suppliers in the different localauthorities. In each LMC area the major contractholders included a careers company, the LEA, theYouth Service and voluntary sector bodies. TheBoard also supported a national pilot initiativefunded by the national Learning and SkillsCouncil – a one-year participation trial. Thisprogramme focused on support of a number oftarget groups including young people who wereNEET and those at risk of dropping out frompost-16 learning. This was done through supportfrom Key Workers, directly employment by thePartnership. As well as working with a small andtargeted caseload, Key Workers could also accessfunds to help, support and reward young

9

people’s participation, and where necessary, theirlearning or training costs.

The major contract in the city of Nortown waswith Careers Nortown, a private careerscompany. This funded a total of around 60 full-time equivalent PAs, most of whom wereworking in mainstream education and wereschool-based. Careers Nortown PAs also includeda ‘Community Team’ composed of seven PAsfrom a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. It alsomanaged one PA seconded to the IndependentLiving Team working with care leavers andyoung people who were homeless. Another PAwas seconded to the local YOT. These lattercontracts were not issued until August 2003, soworking practices and caseloads were not wellestablished. Contracts for other specialist PAswere delayed until late in 2003 and early 2004due to difficulties in identifying and agreeing ontheir deployment.

From the early planning stages there had beenreluctance across Northern to accept the need forConnexions to be organised on a subregionalbasis. Those involved had hoped that thesubcontracting partnership would allow for verysignificant delegation of authority and control toLMCs but the chief executive saw thingsdifferently. The first two years of the Partnershipat Board level had been a site for conflict andacrimony, a reminder that forced collaborationbetween agencies can sometimes occasionantagonism, bitterness and dysfunctionality aswell as cooperation, harmony and partnership. Anumber of different areas of grievance emerged.These included a perceived lack of consultationon the content of the second business plan, poorcoordination of efforts in the contracting anddeployment of the outreach facility, the directemployment of Key Workers under theparticipation trial, the need for a subregionalcomputer system, and the long delays in thedevelopment of contracts to cover the fullcomplement of PA posts across the districts.Many of those interviewed hoped that theconflict that was a feature of the first two years ofthe Partnership Board had come to a close. But itis worth noting that, as the fieldwork for theresearch was concluding, a further round ofantagonism took place around proposals fordealing with a VAT bill crisis, and the possiblereversion to a lead body arrangement.

As we will see in subsequent chapters, whenpartnerships are not clearly signalled from theleaders of agencies and organisations, and re-enforced by agreements on joint working, thiscan have serious consequences for front-lineworkers. The next chapter examines interagencywork taking place in the three partnerships bytaking three case studies of young people withwhom Connexions PAs were working.

Change over time

Finally we should add a word of caution. ThePartnerships in the study have been developingtheir structures and patterns of workingthroughout the period of the research, makingany static description of the ‘current’ state ofaffairs problematic. For instance, the fieldworkfor the case studies took place between autumn2003 and spring 2004. Some of the data collectedis, at times, negative about the practicerelationships between partner agencies. As iscommon in the research process, these situationswill have changed, and may have improved,since the data was collected. Our intension is todescribe the situations as we encountered themso that more general lessons can be drawn by allPartnerships for the future development of theservice. In order to capture the dynamics ofchange, the chief executives of the threePartnerships were interviewed on severaloccasions, including an opportunity for them tocomment at the end of the project after they hadread an early draft of this report. We werepleased to learn that many of the areas we hadidentified as areas of weakness in the initial drafthad been ones they had also identified and spentconsiderable time and effort in attempting toremedy in the months following our initialfieldwork.

Building Connexions

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2Three case studies of workwith young people

In this chapter we provide a detailed descriptionof three case studies, one from each of theresearch areas, so that the reader is familiar withthe detail of some of the cases in whichinteragency work is taking place, as well as beingintroduced to the ‘inevitably messy’ contexts ofinteragency intervention and partnership. One ofthe important features of the design of thisresearch was in linking interviews with keystakeholders with individual case studies. Theformer gave insight into the strategy and localplanning of Connexions, and the latter anopportunity for a detailed examination ofinteragency work in practice.

The overall selection of the cases to include inthis project differed slightly between the threeresearch areas, with different Connexions‘gatekeepers’ being used to recruit PAs who werewilling to take part. In all areas the sametemplate of ‘case types’ was employed so that wecould explore how the different Partnershipsworked with YOTs, care leavers, young peoplewith special educational needs and otherinteragency contexts. The inclusion of a casealways depended on the young person explicitlygiving ‘informed consent’ to taking part in theresearch (and, in the case of young people underthe age 16, we also obtained parental consent),and also agreeing to an ‘information sharing’protocol for the purposes of the research. Allyoung people taking part were promisedanonymity and are referred to here by apseudonym. Some young people chose a newname for themselves; others have been renamedin the interests of confidentiality. All youngpeople taking part received a gift in recognitionof their contribution to the project.

Sal (Midland Connexions)

Pre-16 negotiation of responsibilities andbarriers

Sal lived in the Midland Connexions area andwas an intelligent and bright young person whohad a history of intermittent attendance atschool. She was referred to a Connexions PAfollowing a disclosure to a member of staff at ayouth centre. The PA was located in theCommunity Education (Youth Service) team,housed in the Youth Office where the youthcentre/club had its venue. It transpired that Sal’sattendance at school had been patchy since theage of 14, for varying reasons. Latterly she hadbeen experiencing panic attacks. At some point,Sal’s school had referred her to the local socialservices department, owing to concerns abouther lack of attendance, and what was potentiallyhappening at home. Despite this, it appeared thatsocial services were not expressing concernabout what was taking place, although it was amatter related to potential physical abuse by theboyfriend of Sal’s mother.

The PA took up the case when Sal was in Year 9,that is, 14 years old. Sal’s mother had receivedletters about non-attendance, and had been‘threatened with Court’. The PA arranged with Salto meet her in school and talk about some of thereasons for her not wanting to attend. By liaisingwith the Head of Year at the school, anagreement was made to allow Sal not to go intosome of the non-exam lessons that she clearlydid not want to attend, with the intention ofsecuring attendance in other subjects, andmaking better use of her time in school. Therehad also been discussions about a semi-workexperience package, but this could not get off

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the ground as Sal was not yet in Year 10, aprerequisite of such packages. At the time, the PAwas encouraged by the school to spend timethere, mainly in topping up Sal’s motivation toattend.

At that time, Educational Social Workers (ESWs)were school-based, that is, responsible for certainschools, and the PA worked with the school’sESW, encouraging Sal to attend. This relationshipwas found to be mutually beneficial, and for awhile the work paid off, with Sal’s attendanceimproving. When Sal entered Year 10, the Headof Year agreed to Sal embarking on workexperience, and a placement at a localhairdressing salon was secured by the PA for oneor two days a week, subject to Sal continuing toattend school. Sal was very excited about this.However, following a change in schoolpersonnel, the PA received a letter from a schoolmanagement group questioning the PA’sinvolvement and overturning the Head of Year’sdecision, stating that he had not beenempowered to make decisions of this kind. Themanagement group wanted Sal to return tolessons, as other young people might think they“could have it [work experience] as well”. So Salwas told that she was not allowed to do workexperience, and her attendance at schooldropped again.

On the occasions when Sal did attend school,she was finding it increasingly difficult to copewith being there. The Head of Year 11questioned the involvement of the PA and wasreported to have said “it may be best if youdidn’t see Sal in school”. However, at this stagethe ESW stepped in and made a formal referral toConnexions to ensure the PA’s continuinginvolvement. They worked together, makinghome visits to identify difficulties and discussproblems with both Sal and her mother. Itemerged that Sal was experiencing high levels ofpanic at school, feeling confused and distressedby ringing bells and the rushing environment.

The PA and ESW negotiated with the school toagree a plan. The school preferred that Sal takework into the library at school, rather than doingit at home, although Sal said that no work wasset for her, and she felt she was wasting her time,sitting in the library doing nothing. In addition,the school were not satisfied that Sal wasexperiencing panic attacks, and wanted evidenceof this. In association with a GP and Sal’s mother,

a referral was made to a psychologist. Sal’smother’s relationship with her boyfriend hadbroken down, and she and Sal moved to avillage with a high level of unemployment and areputation for having little to occupy youngpeople. The mother was dropping Sal off atschool on her way to work, but Sal was unableto cope there, telephoning her grandfather to sayhow distressed she was. Soon after, her PAreported that Sal had “actually got to the stagethen when she wouldn’t even leave the house”.The psychologist diagnosed agoraphobia. Theschool finally agreed to send work home for her,but Sal’s mother claimed that no work arrived. Salbecame increasingly depressed, and was takingmedication for this.

She was referred by the school to a council-based special service, Education of Children Outof School (ECOS). The ECOS worker wanted Salto remain on the school roll in case things didnot work out with ECOS provision; the schoolwould therefore continue to have a duty toeducate her. At a review meeting between thePA, ESW, ECOS and a member of school staff, apackage was agreed in conjunction with theschool.

During the school holidays Sal improved inhealth, and had managed to get herself out of thehouse. She had a boyfriend, who was quite a bitolder and who seemed to the PA to be quitecontrolling. After the holidays, Sal was unwillingto return to school and her mother was inagreement. With these considerations in mind,the PA took the lead in discussing an alternativepackage with the school, who agreed to the PAinvestigating what this would encompass. Anearby college, which was experienced inworking with Year 11 pupils with issues whichprevented them from attending school, presentedan attractive option for Sal. She was convincedthat this would provide her with an opportunityto “have an education”. Sal attended meetingswhere she described her history and took anassessment test, which she passed with a goodscore. The college agreed that Sal could startthere with the new intake of Year 11s. Theschool told Sal that they would “write a letter” toher, and requested details as to course costs,which the PA obtained across a variety ofscenarios according to the levels of supportprovided or agreed. The PA and ECOS workerwere delighted that a flexible package hadapparently been secured. Sal was committed to

Three case studies of work with young people

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making a new start, enthusiastic about theoptions provided, and confident that she wouldbe able to cope in a less bustling environment.

The day before the end of the school term, priorto the summer holidays, the PA received a brieffax from the school, listing several points. Thefax noted that the school was unwilling to fundthe college course, that they needed more detailsabout the course itself, and if Sal was able tocope with college, she should be able to copewith school; she should therefore attend schoolfor two days a week. The status of the referraland thereby the PA’s involvement was again alsoquestioned. The PA telephoned the school topoint out that if final decisions were to be takenat the beginning of the next term, Sal would bemissing the beginning of the year but, accordingto the PA “they just basically said ‘no’”.

Coinciding with these events, Sal’s mothercontacted the PA to say that Sal was actingstrangely and she was worried about her. The PAbecame involved in supporting Sal’s mother, as ittranspired that, under the influence of herboyfriend, Sal had started to use drugs. Eventsspiralled, and Sal, then 15 years old, wentmissing for six days, during which timeneighbours had seen her “squealing around thevillage” in her boyfriend’s car. Sal’s mothertelephoned the social services department, whotold her to call the police. The mother’s househad been “ransacked” and she was increasinglyfrightened. When Sal and her boyfriendeventually turned up at the mother’s house, Salwas bruised, in a drugged state and “hysterical”.The boyfriend assaulted the mother, who wasafraid to call the police at first, but later waspersuaded to do so by the PA. A neighbourintervened and was threatened with a knife bythe boyfriend. Sal and the boyfriend disappearedagain, leaving Sal’s mother very fearful andfeeling that she would not be able to control Salshould she return. At this point the PA contactedsocial services, who said that they did not thinkthere was anything they could do. When pressedby the PA, who put in writing her concerns forSal’s safety, social services responded with aletter:

“Then I got the letter to say that [reading]‘Dear Maureen, I’m writing to let youknow that following a consultation withmy manager, it’s been decided that socialservices will not continue with

involvement. Sal turns 16 next week andis already involved with a large numberof agencies, it’s not felt there is anythingwhich social services could usefully add,I will therefore be closing Sal’s file at thisoffice’.”

While Sal was still missing from home, herboyfriend was arrested for burglary. He was alsocharged with abducting a minor, as it turned outthat he was 25 years old and Sal was under 16.The police took Sal back to her mother’s house.Sal’s mother phoned the PA (using a mobilephone number), as she was at a loss to knowwhat to do with Sal, who was screaming, abusiveand violent. The PA, who was away on holiday atthe time, arranged for another Connexionsworker to advise her. An appointment thefollowing day with that Connexions worker didnot happen, owing to the worker’s difficultpersonal circumstances on the day. At this point,the PA referred Sal to an Alcohol and DrugsAdvisory Service (ADAS) worker, who succeededin working very closely with Sal. He sharedlimited information by keeping the PA informedon Sal’s progress, but without disclosing details.

Sal’s mother felt she was unable to cope withher, and so Sal moved to live with hergrandparents. By this time her boyfriend was inprison, although Sal visited him every weekend.While Sal was still referred to ECOS, her mothercontacted the PA to say she was continuing toget letters from the school threateningprosecution for Sal’s non-attendance there. Withthe mother’s permission, the PA contacted theschool and ECOS to explain the situation. ECOS‘closed her file’ (and ceased working with Sal)until her drug situation had improved. But theyreopened it when Sal was feeling better, and wasstarting to want to “do something”. An onlinelearning package was agreed, although this wasslow to start, as further agreements as to howthis would be financed and practically arrangedwere not simple to achieve. The PA felt:

“… angry that she’s a young person, Ithink, [who] if she’d been in anotherschool from Year 9 it would be adifferent story. It’s just this one schoolhas poo-poo’d … everything that we’vetried to do to move her on or to deliveran incentive there’s been, they’ve gonealong with it and then they’ve cut itdead. And it’s sort of like they’re not

13

keen for anyone to be involved orquestion what’s happening here.”

Sal’s feelings were:

“It gets me angry that they tell mesomething, tell me one thing and theydon’t do it, you know. So each differentperson’s come out and told me they’regoing to do something for me and theyhaven’t and then it makes me loseinterest. I think, ‘Well why should I do it?If you can’t be bothered why should Ibother?’”

Aged 16 at the time of the interview, sheexpressed a quiet understanding of the effortsher PA had made on her behalf:

“She tries but then someone else higherabove her or whatever tells her that itcan’t happen, so you can’t really have it.”

The PA remained optimistic that Sal could befound a work experience placement prior to theboyfriend’s release from prison, to enable Sal toachieve some independence and motivation forherself, and gain some sort of qualification.

Key questions

Sal’s case study illustrated some of the inherenttensions Connexions workers had to face inworking across institutional barriers. Her PA wastrying to ensure that Sal got the best out of herpre-16 education, but Sal’s school had not alwaysappreciated the intervention being planned, andon more than one occasion had vetoed it,refusing to give the financial support necessary.It must be emphasised that this degree ofhostility and lack of cooperation is not usuallyencountered. This case study does raise someserious structural and systemic issues about thecapacity of the Connexions Strategy: can it fulfilits aims without the cooperation of key partners?And what can be done with them to secure amore effective partnership?

In Chapter 3 we detail evidence that suggests thatone of the key ways in which PAs build trust andrapport with young people is being able topromise and deliver services others have failed togive. If other partners delay, deny or obstruct theservices being made available, then that not only

affects access to the services themselves, itundermines a relationship of reliability and trust.Part of the skill involved in partnership workingis to be able to effectively negotiate and ‘broker’services. Where services and obligations are notbeing provided or fulfilled, part of the PA’s taskis to act as an ‘advocate’ for the young person inensuring that partners deliver them. Some of the‘brokerage’ and ‘advocacy’ can be ensured bysenior stakeholders at Board or LMC level, orthrough agreements between senior managers ofpartner agencies. Yet some has to be carried outby PAs in their daily dealings with schools,school managers and others. What Sal’s storyillustrates is that such partnerships may well runinto differences in perceptions of the issuesbeing addressed, conflicts of interests, and basicdifferences in cultures of responsibility betweenagencies who are charged with working together.

Tariq (Northern)

Connexions at the margins and too littleinformation sharing?

Tariq’s family were of Pakistani origin and at thetime of the research he was 17. He lived with hisparents and his two (older) sisters and a youngerbrother. His mother did not work and his fatherwas ‘long-term unemployed’, so the family hadno income other than benefits. Tariq was firstreferred to the Connexions community team inDecember 2002. His PA contacted the YouthOffending Team (YOT) to let them know shewould be acting as his Connexions PA.

Tariq’s YOT file indicated that he had beeninvolved in a street robbery in a neighbouringtown and given an eight-month Detention andTraining Order in a Young Offender Institution(YOI) in 2002. It indicated that the robbery forwhich he was sentenced had been undertakenwith a friend during the period when Tariq wastaking his GCSEs. He had had the day off forrevision between exams and had gone to see hisfriend in a neighbouring town. Here they hadforced another young person to give themaround £5. Tariq’s friend had a replica guntucked into the waistband of his trousers. Theyhad shown the gun to the victim. There wasCCTV tape of the area in which the robbery tookplace and both were later arrested as they were


14


using the money to play on slot machines(gaming machines) in an arcade in the nexttown. His YOT case worker became involvedbetween his conviction and the sentence andwas involved in preparing the pre-sentencereports.

His YOT worker did not undertake the initialassessment of Tariq himself but referred to thestandard assessment (ASSET) on file. Theassessment had involved a home visit as well asone-to-one interviews with Tariq. He wasdescribed as “having a lot of problems at home”,and his father as “a strict disciplinarian”. Whenwe interviewed him, Tariq said his parents wereupset at his arrest and his father had beaten him.

“Got battered. It’s life innit! If I didn’t getbattered that violently, I would havedone it again every day.”

His YOT worker says that, at home, Tariq is seenas a “really polite young man” but outside withhis mates he liked to present a more glamorousimage of himself:

“I think he likes to show he is ‘one ofthe boys’ and he wants a lot of ‘streetcred.’… ‘I am Tariq; I’ve “my boys’.”

This was something about which his YOT workerhad continuously challenged him.

Tariq had done quite well in his GCSEs; he hadobtained nine passes, although not particularlygood grades. Tariq said he was disappointed,although, in his YOT worker’s view, he had doneas well as could be expected. Tariq wanted tobecome a car mechanic and had initiallyregistered at Nortown Further Education Collegebefore the offence took place. There isuncertainty about whether he ever started thecourse because of his impending trial, but hisimprisonment and consequent lack of attendanceled to deregistration in February 2003.

After Tariq had been sentenced, his YOT workerhad arranged an initial Detention and TrainingOrder meeting at the YOI. This had involved YOIstaff, his YOT worker, Tariq and his parents, andthey had agreed a ‘care plan’ mainly focusing onhis education and training needs. It also involveda ‘MORE’ course – Motivating Young Offendersto Re-think Everything – and a victim awarenesscourse. Tariq was not able to take a course on

motor vehicle maintenance as all places werefilled, mainly by offenders likely to serve muchlonger sentences. The courses he did takeinvolved ‘fixing TVs’ and ‘electrical wiring’ aswell as Mathematics, English and IT. His YOTworker said that Tariq was shocked by theconditions in the YOI:

“When I initially saw him he was veryfrightened. The whole experience wasnew to him. It was nothing like hisexpectations.... And I think that came asa big shock to him. And, when inside, herealised, ‘This is not me and this is notmy life’ … when he was in prison he didNOT like it.”

Tariq was released ‘on tag’ (electronicsurveillance and a curfew) after three months,with the Detention and Training Order requiringhim to complete the training part of his orderwhile living in the community. However, almostimmediately there was an incident, the details ofwhich remain disputed. Tariq’s version, which hetold at the end of our interview with him, was asfollows:

T: “Bit nasty stuff happened. You know.My parents and all that…. After I cameout of jail, then a few days later I did amission again, didn’t I? And then I wasin police station and see my dad. Andhe flipped and the police station coppergripped him. And I legged it, whatever,back in my cell and locked myself in,and all.”

Tariq told us that he had been caught after a carchase riding in a stolen car with a friend. HisYOT file, however, indicated that he had beenarrested with a friend for shoplifting sweets andcrisps. What is not disputed is that, after hisarrest, Tariq’s father went to the police station.His YOT worker told us:

“… his father turned up at the policestation. And made threats like ‘I amgoing to kill you. You have dragged myname through mud. And, you know, youhave just come out of prison and youhaven’t learnt your lesson.’ But I don’tthink his father was realising that Tariqwas growing up, and he needs pocketmoney. And if you don’t give him that,what is he going to do. And he wanted

15

to be with his friends. He smokes. Andhis father was not acknowledging thesethings.”

The police wanted to release Tariq on bail but herefused to go home and emergencyaccommodation was arranged for him by theYOT in a local hostel. This was done by the dutyofficer as Tariq’s YOT worker was not on dutywhen the events occurred. But on the Mondaymorning, both Tariq and his mother were waitingfor him in some distress.

“And his mother broke down, and thereare issues about domestic violence, andTariq witnessed a lot of it. And he wassaying, ‘I am not going to put up with itany more’. And he’s grown up, and he’sgoing to charge his father with it. Andobviously I’m advising her that she canput a complaint in.… But she said, ‘Nothat’s fine’, and she wanted to go backhome to her husband….

“But she was worried about Tariq goingback home. She thought there was agenuine threat from his father to givehim a serious beating. And from thatconversation I gathered that Tariq hasbeen through it before.… Tariq wascrying, he was weeping, in front of hismother. Was literally crying when all thishappened and he was so scared.…”

On release, the YOT worker had also referredTariq to a ‘mentoring’ project funded by theYouth Justice Board and working in partnershipwith the local YOT. The scheme also worksclosely with the families of Asian youngoffenders and involvement with the project startswith a home visit in which all family membersare encouraged to be present. This is followedby a five-unit course for the offender based oncognitive behaviour therapy, followed by a‘residential’ where the mentor is chosen. Tariq’smentor also worked as a ‘learning mentor’ inlocal schools, something he admitted hadprevented him having as much contact with Tariqas he would have liked:

Interviewer: “How many times have youseen him?”

Tariq: “Never. Only at the bus stop whenhe’s going to school. He goes and works

at … [girls’ school].… He works upthere. And then he goes in mosque –he’s a Sufi, so its hard isn’t it. He goes tothe Mosque training, teaching kids atschool. No time for me.”

One of the managers at the mentoring projecthad proved instrumental in arranging a trainingplacement. Since his release from the YOI, Tariqhad been seeing a Connexions PA who had beentrying to get him involved in a number oftraining courses. She knew he wanted to take acar mechanics course and had arranged oneinterview and test for him, but he had failed thetest. She had then organised a course at NortownCollege together with training at a local provider,but he had not turned up for interview. Time hadpassed and the college term had started whenthe manager from the mentoring projectintervened on Tariq’s behalf. He rang the collegeto confirm that the main course on motormechanics was indeed full. But he managed totalk one of the tutors (a friend of his) into lettingTariq and Tariq’s friend on to another course thatinvolved learning-related practical skills such aswelding. Both his Connexions PA and thementoring manager kept in touch with Tariq’sprogress and found that he and his friend initiallydid much better than most others on the course.With hindsight, both wished that Tariq had goneon the course on his own, and not with hisfriend as they thought he was ‘easily led’. Therewas an incident at college involving a securityguard and one of the tutors. Both Tariq and hisfriend were excluded from college: Tariq forswearing, his friend for threatening the tutor andanother member of the class. Tariq thoughtracism was involved in the behaviour of the classmember, the tutor and the police when theywere called. But he did not want either his PA orthe mentoring scheme to intervene on his behalf.

Despite all this, Tariq’s PA has continued workingwith him trying to give him a new start. At thetime of our interview, Tariq had been spendingmuch of his time at a local gym, out with friendsor at his friend’s house playing on computers. Hestill had ambitions to become a car mechanicand, after training, raising a loan and running agarage with his friend – but he has a long way togo. His PA fixed him up with an E2E coursebeing run by the Youth Service, which Tariqthought looked promising:


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“That’s a proper place for youthoffenders – swearing and that. Thecollege don’t like that. Because whenyou go to college they record everyswear you say, every lesson. Mine hadabout 200 swears and all this and that.[But] that’s the talk innit.”

Tariq’s YOT worker regarded Tariq as now “offtheir books”, although his record remained ontheir computer system. This contained importantinformation about his turbulent family life andthe circumstances in which he had offended inthe past. His YOT worker did not regard Tariq asa particularly difficult offender to work with, justa “bit of a softy”, “easily led” and sometimestempted to avoid the authoritarian nature of hisfamily by entertaining fantasies of being a localgangster with “his boys”. None of these‘judgements’ were being shared with hisConnexions PA. A different Connexions PA hadbeen allocated to the Youth Offending Team and,as a member of the Team, had access to theinformation system. But this was not beingshared with other Connexions PAs working withoffenders, including Tariq’s PA.

Tariq’s Connexions PA seemed unaware of anyissues concerning his home background. She wasyouth work trained and described herself ascomfortable working with both the English andPakistani communities. She thought that she goton with Tariq and he described her as “sound”.But she thought it inappropriate that she shouldenquire into his previous offences or thecircumstances in which these occurred or toprobe too closely into his home circumstances.She had asked him about his homecircumstances and he had told her there were“no issues”. We also asked about whether aformal Connexions assessment (APIR) had beencarried out with Tariq and about informationsharing with the Youth Offending Team. An APIRhad not been used with Tariq although, at thetime of the interview, it was being used withnew clients. She recognised that an ASSETassessment would have been made by the Teambut this was not information that was yet sharedwith Connexions. As she explained:

“I think that eventually all these thingswill pass on. But because I think at thetop they have not got all the agreementssigned for information sharing, to behonest with you. ‘Cos I’ve never been

told or briefed that I am supposed to[pause] ask them for their assessment. It’snot put in with the referral. So thesystems are not really in place yet.”

This PA was reluctant to be proactive in seekingout what might be relevant backgroundinformation about her client, and this effectivelyrestricted her role to that of, fairly narrowlyconceived, careers education and guidance work.

Key questions

This, and other cases covered in the research,illustrates some of the potential problemsinvolved when information is not sharedbetween agencies. Whether Tariq’s PA wouldhave responded differently to his needs had shebeen aware of the content of his YouthOffending Team file is difficult to assess. Likeother PAs in the study, she was reluctant to pryinto issues her client had not willingly disclosedto her. This made any genuinely holisticassessment of his needs impossible.

Two other aspects of this case are interesting andimportant. First, interviewees gave very differentversions of Tariq, his criminal activity, his familycircumstances and his exclusion from college.Only one version is recorded on an electronicdata base, in this case the Youth Offending Teamsystem. One important element of mostinformation-sharing protocols is the agreement ofthe subject that information about them can beshared. It would have been inappropriate in thisresearch to have asked Tariq whether he wouldhave been willing to have his file made availableto his Connexions PA. Yet it is also clear that,when asked by his PA about any problems athome he chose not to reveal anything. Did hisPA ‘need to know’ about the violence he and hismother suffered at the hands of his father?Should Tariq have been allowed to keep aspectsof his family life ‘private’ and unexplored by hisPA? Would a more rigorous use of the APIRConnexions assessment system necessarily haverevealed these details? Would the transfer ofYouth Offending Team records at the point ofreferral or later have led to a helpful, orobtrusively unhelpful, sharing of family secrets?Would Tariq have benefited from this?

Second, although the lack of information sharingin this case may well have been due to the slow

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development of information-sharing protocols inthe Northern Connexions area, at the time of ourresearch information was not beingsystematically shared between Youth OffendingTeams and Connexions in either of the other twoPartnership areas. In the case of Tariq, hisConnexions PA also thought that suchinformation sharing was inappropriate. Indeedthere were other cases covered in the research(see Chapter 3) in which there were formalagreements with voluntary sector agencies thatinformation about young people should not bepassed on to Connexions. For information to beused systematically and effectively, therefore,requires much more than the establishment of aprotocol. It requires that this be incorporated intoagreed working practices in which PAs aretrained, managed and supervised to ensure theseare systematically followed. Some PA also needto be convinced (by both training andsupervision) of the importance of informationsharing and the use of APIR assessments.

A third point highlighted by this case relates tothe different roles played by a Connexions PAand other professionals working with the sameyoung person. In the case of Sal, discussedearlier, the PA clearly saw her role as championof Sal’s rights and key advocate of her welfare,despite opposition from others. In the case ofTariq, the Connexions PA was content to allowothers to take the lead. Initially this was becausea custodial sentence stood in the way of thedevelopment of Tariq’s learning career. But shewas also content for the mentor scheme managerto take the lead in brokering his post-releasecollege course for him, because he seemed tohave better leverage with the tutor than she did.She also concurred with his judgement about notintervening with the college when Tariq wasexcluded, despite suspicions about the possibilityof a racist element in the incidents surroundingthis. She seemed powerless to arrange anotherplacement until the E2E training provider gaveher a start date. In partnerships, some partnershave to accept that they are junior partners. Butthis case does raise questions about how centralthe PA was as advocate for the promotion of thewelfare of her client. Sometimes, however,always trying to play the lead role as a strongadvocate can create difficulties for the PA, as isshown by the next case.

Sam (Metro Connexions)

A young carer with post-16 barriers to learning

The third case we examine is taken from theMetro Connexions area. The deployment of PAsin Metborough included a large team with thecareers company largely delivering the universalservice in schools and colleges, a specialist teamworking with schools, as well as those workingin agencies such as YOTs and Leaving Careteams, and those working with One-Stop-Shops.

Sam was a 17-year-old white male who lived in aone-bedroom council flat with his 75-year-oldfather. His mother died a few years ago leavingSam and his father living alone. He had an olderbrother who had his own place. He and hisfather had lived in the flat all of Sam’s life. Theymanaged by using the sitting room as a secondbedroom. Sam had a ‘guardian’ who was a friendof his mother and who lived in a distant town.He sometimes spoke with her on the telephoneand she visited him sometimes. While she wassupportive she was not in a position to help himfinancially. He also had friends at a local Catholicchurch.

He attended a sixth form in “a good school” inMetborough, although Sam lived in a differentborough covered by a different ConnexionsPartnership. As was made clear in Chapter 1, itwas not unusual for young people to go toschool in one borough and to live in another.Sam had done well academically in his 16-plusexaminations, achieving nine A-C grades GCSEsand one D grade. He had been in contact withhis Connexions PA for approximately one year.She was an ex-teacher and he was initiallyreferred to her by his Head of Year because hewas not able to complete successfully his firstyear in the sixth form. Sam’s father was describedas being ‘infirm’ and showed signs of dementia.Sam had cared for his father for some timewithout any support, doing what he could tolook after the house, provide meals and tookfrequent calls from his father during school time,to the detriment of his studies.

“He once called me six times in 15minutes while I was in a lesson. And itcould be quite testing because I have totry and be patient with him and it can bereally hard.”


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Sam also had issues with his own motivation andwith his own health, as he was quite overweightand there was concern about his diet and hisability to look after himself. It was clear that Samdid not have anyone else to look after him.

The only household income was Sam’s father’spension/benefits, and so Sam had difficulty withmoney and making ends meet. At one stage heeven struggled to come into school at all becausehe did not have the travel expenses. His father’spension money was often cashed by Sam’s olderbrother who was said to have an alcoholproblem (see below). Initially Sam was notthought to be entitled to benefits in his own rightbecause he lived at home and was in full-timeeducation. The first work that the PA did withhim was to try to help him with money, helpinghim to apply for an Educational MaintenanceAllowance (EMA). He eventually received this,back-dated for the whole academic year, and fora while things seemed to settle down. As theimmediate problem of money was solved,contact with his PA reduced.

During his first year in sixth form (and afterinitial contact with the Connexions PA), therewas also a violent incident involving Sam and hisbrother. Sam approached the local social servicesdepartment (Children and Families Division)about this. He was seen by a social worker fromthe assessment and referral team of the boroughwhere he lived rather than Metborough. WithSam present, the social worker telephoned theadult social services team about his father. Hewas advised to contact the police about theassault but declined to do so. In addition, thesocial worker contacted a Connexions One-Stop-Shop for benefits advice. But this again was inanother borough and in a different ConnexionsPartnership area. Sam also approached the One-Stop-Shop but declared it to be “terrible”. He saidthe staff there did not try to help him and did noteven have the right (EMA) forms. His school PAalso had no meaningful contact with his homeConnexions area. Sam was not taken on caseloadby social services but was invited to return infuture if he felt the need to do so. He wasdisappointed with the lack of help he receivedfrom social services:

“They just spoke to me and didn’t offerany advice. They didn’t chase upanything, which wasn’t particularlygood.”

Sam’s PA was employed by the Youth Service andwas part of Metborough schools’ team givingextra support to those with high levels of need.She asked her line manager, the school’s SocialInclusion manager, whether she should get incontact with the social services team that Samhad approached, but was advised not to do so.The PA reported that her line manager said that itwas the responsibility of the Social Inclusionmanager to liaise with social services as childprotection was part of her role. Sam’s PA initiallythought that he had an allocated social workerwith whom he had been in contact, but afterspeaking with social services they denied this.

At the time of the research, Sam was repeating ayear at school so he could take his AS levelsagain and, hopefully, get better grades. Therewas a problem with his EMA for the currentacademic year, insofar as the EMA departmentwere asking for further documentation about hisfather’s income and Sam was having difficultyobtaining this. His father was not able to engagefully with what was happening. Because of this,Sam was re-referred to the PA by his Head ofYear. The PA tried to help with this by calling theEMA team in the borough where he lived. Butthey were unable to discuss individual cases (andbecause of this unable to say anything to theresearch team).

There was clearly a lack of ‘joining up’ ofprocedures and practices concerning theadministration of EMAs, despite this being part ofthe Connexions Strategy. EMAs will beadministered through a national body as ofSeptember 2004 and local authorities will ceaseto be involved. This change will not impact uponthe problem of EMA staff being unwilling todiscuss individual cases with PAs because of dataprotection issues.

“They [the EMA team] know my dad can’tdo anything. They know I’m in full-timeeducation but they still won’t let me doanything over the ‘phone without mydad there. I try to ‘phone up with Sarahthere and can’t get anything donebecause my dad’s not there. Dataprotection and all that – red tape.Sometimes I have to miss lessons just to‘phone up.… Most of the offices close at5pm.”

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In the interim, Sam received some ‘emergencyfunding’ from Connexions, which was held bythe careers company. This was similar to ahardship grant. Also, unknown to the PA, for ashort time the school were giving Sam help withhis travel expenses. She felt that no one wasreally taking a coordination role and this wasbeing made worse by relationships within theschool, and having to deal with different localauthority areas.

“I found out yesterday that the schoolwas giving him travel allowance and Iknew they were giving him travelallowance, but after I mentioned that I’dnow actually got the fund, the fundingfrom … Careers, my line manager said,‘Oh, well the school will put somemoney up as well. Just find out from theschool’. And it’s that kind of, nobodyactually being, having an overall pictureof what’s happening.… And in my pointof view, that is what a Connexions PAdoes. And it’s a prime example of a casewhere that is absolutely vital, but it’s, Ithink it’s not happening because ofvarious things.”

Sam’s father was soon due to move out of theflat and into sheltered housing. Sam said thatsocial services had told him this was because hewas not doing enough for his father. Sam washoping to keep the flat and become the maintenant when he became 18. But there werequestions remaining about how he wouldsupport himself and pay the rent. Sam should beentitled to Housing Benefit and Income Supportas long as he is in full-time, non-advancededucation if no one is acting in place of hisparent. However, if he goes to university afterthis, he will be liable to pay full rent and counciltax. At the time of the research he was receivingsome support from his girlfriend’s family, goingto their house for meals and sometimes stayingovernight. Ben hoped his girlfriend would movein with him if he got his own flat.

Most of the young people on the school PAcaseload have issues with their behaviour. This isoften the main reason why teachers and Headsof Year refer them. The PA said she was seen bythe schools as someone who is there to sort outindividual-based behaviour issues. This is quite acommon perception in all areas, as we will see inthe next chapter. Yet Ben did not have issues

with his behaviour and so, in this sense, did notpresent a problem to his teachers. As such, notall young people who perhaps should be workedwith actually do receive attention. Ben wasreferred to the PA because his attendance atschool started to be affected. Yet, interestingly,quite a lot of fixed-term exclusions occur at theschool, but the PA is rarely involved. Indeed, apupil being excluded does not mean anautomatic referral to the Connexions PA.

At the time the research was undertaken, the PAdid not think that her role within the school wasclear, nor that the range of her responsibilitieswere particularly appreciated. She did not haveher own room, and her desk was located in thestaff room.

“When I got to the school the Head hadno idea what I was supposed to bedoing and neither did my line manager. Ithink they like it on paper, they like tobe able to say to people, this is thesupport we provide for students who arehaving difficulties. But in practice, Iwould say, 75% of the senior staff areactively against the work that I’m tryingto do.”

She felt that there is quite strong organisationalopposition, as she explained:

“Connexions really is a youth agency asopposed to an education establishment. Ithink they find their own values verythreatened by Connexions’ ethos oflistening to young people and youngpeople being at the heart of something.Whereas, although I think it probablyshould be the same in schools, it’s not.And it can’t be, because of the way thesystem is. And it just doesn’t, it doesn’twork together … they don’t wantsomeone coming in from Connexionswith all the Connexions-speak.”

The PA did not feel part of any widerConnexions Strategy, trapped as she was within aschool environment. She reported feeling that,since she was a teacher, she had taken “threesteps back” professionally in terms of the respectshe was given within a school environment andthe level of responsibility and autonomy she had.


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“I think because I work full time in aschool I’m really removed from the restof the service. I feel really removed …certainly the ideas and the aims andobjectives of Connexions sometimesdon’t seem to fit with what I’m doinghere. I feel like I’m more part of theschool than part of Connexions. And Ifeel like my work is controlled by theschool rather than by the aims ofConnexions. So there’s that – always atussle between what Connexions isaiming to do in my role and what theschool wants me to do and the thingsaren’t marrying together, they just seemto be worlds apart really.”

This gave rise to concern over who she wasactually pleasing, if anyone:

“I’m never quite sure if I’m doing theright thing by the school, by Connexionsor by the young person.”

There was a learning mentor at the school butthe roles of the PA and mentor had beenseparated rather than joined up. The mentorworked with Years 7, 8 and 9 and theConnexions PA worked with Years 10 to 13.Clearly Connexions work is intended to be withyoung people aged between 13 and 19, but thePA feels that there are other reasons for thisdistinction:

“I have turned into a learning mentor forthe older ones.”

Continuity of Connexions support during schoolholidays and when young people leave schoolwas also an issue for school-based PAs, as werereferrals between the different teams and otherConnexions-sponsored activities. One of these isthe Positive Activities for Young People’s (PAYP)programme, mainly leisure and sports-basedactivities particularly designed to work with thoseat risk of disengagement. There were somereferrals from the school PA to PAYP whereyoung people meet the PAYP criteria. Also, PAYPtends to be group activities, therefore referringon to PAYP does not necessarily mean continuityof one-to-one support.

Key questions

Although there are some similarities to the issuesraised by the first two case studies, Ben’s caseshows a lack of clarity in terms of the definitionof the role of the PA, particularly when they areworking in organisations which are not theirown. There are also issues concerning the levelsof responsibility and autonomy accorded todifferent professional workers, and the impact onthe morale of PAs when their best efforts arebaulked by others. It further raises issues ofwhere such problems of interagency workingmay be best resolved and what tactics managerscould adopt in trying to forestall the frustrationsof front-line workers. In this case, none of theusual strategies for coordinating efforts, such asthe calling of case conferences between all theworkers involved, were attempted.

This chapter has introduced multiagency workunder Connexions through three case studies.We have intended to give the reader a flavour ofthe day-to-day challenges faced by ConnexionsPAs when delivering the aims of the Strategy. Thenext chapter builds on the case studies andstakeholder interviews in order to examine thekey issues thematically.

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3Issues and challenges ininteragency working

The case studies discussed in Chapter 2 raisedsome fundamental issues about the problems andchallenges of interagency working. This chapterdraws on interviews with key stakeholders andcase studies in order to analyse a range of thoseissues. In addition to focusing on analysis, thechapter provides insight into the practicalchallenges being faced by Connexions PAs andfellow professionals in their daily lives. We alsofocus on some of the main mechanisms throughwhich interagency work takes place, and howthese interface with the working relationshipsPAs have with young people.

Much of this chapter is concerned with theparticular means, procedures, mechanisms androles through which interagency working takesplace. This includes how referrals are made, thesharing of assessments and information, as wellas the distinctive roles played by Connexions PAswhile acting as supporters and advocates toyoung people when involving other agencies. Webegin by discussing the ways in which the sizeand shape of interagency networks aredetermined, and the level at which Partnershipsfoster and develop different sorts of frameworks.

Determining interagency networks

As pointed out in Chapter 1, some of thesenetworks are determined nationally. This issignalled by the number of Cabinet Membersignatures on strategy documents, and by theguidance given to Partnerships about thecomposition of their Boards and LMC. Thisindicates the sorts of institutional parameters thatshould be covered by interagency work underConnexions. The presence of some agenciesrepresented at a Board level did not mean thatthe strategies agreed by the Board necessarily

would be implemented. Understandably, onehead teacher on a Partnership Board cannotdeliver the cooperation of all schools in thesubregion. Representation on a Board by a chiefexecutive of a strategic health authority did notmean necessarily that all the relevant healthservices were committed to interagency workingwith Connexions. A single senior policerepresentative could not automatically delivergood working relationships between Connexionsand the Youth Justice System. Many Boardmembers did not have channels with which tocommunicate with their constituency ororganisation about Connexions, nor did manysee it as their duty or function to do so (see theAppendix).

Two other levels are of crucial importance inbuilding the frameworks within whichinteragency work takes place. The second layerconcerns the functions, through senior managers,of the range of services that are potentiallyinvolved. Careers company chief executives, YOTmanagers, social services managers, YouthService managers, Teenage Pregnancycoordinators, head teachers, college principalsand heads of student support services, togetherwith the managers of some voluntary sectorprojects, are each crucially important in a numberof ways. These include signing up their agencyto partnership agreements, or protocols of jointworking, or information sharing. Some of thismight be facilitated by, or even through, LMCs,although many members regarded meetings as anopportunity to conclude and confirm previouslyagreed arrangements rather than as an occasionto initiate them. Responsibility for much of thissecond-level development of the network,therefore, rested on the ability of the Connexionslocal manager to negotiate with the appropriateagencies. The importance of this should not be

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underestimated and, of course, building thesenetworks takes time. Yet it is often only throughthe managers of services that working practicesand expectations can be established. Withoutclarity at this level, the nature of activities whichfront-line workers carry out routinely cannot beformalised as ‘required’, as distinct from being‘tolerated’. If overt recognition of roleexpectations has not been identified, it is PAsthemselves who have to deal with theconsequences, as will be illustrated later.

The third layer in determining networks isthrough the activity of the front-line workers.Even without the stipulations of a National Unit,or formal protocols and/or partnershipagreements locally, front-line workers willdevelop informal networks with people theyknow and with whom they have worked. Theseinformal networks are vitally important and mustbe recognised as such. They are not, however,the basis on which a secure and stable platformfor interagency working can be built. If oneworker leaves, the network may well be lost. Butsometimes such informal networks can beencouraged, fostered and supported by moreformal arrangements at the other two levels.Indeed, all the different levels have the capacityto re-enforce each other. Mandatory training forPAs, for instance, may give people the toolsthrough which effective interagency workingmight take place. But many of the PAs we spokewith argued that the most valuable aspect of theirtraining experience was in meeting others fromadjacent agencies and learning about the workthat they did. The relationship between all threelevels is illustrated by a participation trial KeyWorker in Nortown (see page 55) who spoke ofher baptism of fire into her new job:

“The first two months has really beennetworking and promoting the rolebecause there is politics … particularly inNortown around the Key Worker role …I think there’s been a lot of animosityaround the Personal Advisersparticularly.… There’s been quite a lotof back-stabbing I think, yeah, youknow. And so it’s kind of like having tobreak down professional barriersbecause you’re working with peoplefrom other organisations who ... I thinkfirstly the whole Connexions Strategy’snot got its message across. People likeschools still, see, they’ve got a careers

person in post. What’s Connexions, whoare you, why are you here, you know. Ijust think the message hasn’t got outthere to other partnerships, really.”

The basis of effective intervention:building a relationship of trust

At the heart of effective working with youngpeople is establishing a good workingrelationship. Sometimes this is based on theworker making a concerted effort to get to knowthe young person, or trying to engage with themin informal settings. At other times the workersimply may have to wait for the young person totell them things that may be important, but willnot be shared until the worker has gained theyoung person’s trust. As one PA said:

“I do think the quality of the relationshipis, well it’s crucial really. And so I do tryand invest a lot of energy in that, ’costhat’s going to sustain us through all theups and downs….”

At times it was a matter of being able to dothings for a young person that others wereunable or unwilling to do, such as physicallytaking them to an appointment at a hospital:

“It makes the young person feel betterabout themselves as well. You’re notdoing it just ’cos it’s your job and you’regetting paid for it.”

Yet how is a good relationship with a youngperson established? One youth worker inNorthern talked explicitly about it as a set ofstepping-stones in which the first ones werecrucial:

“How do you build rapport? It’s amillion dollar question isn’t it?... It’s thenature of our relationship with thatyoung person because we’re non-threatening. It’s never a teacher/studentrelationship…. But we’re very non, non-judgemental of that, you know.… Whenthat young person now feels that theycan talk to you and sit there and tell youanything they want to tell you, that’swhen you know you’ve got rapport.…”

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“Well communication, they say onlyseven per cent is, is through words.…Ninety-three per cent of it’s bodylanguage, you know.… So one of thethings I do is ‘match’ ... it might bematching behaviours slightly, ormirroring their behaviours slightly. It maybe mirroring the way they speak, usingthe words they use.…”

“I’m from here, I’m from here ... I knowyoung people in Nortown ’cos I was onemyself ... and I know a lot of the needsof the young people in Nortown, I talk tothem a lot.”

“Humour’s one of the most importantthings. If you can make them laughyou’ve won them over.… It’s all on thatfirst meeting. On the first meeting,whenever I meet a young person, I haveto speak to them totally in private. But …that’s the moment when you catch them.If you don’t get them then you’ll neverget them. You’ll never ever get them.”

Forming good relationships is a key principleavowed in all social practice settings. By remit,PAs occupy roles that extend beyond briefinterventions, taking account of the widercontexts of young people’s lives. Getting toknow young people, respecting their choices andrepresenting these is part of the process ofrelationship building. It provides space for youngpeople to engage with potential opportunities,and for PAs to establish themselves as referencepoints offering continuity and stability.

But how are such relationships maintainedwithin interagency working and how might theybe helped by it? We turn now to the mostfrequent starting point in interagency work,namely, referral of cases from one agency toanother.

Referral: procedures and processes

Part of the training that Connexions PAs andother co-workers undertake is on how thereferral of young people to Connexions workersis best handled. Referrals may come from otherprofessionals, parents or young peoplethemselves, and are argued to be at their mostsuccessful when they contain information about

the involvement of others, and where the workbeing done by other agencies is clearlydocumented. Efficient referral is seen as thefoundation of effective interagency workingwithin Connexions (Connexions, 2003a). Inpractice, however, such procedures are notalways possible to observe, and many PAs saidthey had no alternative but to start to work witha young person where referral had beeninformal, with no accompanying paperwork andwith little background being given by thereferring agency.

Some referrals were based on something assimple as a telephone call from anotherprofessional. In Northern, perhaps because theysometimes expected to start work with individualcases as quickly as possible (to intervene in orderto prevent a minor problem turning into a majorcrisis), participation trial Key Workers (see page55) often knew little background to a case:

“I’m not sure they did have anything onpaper. Sometimes we do and sometimeswe don’t. ’Cos we normally get it overthe ‘phone … and to be honest, when Iwas new in post I didn’t even know thatthere were special forms for referralsbecause nobody told us and nobodygave them to us.… You find out thingsbit by bit, by accident…. It would cometo me by ‘phone, yeah, … I’ve writtendown here – ’phone call.…”

In Midland Connexions, where practices weremore fully developed over time, some PAs hadstarted to resist referrals that resulted frominformal contact with other workers:

“You could be walking down thecorridor and you get a worker who’ll say,‘I’ve got a young person, can you seethem?’. You know, we’ve said ‘There is areferral process and we have to stick tothat’. It’s like, if you’re working in hereyou get YOT workers coming, in ‘I’ve gota young person can you just have a fiveminute chat with them?’. We’ve had tosay ‘No, we can’t do that, you have toput the referral in and do it properly’.”

There was also significant variability betweenareas as to the likelihood of referral beingaccompanied by formal assessments. PAs

Issues and challenges in interagency working

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working alongside a YOT in Midland Connexionswere able to access the ASSET assessment:

“When we get a referral, attached to thereferral is a pre-sentence report.… Andwe’re also given a copy of an ASSETwhich is an assessment on the youngperson, so we have all that information,so we do work with it.”

As we saw in the case of Tariq in Chapter 2, thiswas much less likely to take place in Northern.However, a PA in a different Midland Connexionsteam argued that referral and assessmentnecessarily had to be flexible:

“We all work very differently andperhaps because a lot of our work ispractical and out and about.… Actually,sitting down and doing a load of forms isvery low on our agenda. And also I’mprivy to lots and lots of information andthe ASSET assessment. And, we’re notout to duplicate and to make a youngperson go through repeat processes anddo things they’ve already been through.So I rely on the ASSET and speaking tothe YOT practitioners to get a lot ofinformation. And I also do a lot ofassessment by observation.”

Referral processes are often used dynamically tofurther the interests of young people, meetingtheir needs at given moments rather than beingregarded as finite activities:

“They’ve been very careful about theConnexions role within YOT. They seeit as a strength, the fact that I’m avoluntary intervention, and the youngpeople, you know, they’re encouraged tocome and see me … and if they miss anappointment I’ll home visit, I’ll ’phoneup. I’ll try and do what I can to keepthem interested and wanting to, butthere’ll come a point where if theychoose not to work with me, if they saythey’re not interested in the support andthe opportunities that I can offer them,then it’s batted back to the YOT workerto work on some of the other issues –why is this then, what’s getting in theway of them wanting to engage with me,have they got some anger management,drugs, what’s going on [pause] and I

think it’s just a case of YOT then tryingto keep me in the back of their mind andthen make another referral, if and whenthey can.”

At times, the fluidity required when referring toPAs or other agencies presented difficulties interms of workload and its caseload management:

“They [referrals] come direct to us, so wehave like a pigeon-hole with all ourreferrals in and we’ve got loads at themoment, so we’ve got, we’ve got about20 young people each between myselfand Gina, and that’s a lot and it, youknow, we’re trying to dwindle thenumbers down really, ’cos you can’t dowhat you want to do with that amount ofyoung people … so the pressure’s stillon, but what we do, we look throughthe referrals and, you know, if it’s anurgent case then we’d refer them straightto the One-Stop-Shop.”

Identifying who might provide what kinds ofservices in order to suit the young person’s needsat a given point was vital. This was frequently amatter for negotiation between different workersand agencies. At its best, a robust referral playeda part in determining the start-point forappropriate work. Where referrals were lessdetailed or specific, considerable time was spenton ‘getting up to speed’ with why help wasrequested or expected by the referrer. In effect,work began afresh.

The flexibility in referrals into and out ofConnexions conferred both advantages andlimitations for interagency work. Whereprocedures were loose, it became difficult for PAsto determine or control the flow of their work, orthe specific nature of it. Where insights intoneed, or more formal assessments, did notaccompany referrals, the attendant lack ofcontinuity for the young person required ‘doingsomething’ quickly. This, in effect, served tomitigate the gaps in communication. In caseswhere such gaps were apparent, PAs spentintensive periods of initial contact with youngpeople that were positive, insofar as they helpedto build necessary relationships. The implicationhere, however, is that workers did not necessarilybenefit when referrals were formal: practice wasnot always accelerated.

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What comes next? What doConnexions workers actually do?

In this section we comment of the variety ofdifferent roles taken by Connexions front-linestaff and the different things they do. This coverstheir involvement in making detailed assessmentsof the needs of the young people they workwith, brokering services of a range of otheragencies and acting as advocate on the youngperson’s behalf. Yet not all PAs fulfilled theirroles in the same way. The final part of thissection comments on the different roles they playand the impact this difference has onunderstandings and expectations of Connexionsby those who deal with PAs in differentcircumstances.

Assessment of young people’s needs

As we have seen, in some circumstances referralscame complete with an assessment by anotheragency and many PAs saw no need to duplicatethe process. However, in other circumstances,assessment needed to take place. Connexionstraining recommends its own preferred meansthrough which this is conducted (CRG Research,2002). Within the training of PAs, the assessmentand the planning of interventions is covered byAPIR which seeks to give guidance on: howindividual cases are assessed (A), activitiesplanned (P), implemented (I) and reviewed (R).Not all PAs have completed all of the diplomatraining programme, although training in the useof APIR is now given through a separate trainingmodule (Connexions, 2003b). Since April 2004,APIR assessment has been mandatory for allyoung people with acute needs. The assessmentpart of APIR suggests that 18 different areas ofneed could, or should, be explored including:skills attained through education and training;family and environmental factors; issuesconcerning personal physical, emotional andmental health; and social and behaviouraldevelopment including issues about motivationsand attitudes. Assessment should explore adimension from positive strengths to complexdifficulties on each of the 18 facets (Connexions,2004).

The APIR system encourages workers to usediagrams in their assessments. These indicate theintensity of needs in various different areas of

review and subsequently allows the worker toplot any progress made. A PA in MidlandConnexions explained:

“A lot of the young people I work with,everything would be in that critical bit inthe middle – [critical and/or complexissues identified – inner ring]. And it’smeant to be a visual guide to howthey’ve moved on and they need to bemoving on to be able to see somepositives. So I think you have to be verycareful how and when you used it. Andthe other thing is things like ‘motivation’[is] one of the little sections. Wellmotivation’s such a huge area and … I’mnot quite sure … how useful that wouldbe. And you’d have to know what areaof motivation you were measuring thattime to make sure it was the same areaof motivation you were measuring nexttime, to be able to have a, some value indoing that.”

Some workers were enthusiastic about therecommended methods of working, butnevertheless were wary of moving into a detailed‘formal’ assessment too soon, lest it impactnegatively on establishing a good relationshipwith the young person. Others regarded it aseither common sense, or what they have beendoing informally anyway. One participation trialKey Worker was positive:

“I mean from what I’ve seen of thetraining we did, it looks like, it looks likea very comprehensive assessment. I thinkit looks fairly positive ’cos you, you’regoing to adapt it with each individualyoung person. So you’re not going tohave to go into every, each of the 18segments in detail if it’s not appropriate.But I think anything that gives you akind of tool and a guide is positivepersonally.”

Another, less so:

“I mean, I realised when I did APIR, Ithought, well this is just what I’ve alwaysdone anyway.… They accepted that theway particularly Key Workers areworking, often, you know, you meet thekid in a cafe. There’s no way you’regoing to sit there with an 18-page


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whatever and, you know, drawing on asheet and, you know.… It might takeyou months to work your way throughthat process with somebody.”

A youth worker in Northern was working mainlywith young people either excluded from, or atrisk of, exclusion from school:

“In order to get a young person to thestage where they’re going to go throughthe APIR … I think the APIR … isfantastic. I’m really impressed by it. [But]the young people that we work withhere, you’re not going to get them intothe Connexions office to sit there and gothrough that ... because it doesn’t, they’renot at that stage yet.”

Other PAs thought that APIR potentially gets inthe way and, as may be anticipated, someresented the time it took complete detailedinformation on potentially unwieldy or unreliablecomputer systems.

Brokerage and interagency work

Much of what Connexions does, in terms ofinteragency work, involves what the trainingmaterial refers to as ‘brokerage’ (Connexions,2004). Indeed the early calls for a new youthsupport service described it as a youth ‘broker’(Bentley and Gurumurthy, 1999). What thisimplies is that, as well as listening to andassessing the needs of young people andagreeing on an appropriate course of action, thePA will then try to arrange for the delivery of anappropriate service from other service providers.Providers will, of course, differ according to thetype of need being assessed, but typically mayinclude housing and accommodation, benefits,specialist health or drug support, as well as acourse in education, a training programme, anemployment opportunity, or leisure services.

Brokerage often involved PAs in negotiating withdifferent agencies with very different culturesand professional practices. Housing, JobcentrePlus, and social services were cited by PAs in allareas as being not easy to deal with for a varietyof reasons. For instance:

“I find housing the most difficult to workwith. It’s a number and because we don’t

work in that style it’s very frustratingwhen you’re liaising with them becausethey just want a number and I hateworking with them. It’s not really theirjob to meet the needs of the youngperson, it’s their job to house youngpeople or adults but it’s very impersonal.We’re all about being personal.”

Sometimes this was because the agencies inwhich PAs worked had their own rules, prioritiesand organisational constraints. Some PAs workingin schools, for instance (as in the case of Sal inChapter 2), found that senior managementpersonnel could be hostile to the sort of workConnexions was trying to bring about. The KeyWorker in Nortown quoted at the beginning ofthis chapter says she experienced hostility fromboth schools and from other Connexions PAs.

In Metborough, both Connexions and theCareers Service had ‘One-Stop-Shops’. The onerun by PAs employed by the Youth Service,however, did not have the relevant forms foryoung people applying for Jobseeker’s Allowanceunder the Hardship Provision (ES9). At the timeof the research, these were only available fromthe careers company within MetboroughConnexions.

Most of the PAs doing work other than careerseducation and guidance in mainstream schoolswere expected to be familiar with a wide rangeof patterns of local provision. This covered the‘welfare of young people’ in its broadestmeaning. As one of the PAs in MidlandConnexionss commented:

“We have to know something abouteverything – whatever the topic mightbe, we might be called upon to know abit about it, and for the whole of thecity.”

As far as education and training was concerned,sometimes this could be reasonablystraightforward. But fitting together alreadyexisting patterns of provision to the assessedneeds of the young person was not always easy.For instance, one common complaint was aboutthe shortage of courses that could be flexibleabout start dates rather than insisting thateverything and everyone must start in September.In some areas, however, there were also dire

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shortages of high-quality training. A youthworker in Northern, for instance, argued:

“… Having spoken to many of the PAs(’cos I attend a lot of their meetings)there isn’t actually much in Nortown forthe young people to do. Fine … you doan assessment, you decide what best fits... the category of this young person ...the modern apprenticeships. Most ofthem ... in Nortown have collapsed.There isn’t actually anywhere for theyoung people to go. They’re actuallynow telling young people you’ve got totry and get your own placement.… Imean it’s, it’s completely lost the plot,you know. There’s only a very smallpercentage of young people who areactually getting back into it, you know,into E2E. There’s nobody who wants totake on young people ... as apprentices.”

If the places are not available there is little the PAcan do, which of course potentially impacts onthe quality of the working relationship.

Ensuring that young people attend interviews,register and attend their courses, or sit down tore-plan where things went wrong when theydrop out, all forms part of the PA’s work. Mick, inNortown, was initially placed on a course in thecity centre, but he left of his own accord becausehe was fearful of getting in with the wrongcrowd. He had a conviction and was afraid thesefriends were enticing him into stealing again. HisPA arranged a second college course in aneighbouring town that, again he left, becausethis time he thought he was getting too muchhomework. It was only when he was placed onan E2E course training in building skills whichwas nearer to where he lived that he seemed tobe more settled. Choosing the right course, at theright level, with the right content, in the rightplace was something of an art form, especiallywhen start dates could not be flexible.Furthermore, the suitability of courses was oftentied to other facets of a young person’s life,especially whether they were living in suitableaccommodation and had sufficient support tomaintain a work or study regime.

As with ensuring support in sustaining courses oflearning, Connexions PAs spent a considerabletime and effort supporting, checking and ‘hand-holding’ to ensure that accommodation needs

were met. One PA in Midland Connexionssexplained the degree of support she tried to give:

“I can’t attend tomorrow when he[another young person] goes for hisaccommodation appointment so I said tohim ‘Can I ring you?’. ‘Yes.’ So I’ll makeat least two ’phone calls to himtomorrow. I’ll ‘phone him at ten o’clockin the morning to make sure that he’s onhis way and then I’ll ring afterwards.”

Similar sorts of support were offered in the otherresearch areas, especially to those deemed mostin need. Robby, a black British care leaver inMetborough, was one young person with whoma PA was working intensively, with some contactat least once a week. In order to maintain thisand to try and build his confidence, the meetingssometimes involved them playing squash orbadminton together. The case, however, alsoillustrates some of the restrictions within which aPA must work. Like the other young people inthe study who were leaving care and startingindependent living, Robby was subject to theroutine practices of the local authority. Until theage of 16 he had been brought up in foster carein a different borough. He had done quite well atschool but not well enough to ensure he couldtake academic A-levels and be on track to fulfilhis ambition to go to university as the offspringof his foster carers had done. Social services inMetborough often move young people back intothe borough for independent living, as the PAexplained:

“So young people go out of the boroughwhen they’re in care and then they turn18 and we get them a flat. We fast trackthe council route and get them a flat thatbrings them back into [Metborough]because that’s where we have to placethem. So they leave their foster families,networks they’ve built up, maybe friends,maybe children of the carers. They leaveall that network and move into[Metborough].”

After Robby had left his foster placement he haddropped out of a number of courses that hadbeen arranged for him. Opinion differed betweenthe various professional workers trying to helphim as to the main causes of him dropping out.The linkage between accommodation problemsand the ability to sustain learning placements


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was also an issue in Northern, as we will see inthe next section. What is important to note is thatsome of the main barriers to being involvedeffectively in learning were structural rather thansomething that the workers or their managerscould influence directly.

Advocacy: the PA as the ‘powerful friend’

The work of Connexions PAs was not merelyconfined to putting young people in touch withservices. Often to the most vulnerable youngpeople, PAs became their ‘powerful friends’. Asone young person, Arnie, told us:

“She [my PA] enjoys it [her work], shetold us, so she’s always got a smile onher face. Another good thing about Melis if even if she’s on her dinner break,like, I can get in contact with her, I cansay, ‘Mel, I need you’ and even if she’son her dinner break she’ll still come andsee me, so she’s pretty cool. Like I saidshe’s not like a careers officer, she’s morelike a friend, a high-powered friend.She’ll listen, that’s what I like about her.”

Arnie’s situation showed a long history of contactwith his PA, starting at a point prior to theexistence of Connexions, when he was 14 yearsold and excluded from mainstream school. Therehad been various interventions with him,including outreach work in the community. Atthe time when he became involved with thisresearch, Arnie was 18 years old, unemployed,claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance and HousingBenefit, and living with his partner and three-month-old baby. During the time he had been incontact with Mel, he had greatly valued hersupport:

“She’s helped me a – well, a lot of thetime, getting to training and stuff to getme back on track. I did have a sort of,well not a drug problem, but I wassmoking a hell of a lot of cannabis, shegot me off that, she helped me with that.I used to get in trouble with the lawbefore because, like, everyone else hadthings and I didn’t, so I was going outand getting them myself, and shebasically helped me with that as well.She helped me at school, college.”

PAs actively battling for their clients wasillustrated in more detail by the cases of Sal (inMidland Connexions) and Sam (in MetroConnexions) in Chapter 2. As in these cases,advocacy could mean confronting a number ofdifferent agencies, something that requiresconsiderable skill, courage and diplomacy. It wasnot always the Connexions PA who was bestplaced to fulfil this role. In three cases in theNorthern research area, the role of advocate wastaken by workers in voluntary sector projects,and in a further three the advocacy lead wastaken by professionals other than ConnexionsPAs. What was important was that someoneshould be there to be the advocate and that thedivision of labour was clear and planned.

Benefits and/or entitlements to financial supportwere areas where workers not only gave advice,but often took a more proactive role to interveneon a young person’s behalf. This was particularlyimportant in the case of a young mother inNortown. Mandy’s PA had left Connexions to joinSure Start Plus when Connexions ceased tosupport the work the careers company was doingwith teenage parents. Mandy was taking a full-time course at a local college while continuing tolive at home with her parents. She continued hercourse after reaching her 29th week ofpregnancy; indeed, she had her baby during thehalf-term break and continued her course after it,with own her mother looking after the baby. Shehad made three unsuccessful attempts to claimbenefit from the Jobcentre and was on the edgeof dropping out of her college course as shecould not afford the travel costs. She had visitedthe Jobcentre Plus office on several occasions butwas told repeatedly that she had no entitlement,or that her mother must claim extended ChildBenefit. It was her Sure Start Plus worker ratherthan her PA who intervened on her behalf:

“The under-18s at the Job Centre, are notyoung people friendly. And I knew theywere wrong. So all I did was pick Mandyup, go down, tell them they were wrong.And she ... I made them fill forms inthere and then and I made them write onthe form, and she’d given thisinformation to them and it neededbackdating.”

“I’ve had young people having to writecomplaint letters, I mean in this job [SureStart Plus] could do that on behalf of the

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young person. I couldn’t at Careers.…We weren’t allowed ’cos of red tape andpolitics at the top somewhere.”

In Nortown there were plans for the co-locationof the Jobcentre Plus advisers working with theunder-18s and the Connexions One-Stop-Shop.This was initially planned to take place inJanuary 2004 but had still not taken place by thetime the research ended, due to disputes withunions about safety arrangements for their staff.

Although all young people in Nortown includedin the case studies had a Connexions PA, someof them had only fleeting contact with them.These included young people who had acuteneeds. For some of these, advocacy was beingcarried out by workers in the voluntary sector.One case involved a charity supporting peoplewith disabilities who lobbied social services(albeit unsuccessfully) on behalf of a youngperson with special educational needs. He hadbeen at home (NEET) for a year at the age of 17,being looked after by his mother and with nocontact from his PA. A youth worker, who wasworking with a 14-year-old Asian boy withspecial educational needs, intervened and calleda case conference after the boy disclosed that hewas being bullied at school and beaten at home.His PA, who had a caseload of around 600 in amainstream school, had attended the caseconference, but had no other contact with him.

Repeated and persistent advocacy on behalf of ayoung person was being undertaken by workersat a voluntary sector project working with youngwomen thought to be in danger of beinggroomed for prostitution. This involvedprotesting when one young woman (Ghazella)was returned home from care shortly before shereached the age of 16. Later workers lobbiedsocial services on her behalf about unsuitable(temporary bed and breakfast) accommodationwhen she was returned to care, and later stillthey tried to insist on the completion of a‘pathway plan’ which had still not been agreednearly a year after her 16th birthday.

Like other ‘looked-after’ young people includedin this research, this young woman had a numberof different professional workers in her life alltrying to help her. But this case helps highlightsome of the problems in working togethereffectively. Ghazella eventually obtained her ownflat but was worried about the implications this

had for the other decisions she had to make, herability to pay for it when she reached the age of18, as well as what she should most sensibly doin the meantime:

“The maximum they will pay is £350. I’vegot to think about how I will pay for itonce they stop paying for it in 2 years.I’m thinking shall I get into college nowinstead of thinking shall I get a job topay for it. If I sort out my education nowthen I can get a better job to pay for itlater.”

With accommodation arranged, what should shedo next? And who was best placed tounderstand her needs and advise her? AcrossConnexions, social services and the voluntarysector project Ghazella had numerous PAs andKey Workers (a total of six). But there seemed tobe little planned divisions of labour betweenthem. There was some agreement of roles andplanned interagency work within a voluntarysector team, to which Connexions made a smallcontribution (one half day a week). But linkswith social services and the Independent LivingTeam seemed conflictual in nature rather thanpredicated on principles of partnership andcooperation, despite Connexions having a PAlocated in both the voluntary sector project andthe Independent Living Team.

A confusion of different roles played by PAs?

What is clear in the three areas is that, despitethe generic title ‘Personal Adviser’, PAs performvery different roles. In Metborough, at the timeof our fieldwork, a number of PAs commentedon the ways in which PAs employed by thecareers company and those employed by thelocal authority were still operating separately andhad distinctively different approaches to theirwork. Giving careers advice and guidance was,of course, an important skill many PAs musthave, something many ex-careers officers were atpains to tell us. Many PAs employed by careerscompanies in Metro Connexions and Northernare carrying out work in delivering what wasdescribed to us as ‘the Universal Service’, verydifferent work from those carrying out moretargeted work. In schools and colleges manyprofessionals saw the same faces from the oldcareers company doing what they thought wasthe same job prior to the arrival of Connexions.


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Yet many PAs saw their ‘Connexions PA’ role asvery different from this. One in Metboroughcommented:

“It [careers and Connexions] is twoseparate things. Without a doubt it is.And, it will remain, I think it will remainthat way because the careers staff areactually very different people. Careerspeople have got into that kind of workfor a reason. And it’s usually a quitedifferent reason to why people in our[Youth Service PA] work, not just the waythey get into it, but why they stay in it.They’re much more bureaucratic than us.And they’re much more regimented inthe amount of time they spend and whatthey will do. And how much supportthey will provide. So to expect us all tobe doing exactly the same thing, I thinkit’s unrealistic. And a lot of them don’twant to do it. They don’t want to be aPA. But they have to be.”

Many PAs working in schools, even special needsschools, were doing work that was largely thesame careers education and guidance work doneprior to Connexions. One head teacher of aspecial needs school was disappointed andexasperated by this, and the fact that this stillfailed to meet the needs of the case beingdiscussed with him:

“Connexions in Nortown is just theCareers Service rebranded. I feel totallyfrustrated and fuming that all this moneywas supposed to be coming.… There isno difference to the way the services aredelivered, it’s just a change of label.… It[support from the PA for the case beingdiscussed] should be someone within theschool who knows him well … able todiscuss his timetable regularly anddiscuss with him what he needs – anindividual timetable which could involvea mix of school, college, work, leisureneeds, including outward boundcourses.… We thought this was whatConnexions was all about. Why can’tthey provide support workers/transitionalworkers to support placements … andadministrative support so they meethealth and safety requirements?”

Among those PAs working intensively with asmall number of young people there weresignificant differences in their deployment andapproach being followed. Some PAs wereattempting work ‘generically’ and ‘holistically’, inthat they would assess and try and meet a wholerange of needs that a young person might have.Others were sometimes placed as a singleConnexions PA within another agency, workingas part of a multiagency, interdisciplinary teamdealing with client groups such as offenders orcare leavers. Yet even where PAs were deployedin such settings (including those in voluntarysector), the work that they did depended verymuch on what others within the team defined astheir roles. More often that not, even thesespecialist PAs seemed to restrict their work togiving advice on education, training oremployment rather than more generic andsupportive roles.

In Metro Connexions, support from PAs was attimes arranged through a network establishedbetween different PAs who were each playingdifferent roles. This was illustrated by the case ofKathryn who had a long-running dispute abouthousing with two different councils. Both initiallyrefused to accept responsibility. Kathrynregarded her allocated college PA as her saviour– an advocate who had “made things happen” forher:

“The fact that Metborough have acceptedme is all to do with [her PA]. It really is.The fact that she’s been pushing for meto get in touch with them. The fact thatshe’s been, just there, helping me. Andshe’s liaised with them quite a lot, toldthem what’s going on. And giving theminformation about me and stuff. She’sjust great.”

The housing department that eventually helpedher also had a Connexions PA located there. Hewas playing an influential role within thedepartment in relation to his co-workers andensuring successful outcomes for young peoplewith whom he did not have direct contact. Yetthis PA remained concerned about confusion ofroles and duplication of effort:

“When I think about it, I’ve come acrossmore problems of duplication withinConnexions than between Connexionsand other organisations.”

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While not all Boroughs had such a PA located ina housing department, this seemed to beproviding a vital link in a network, ensuring thatother PAs carried out their ‘brokerage’ workeffectively.

In all partnerships, PAs were working as part of ateam, although more integrated teamwork wasmore evident in Midland Connexions, the longestestablished partnership. Here there was mostevidence of cross-referral between differentworkers:

“We actually ask on the referral formwhat their status, what this youngperson’s status is, do they have anyassessments of any sort … did they haveany other professionals or servicesworking with them which would tell usabout drugs or sexual health … thereasons for referral and what support isrequired for this person. And … throughthat referral form we should be able tomake a slight judgement or assessment tosay, it’s an emotional need, Jim couldwork with this. Or it’s a careers need,Helen would work with this.... We’re notpossessive of our clients, but we’re notthere to say this is your client, that’s yourclient, we are ... it’s an open service andit’s a cross-referring services. So ourclients will have the input of the wholeConnexions teams at some times, whichwill be focused in different things.”

Establishing a skills mix within teams was,therefore, regarded as important.

Agreement on the coordination of roles andinformation sharing in interagency work

Working together as a team for the benefit ofyoung people sounds an eminently sensiblething to try to achieve. But, as we have seen, itdoes present a challenge when the team is madeup of different workers, steeped in differentorganisational traditions and cultures, withdifferent qualifications and training backgrounds,and where work sometimes has to take place indifferent parent organisations and on theirpremises. Power struggles are not confined toboardrooms or council chambers. There arestrong temptations for professional workers todefend well-established working practices and to

resent outsiders. As one of our stakeholderspointed out, effective partnership sometimesinvolved flexibility, modesty and a willingness tobe led as much as an ability to lead:

“They see us as good partners …because we are flexible and we areprepared to be a partner where we’re thejunior partner. Now too many people areonly prepared to be a partner if they’rethe lead. I personally took a view a longtime ago when I said to them, ‘Youknow, I want you to be valued aspartners and that means on occasions,you know, you shut up and you don’tsay, yeah, we’ll lead on this, we’ll leadon that’. Because otherwise [it’s a bunchof] leaders rather than being teamplayers.”

Divisions of labour and working together

Many of our case studies covered by thisresearch involved a number of differentprofessional workers working with the sameyoung person. Nationally, no fewer than ninedifferent documents have been produced abouthow agencies should work together and whoshould play the lead role as PA where the youngperson was dealing with several agencies at thesame time (Connexions, 2002a-f, 2003a, 2003b).There were some instances in which networksseemed to be well-developed, flexible andeffective.

The professional network surrounding Peter inMidland Connexions was relatively extensive.Peter was an unaccompanied minor, an asylumseeker from Kosovo, who had come to Englandin a lorry, accompanied by his cousin. Thoseworking on Peter’s behalf included a field socialworker and his manager, an anti-drugs sportsofficer funded by the local authority, a specialistproject Connexions PA located within the socialservices team, and a further Connexions PAresponsible for training, based at a One-Stop-Shop. Peter was living with a foster carer at thetime of being interviewed for our research. Eachworker recognised that interagency working wasfunctioning well on Peter’s behalf, despite theawareness that he was not happy with his livingsituation, and was wanting to move to a townwhere his cousin was living. Each worker feltthey were touch with the others, and each knew


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their respective areas of responsibility andtherefore where each were likely to take a lead.All felt able to request a meeting to reviewprogress and difficulties, and one such reviewtook place as our case study was starting to takeshape.

There were issues concerning Peter’s age, whichhe claimed was greater than official recordsshowed (under 16), and this had implications forhis freedom to choose where he lived and makedecisions for himself. The local authority hadresponsibility to foster Peter only within theirown boundaries and proposed to review thesituation when he turned 16. Those involvedwith Peter had seen him improve over a periodof around two years, although all were awarethat he was not happy. Peter did decide to moveout of the area and went to live with his cousin.He was technically ‘missing from care’, althougheveryone was aware of where he was. His socialworker and others had visited Peter and haddecided that they would rather know that he wassafe and where he was than force the issue byhaving the police return him to their localauthority and run the risk of him disappearing.The Connexions specialist PA had referred Peterto the local Connexions Service where a PA, whohad also worked with Peter’s cousin, looked foropportunities to occupy Peter, as part of hisvulnerability related to having no income and noschool place. The Connexions staff were able tooffer support regardless of local authorityjurisdiction, and felt this to be a great strength interms of continuity. Although, formally, Peterwas ‘missing’, those with responsibilities for himwere retaining their professional boundarieswhile at the same time ensuring that he did not‘slip through the net’ and increase hisvulnerability.

Under the subcontracting model one mightexpect that the terms and conditions of contractsthemselves should make clear which roles andresponsibilities should be fulfilled and by whom.Yet there were numerous occasions (the cases ofSal, Tariq and Sam, in Chapter 2, and Mandy,Ghazella and Robby in this chapter) in all threePartnership areas where ambiguity and confusionoccurred. In a further example, it was left to arecipient of services who, although deeplygrateful to Connexions for the support it wasgiving to her adopted son, suggested a meetingof the different professional workers in order toprevent friction between them.

John had a turbulent history from a very earlyage, having been abused, abandoned and takeninto care at the age of one year. He was adoptedbut, especially in his teens, he had difficultiesand conflicts at home and at school. He hadtruanted from school during the 16-plusexamination period and left with noqualification, much to the exasperation of hisadoptive parents. He joined the army but hadbeen discharged after only a few days because ofconflict with officers and other recruits. Violenceand difficulties at home had led to him beingreferred to the Independent Living Team andhoused in bed and breakfast accommodation. AConnexions PA who was a member of the teamwas told about his background, talked to him“for an hour-and-a-half”, thought he was brightand deserved a second chance and arranged forhim to start a college course on ‘UniformedServices’. With hindsight, his social worker wasnot sure this had been a good idea and regrettednot sharing information about his history andbackground with the college, with John’sconsent. John’s file was flagged indicating thatcare should be taken in dealing with himbecause of his temper:

“I think that’s my social workbackground … he’s had a lot of conflictwith his parents and that could hinderand prevent him from being in a learningenvironment. And I think had we sharedthat with the college … we might havebeen able to support him more.”

His Connexions PA, although she had somedoubts when she took him to see the college,thought he was someone she could really help:

“’Cos I liked John straight away and Ithought, ‘Yes … we’ll get him sorted,that’s all he needs. He just needs achance to get in, once he got on to thiscourse he’ll be fine’.… I didn’t look atthe other sides ... there were a lot moreunderlying issues.

“What I find as well with this job …you’re there to put them in, ontoeducation and training. And I thinksometimes they are not ready, they needa lot more time to be able to deal withall these other issues.”

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John was asked to leave the course because ofconflict with tutors and other course members,found a place on another E2E course (includingan anger management component) and allocateda participation trial Key Worker. It was at thispoint that his mother called a case conferencethat she felt was needed to clarify roles amongthe different workers involved.

There were signs, however, that the Partnershipswere beginning to recognise the seriouschallenges they had in managing and supervisingPAs. In all three study areas the managementstructures changed during the course of theresearch (see the Appendix). In Metborough, anadditional tier of management was added, withthe team of PAs employed by the local authoritybeing broken into three different teams, eachwith their own manager responsible for day-to-day supervision. In Northern there was a growingrecognition that the tasks and duties of the PArequired much more support than the linemanagement that had been in place within thecareers companies. Support was felt to benecessary that was much more akin to close one-to-one supervision, and opportunities for allfront-line staff to discuss aspects of their workwith senior and experienced staff. In MidlandConnexions and Metro Connexions supervisionwas being strengthened and prioritised. In all thestudy areas, team meetings – opportunities forPAs to meet together to discuss practical issues ofcases they were dealing with and to share goodpractice – were becoming established.

Regular team meetings were seen by some PAs asone means of ensuring coordination, although itwas recognised that these could be time-consuming. One PA in Midland Connexions forinstance commented:

“We don’t have many formal meetingsbut we’re going to start to because it’sbeen raised a few times now, the threeteams, you know, me and the CLASP[Children Looked After Support Panel]team and the PA need to meet moreoften.”

At the time of the fieldwork in Metborough,careers company PAs and Youth Service PAs hadseparate team meetings, although there wereplans to have joint ‘away days’ and ‘recreationals’to encourage networking and working moreclosely together. In Northern, meetings of PAs

were just beginning to take place in the spring of2004 in an effort to share experience and goodpractice.

Confidentiality, information sharing and recordkeeping

One issue that remains difficult and unresolvedwithin interagency working under Connexionsconcerns the recording and sharing ofinformation. A general principle which allseemed to agree on was that information shouldnot be kept or shared without the consent of theyoung person concerned. One PA commented:

“I have in some cases bits of papersigned by young people saying I canshare information. I haven’t got that forall of them, but I’ve got their verbalagreement from the others, and everytime we see somebody we remind themof the confidentiality policy.”

Others in the same area were less clear:

“I did ask them whether I could actuallyshow my [project] colleagues what’s onthere. And I’m not really quite sure. Ithink again it’s down to me checkingwith the young person. If they are happywith that and if I have their permission,each individual gives permission, then itwas OK. If I don’t then it wouldn’t.”

Information sharing was regarded as particularlyproblematic when this might include sensitivematters. The PA working with Ghazella’svoluntary sector (at risk of prostitution) project,for instance, was very firm about the fact thatnone of her meetings or interventions at theproject should be recorded on the Connexionscomputer system. There was an agreement inplace between her manager and the project tothat effect. The Sure Start Plus worker also hadclients who were supported by the same project,but she was a little more ambivalent about suchtightly interpreted restrictions:

“We don’t get any information from [theproject].… I think it’s because of thenature of the organisation, becausethey’re dealing with a lot of childprotection and vulnerable young girls,you know.… What the project will do,


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they’ll ring me up and ask me to speakto A [another case]. They won’t tell mewhy or, do you know what I mean, theysometimes do that. They will tell theyoung person everything but they don’ttell you anything really.”

This worker did not have access to theConnexions database and there were no plansfor this to happen in the future. However,because of strong informal links, informationcould be shared without paperwork changinghands and without anyone having to log on tothe system, as she explained:

“Yeah, I’ll ring individual PAs and talk tothem about young people and do it thatway, but I don’t know about a higherlevel.”

Sometimes formal protocols about joint workingwere in place, although these seem betterdeveloped and more widespread in MidlandConnexions, the longer established thePartnership. Even here, on occasions, not allrelevant agencies had yet been included.

“There was a protocol that was set upbetween social services, Connexions andthe LSC, that [National Children’s Charity]weren’t involved in at all ... so that wassort of at very high level, and [thecharity], for whatever reason, I don’treally know why, but they weren’tinvolved in it.”

There was a general consensus that suggestedthat, if the technology permitted, professionalsshould share information on a ‘need to know’basis. But it was less clear what that meant andwhen information might be deemed relevant andwhen it would not. Often, it may only come tolight that workers ‘needed to know’ somethingwhen it is too late and the damage caused by notknowing has already been done. In MidlandConnexions, Connexions staff working withoffenders and ex-offenders were given access toinformation on YOT files. In Northern at the timeof the research, no such agreement was in placeand there was no expectation of informationsharing with the YOT. Yet, as is shown in thecase of Tariq (in Chapter 2), such sharing mighthave enabled a more complete assessment andintervention to be made. In Metborough, PAs inboth the YOT and the Leaving Care Team had

access to the same information as case workersand social workers, but only because they werepart of the multidisciplinary team. This did notapply to Connexions colleagues workingelsewhere. This suggested that, outside of formalprotocols or agreements, it was easier to shareinformation with workers who were moreobviously working within the agency.

In Midland Connexions, there was evidenceabout how complete openness in sharinginformation could disadvantage a young person.In some cases, revealing an on-going problemaround drug use could have implications forbeing allocated housing, as one PA reported:

“I did take a young person to one of thehousing places, he had an interview andI told him to be open and honest, and itwas about that he smoked cannabis buthe wouldn’t do it on the premises. And,you know, he was getting some helpfrom a counsellor about that. And assoon as he said that they said ‘No’.… Sothen he went away thinking, ‘Well ifthat’s the reason, I’m not going to tell …I’m not going to tell them’.”

Being honest about previous criminal convictionswas another issue, as the same PA explained:

“If you’re working with a young person,looking at employment, then they neverreally want to tell the employer thatthey’ve got offences. So it’s working withthem and trying to make themunderstand why it is best to do that. Butit’s still their choice. But when we’reworking with providers, you know, wehave a responsibility that we have toinform them about a young person’soffences. As in with housingassociations, we’ve got informationprotocols with two of the housingagencies, so we would just attach theirlist of offences.”

Many PAs remained wary about the benefits ofeverything being recorded on the Connexionsdatabase system (CCIS) and about the time andvalue of continually trying to keep records up todate:

“Communication is so time-consumingand takes such a lot of energy, and the

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time just goes by between people beingoff or on training or getting back to youand [pause] but the system, I think, isfraught with difficulties.”

Others reported that even sharing written reportswith colleagues was still contentious:

“It’s mainly for Personal Advisers butthen again some admin staff need to beable to know those details, so somepeople are extremely guarded, evenwithin the company, of sharing it withother people in the company, what theyput on that system.”

Others were unconvinced that the informationwas always illuminating or reliable, and manyPAs in all three areas complained that the systemwas time-consuming and sometimes led to wrongimpressions being formed. As with all databases,CCIS could only be as good as the data enteredon it:

“You’ll get completely the wrong view ofsomebody. Like I got told I couldn’t do ahome visit because there was an incidentwith an axe, and the way it was wordedI was led to believe the young personwas the one that had the axe. As it turnsout the young person was chased downthe road by very big guys with axes …and he’s now living somewhere elsewhere it’s quite safe. And I think hewould have benefited from me visitinghim at home.

“So that someone again hasn’t updatedthe information they’ve put on. Andthat’s another problem.”

Issues around information sharing have becomeincreasingly important in the light ofdevelopments following the Green Paper Everychild matters (DfES, 2004a) . These will bereviewed in the next chapter.


Summary

This chapter has reviewed a number of differentaspects of interagency working undertakenwithin Connexions Partnerships. It has identifieda number of different levels of operation inwhich the networks are designed and operated.The chapter has also examined how front-linestaff try to establish good working relationshipswith young people and the ways in which thedifferent facets of interagency networkingimpacts on this. At its best, well-establishednetworks allow for positive sharing ofinformation at the point of referral and allow PAsto move quickly from the identification of needsto the means through which these needs can bemet. Again, well-established and well-managedinteragency networks make it easier to broker inservices, and, where necessary, act as advocatesfor young people. The case studies included inthis research have had at their core young peoplewho represent the apex of the triangle of need;they were the most severe, complex, and mostlikely to require specialist and multiagencysupport. What is clear both from the illustrativecase studies presented in Chapter 2 and theevidence presented in this chapter, is that thereare still many instances where interagencynetworks are not strong, well-established or well-managed. The final chapter examines what isrequired for these issues to be addressed moreeffectively in the future.

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4Building better Connexions

The Connexions Strategy is one of the majorservice reforms to have been introduced by theLabour government in its attempt to bring morecoherence to youth policy and to addressproblems of social exclusion. In Chapter 1 wereviewed the background to its introduction,some of the main principles and building blockson which it is based, together with thechallenges to be faced in interagency working.We also outlined how the Connexions Strategywas being implemented in the three Partnershipareas covered by the research and how they hadapproached the challenges of establishinginteragency working. There were markeddifferences experienced in the three researchsites and these had influenced both the speed ofpartnership development and the contexts withinwhich PAs worked. Chapter 2 outlined three casestudies of young people with whom theConnexions Service was working in the threestudy areas as a precursor to a discussion of theissues being faced in interagency work. Thislatter was the focus of Chapter 3. In this finalchapter we summarise some of the main findingsof the research (F1-F9) in the first part of thechapter, together with recommendations foraction (R1-R12) that follow from these findings.We then review the impact of the differentmodels of partnership on interagency workingand factors that are of equal importance. Finally,we review the policy debates that are ongoing atthe time of writing. These suggest a likely re-configuration of Connexions in the near future inorder to meet new arrangements being proposedfor services for children and young people.Associated with this review and in line with theresearch findings, we add recommendations(R13-20) for the effective integration ofConnexions into these service arrangements.

Summary of the main findings fromthe research

The research set out to examine interagencywork under Connexions, to find examples ofgood practice and barriers to interagencyworking, and to examine whether differentmodels of partnership development had animpact on the delivery of services to youngpeople. Chapters 2 and 3 contained severalexamples of Connexions PAs playing a vital rolein promoting the well-being of young people,often in partnership with other professionalworkers. It included examples where serviceswere not as well coordinated as they might havebeen, where opportunities for informationsharing were absent or severely limited. In somecases, Connexions PAs were only marginallyinvolved and covered situations wherevulnerable young people were not being well-supported by other professional workers withwhom they were in contact. Yet even whereinteragency relationships were not working well,many of the young people themselves (and inone case a parent) went out of their way toexpress their appreciation of the help andsupport they had been given. Below wesummarise some of the findings in more detail inorder to highlight areas where lessons can belearned and improvements may be made.

Role definitions

F1: The term ‘Personal Adviser’ covered amultitude of very different roles and, becauseof this, was potentially confusing to somepartners.

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F2: One specific tension in the type of rolesplayed by PAs was between those whosework was generic and related to an holisticassessment of the needs and those whoserole was either entirely constrained within,or primarily directed by, a focus on careerseducation and guidance. Lack of clarity,particularly in schools, had bred suspicionthat the Connexions Service was merely a re-badging of careers companies. It also leftpartners unclear about the authority ofConnexions PAs.

Some school-based PAs had very large caseloadsand, as such, were doing work which wasclosely aligned to the careers education andguidance role fulfilled prior to the arrival ofConnexions. Some head teachers (such as thehead of a special needs school in Nortown,quoted in Chapter 3) were bitterly disappointedand disillusioned that little had changed in theservice they were offered. Confusion about, orresistance to, the role of PA, especially inschools, had also hindered effective interagencyworking (as in the case of Sam and Sal inChapter 2). PAs with much smaller caseloadswere, however, able to be very flexible andadaptable in responding to young people’sneeds, sometimes acting as a combination ofpersonal secretary and parent as much as acareers adviser, broker and advocate.

In the final interview with the Chief ExecutiveOfficer in Metro Connexions, we were told that,latterly, the Partnership had worked very hard toblur the distinction between Careers PAs andConnexions PAs. We were told that great effortshad been made to create a unitary service inwhich the PA (no matter under which contractthey were employed) was required to be flexibleand play whatever role was needed. This raisesquestions about the extent to which PAs withvery high caseloads can also find the time toundertake complex assessments and offerintensive support.

R1. Greater clarity should be provider forPAs about the specific role(s) they areexpected to play, relating to their particulardeployment.R2. Better systems of referral should bedeveloped between PAs with large caseloadsand those able to offer intensive support.

R3. Greater clarity should be provided foragencies about the roles PAs working withthem will play. This should also beaccompanied with information about anyopportunities the PA has to broker insupport from other workers who can offerspecialist or intensive support. Whereappropriate, consideration should also begiven to the range of job titles that mightbetter aid understanding, for example, PA(Key Worker), PA (Careers Adviser).

Referrals

How cases were referred to Connexions PAs wasreviewed in Chapter 3. Our major finding here issummarised below.

F3. Patterns of referral to PAs are veryvariable. Informal referral is oftenaccompanied by insufficient backgroundinformation. However, flexibility in the waysin which referrals were received sometimeshelped to strengthen partnerships.

In Midland Connexions more formal referraloften depended on agreements about patterns ofjoint working and information sharing (seebelow). In the other two areas informal referrals,sometimes based on a single telephone call, weremore common and PAs started with littlebackground information and were sometimespropelled into taking action before a properassessment of need had been made (as in thecase of John in Chapter 3). This was mostapparent in Northern where Key Workers oftenhad to begin work on the basis of a shorttelephone call.

R4. Across all agencies, wider commitmentto accompanying referrals with fullinformation is needed.

Coordination of roles

The main focus of this report is on interagencywork where it is highly likely that more than oneworker will be involved in trying to help a youngperson.

F4. Where a young person had more thanone professional worker working with them,formal attempts to coordinate roles throughcase conferences were infrequently reported.

Building better Connexions

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Chapter 3 summarised numerous cases where anumber of different professional workers were alltrying to help the same young person.Sometimes, and especially in MidlandConnexions, there was evidence of goodcoordination of effort (as in the case of anasylum seeker in Midland Connexions reportedin Chapter 3). In the other two areas, meetingsbetween workers, face-to-face or over thetelephone, were seldom found. This ran the riskof duplication of effort (as in the case of Sam inChapter 2), placements misjudged, or needs notbeing met (as in the case of John and Ghazella inChapter 3). Although team meetings of PAs werebeginning to be organised in all three areas, caseconferences were not commonplace. Often teammeetings were restricted to those employed byspecific contract holders rather than across thewhole network of PAs. In the final interview withthe Chief Executive Officer of Metro Connexions,however, we were told that these separatemeetings had been replaced by meetings of allPAs across the borough.

R5. There is a need for PAs to be moreaware of the value of systematic andregular communication between all workersworking with the same client and theimportance of formal case conferences, toshare information, and to agree roles andactions.

Information sharing

One crucially important element supportinginteragency work concerns the sharing ofinformation.

F5. Information sharing betweenConnexions PAs and others was most likelywhen the PA was located within amultiagency team. Even when this PA hadaccess to information it was often highlyunlikely that information would be sharedacross the Connexions Service moregenerally or with other PAs outside of thisteam.

The research also indicated that some PAs wereanxious about too much credence being given toelectronic records which may be inaccurate,misleading or could quickly become out of date.

F6. There was some recognition by PAs thatinformation, together with formal

assessments, can be partial, incomplete ormisleading. The fact of it being electronicallystored and widely available to specificnetworks of professionals did not reduce itsfallibility.

One of the risks of sharing information lay in thepotential for forfeiting the need for Connexionsto complete a further (possibly different and/ormore complete) assessment.The research drawsattention to the crucial importance of formalagreements and protocols for joint working infacilitating interagency work.

F7. Protocols or agreements on informationsharing were an important part ofinteragency work. Although (increasingly)they were in place in some partnerships, intwo of the three covered by this researchmuch remained to be done. This continuedto be a major structural barrier to effectiveinteragency work by front-line workers.

In the absence of formal agreements, PAs remainunclear about what they can, or should, do andthis can result in incomplete identification of theneeds of clients, and uninformed, or misjudged,interventions.

R6. There is a need for more systematicinformation sharing between agencies andmanagement, and supervision of PAs mustsupport the value and importance of this. Itis essential that information sharingbecomes:• an integral part of the assessment

process;• continuous throughout any period of

intensive support.

This would be helped by clear protocols oninformation sharing between agencies.

Advocacy

Acting as an advocate for young people provedto be a most effective way in which PAs weresupporting young people. Chapter 3 providednumerous examples of how this was being doneto great effect.

F8. Advocacy on behalf of young people wasclearly important as a means of preventingserious welfare harm, and ensuring that

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young people received the benefits andservices they needed and to which they wereentitled. This role was sometimes played togood effect by some PAs, and young peoplewelcomed their PAs as ‘powerful friends’.

There is a need for greater clarity for all agencieswith whom PAs work (and especially schools)about the legitimate responsibilities PAs have interms of acting as advocates for young people.

R7. There is a need for clearer mechanismsthrough which managers can support theactions of PAs in acting as advocate fortheir clients and in challenging the routinepractices of agencies where there isevidence of failures in service delivery.

Did the type of partnership model adoptedmake a difference to practice?

It is important to consider whether we havesufficiently robust evidence to offer an answer tothe question as to whether the type ofpartnership makes a difference to thedevelopment and promotion of interagencyworking, and if so, the reasons for this. It isappropriate to review some of the reasons thatmake reaching firm conclusions on this questiondifficult. The three areas did indeed display thethree different approaches to partnershipdescribed in the literature (OfSTED, 2002). Butthey differed in other ways. Midland Connexionshad been operating longer than the other twoPartnerships, although Metborough had pilotedsome aspects of Connexions the year before thefull Partnership became operational. MidlandConnexions covered only two local authorities.The others covered many more, which impactedon the complexity of their task. There were alsodifferences of leadership style between the twoareas that were not necessarily the result of thepartnership model adopted, although the directdelivery model by its nature gave clear lines ofinfluence in terms of staff management. Otherfactors contributing to different approaches toleadership could be explained by the personalcharacteristics, skills and beliefs of the postholders. All these aspects mediate the apparentinfluence of the structure. The research points toother factors that are also important in promotingand facilitating interagency work.

Joint working agreements

Agreements on joint working practices, protocolson aspects of joint working (includinginformation sharing) are crucial in the effectivepromotion of partnership working. It is these thatcreate the structural framework that bothrequires and supports agencies to work together.This can be fostered by Board-level activity, but,most importantly, must be put in place at a localauthority level because it is here that many of themajor agencies with which Connexions front-linestaff have to work are located.

F9. The Connexions Strategy still facedstructural problems in the promotion ofeffective interagency work, regardless of thetype of partnership development model ithas adopted. While managers of partneragencies may not have been wilfullypreventing partnership working, in manycircumstances the mechanisms which wouldpromote it were not yet in place.

The case studies reviewed in Chapters 2 and 3illustrated that, by and large, PAs were workingto their maximum potential with complex casesin difficult circumstances. But it is also importantto emphasise the need for further improvementsin the structural framework in which Connexionswork is carried out if the potential of the workdone by PAs is to improve significantly. Theseconclusions directly contradict some of thefindings of the Connexions Stakeholder Surveysponsored by the DfES. Summarising theirfindings the NAO contend:

Where barriers to joint working haveemerged, these have been local ratherthan national. The head quarters staff atthe partner agencies and departments weconsulted were broadly happy with theirrelationships with the ConnexionsService and were clear about whatConnexions wants to achieve. Thesepartners did not feel that there were anystructural reasons that would preventConnexions partnerships workingtogether with their staff at a local level.[They] agreed that local relationships andpersonalities were the crucial factorsdetermining how quickly they were ableto move to true partnership working.(NAO, 2004, p 4; emphasis added)


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We regard these as potentially misleading. Ourresearch demonstrates clearly that there werestructural barriers to interagency working.Chapter 3 illustrated that mechanisms needed tobe put in place at a structural level, with theagreement of partners, before they could affect orinfluence practice. The Connexions Strategy stillfaced structural problems in the promotion ofeffective interagency work, regardless of the typeof partnership development model it hasadopted.

R8. There is a need for clearer mechanismsthrough which managers can support theactions of PAs in acting as advocate fortheir clients and in challenging the routinepractices of agencies where there isevidence of failures in service delivery.

Perhaps understandably, the longest establishedpartnership, Midland Connexions, appeared tohave developed and implemented moreagreements and protocols than was the case inMetborough and Nortown. Senior managers inMidland Connexions had been proactive inengaging in both formal and informal negotiationwith agencies to reassure and reconfirm theinvolvement of partner agencies in theConnexions Strategy. They saw this as afundamental part of their job.

In Metborough, at the time of our research, thestructure for interagency work was much lessdeveloped. Some stakeholders interviewed saidthey were reluctant to sign up to Connexions,partly because of continued confusion about therelationship between Careers, the ConnexionsService and the Connexions Strategy. Somepositive interagency work was occurring, but thisdepended on the individual skills of the PArather than the planned structural environment inwhich they worked. Furthermore, in somecircumstances the practices of key partners (suchas the social services department) contributed tothe barriers to learning being faced by youngpeople. This was something that the ConnexionsPAs could not resolve alone.

The structural framework for interagencyworking in Nortown was also poorly developed.Again, some positive interagency work wastaking place, but often despite, rather thanbecause of, the partnership frameworksdeveloped by Connexions itself. Much dependedon either interagency working developed

elsewhere or the skills of the individual PA, manyof whom were working within a structure andcontext that was often limiting rather thanfacilitating interagency work. It is notable thatsome effective interagency work, includingtaking on the role of advocate, was being carriedout by professional workers other thanConnexions PAs.

R9. The management and supervision ofConnexions PAs needs to be strengthened.Action by managers is needed on severalfronts:• the negotiation of agreements on joint

working with partner agencies at a locallevel;

• supporting PAs in their role as advocatefor the young person and ensuring thatthey fulfil this role, even in situations inwhich there is resistance from partneragencies; and

• ensuring compliance of partner agenciesin the proper fulfilment of theresponsibilities.

In support of the above:

R10. There is need for better communicationbetween management and PAs aboutprecisely what protocols and agreements onjoint working are in place.

Training

The 2004 NAO report on Connexions containssome evidence that Partnerships following the‘direct delivery model’ have been quicker inmoving towards the completion of the training ofPAs than subcontracting partnerships (NAO,2004). A chart in the report does indeed showMidland Connexions significantly ahead of bothNorthern and Metro Connexions. Interviews withsenior managers and Board members in MidlandConnexions confirmed that they placed a highvalue and priority on training, despiterecognising the costs to the Partnership in termsof staff time spent in not performing front-linetasks (see the Appendix). The direct deliverymodel does also give manages more directcontrol over how to organise staff time.Subcontracting partnerships must rely onmanagers of agencies holding the contractscomplying with training demands. Our researchindicates that contracting agencies were indeed

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making efforts to ensure that PAs completedprofessional diploma training.

R11. There is a continued need for trainingof:• PAs to hone the variety of skills they must

use;• mid-level managers in supervising and

supporting PAs, particularly withreference to trouble-shooting thestructural problems surroundinginteragency work;

• co-workers in other agencies, in respectof the responsibilities of Connexions PAsand the changing structure of services.

Communicating the vision

In all three partnership areas many attempts weremade by Connexions staff to meet with potentialpartners to explain what the Connexions Strategywas and what the implications of it were forother organisations and agencies. The occasionsvaried from face-to-face meetings of senior staffto multimedia presentations at large gatherings inschool halls, hotels and football stadia. MidlandConnexions placed considerable emphasis oncommunicating the vision of Connexions to otherpartners, encouraging cultural change in workingpractices and encouraging senior managers toengage in partnership building to foster jointprojects. They had also done so in a way thatwas beginning to break down some of thebarriers between the two local authority areas.Starting initially with the activities of the chiefexecutive, transmitting the vision of Connexionsincreasingly had become the duty of allmanagers.

Not all such missionary work had positiveoutcomes. The head teacher of a special needsschool in Nortown (referred to in Chapter 3) wasparticularly critical, seeing staged events asexpensive, unnecessary and time-consumingwhen he would have preferred to have seen themoney spent on front-line services. Another headteacher in Metborough, although acknowledgingthat Connexions had made a big impact on themost vulnerable in the Borough, thought it was‘the universal service’ that was losing out (see theAppendix).

R12. As Connexions enters a new period inwhich it has to operate alongside otheragencies charged with the coordination ofservices for children and young people,there remains a need for clearcommunication to partner agencies aboutthe Connexions Strategy and the roles andresponsibilities of the Connexions Service indelivering this will be vital (seerecommendations R13-R20 below).

The changing policy contexts for theConnexions Strategy

Chapter 1 outlined the policy context that gaverise to the Connexions Strategy, focusingespecially on the drive to prevent the socialexclusion of vulnerable young people and tooffer positive routes back to those whoexperienced it. The case studies outlined inChapters 2 and 3 illustrate the processes and thehelp Connexions is offering to a variety ofdifferent vulnerable groups of young people.Towards the end of our fieldwork we were toldthat, within the upper echelons of the seniorCivil Service and in government, few talkedabout the ‘Connexions Strategy’ any longer. Thewider vision of joined-up and coordinatedservices for young people seemed to havedropped off the agenda, at least as far asConnexions was concerned. If this is the case,then we think it a retrograde step, although itwas always ambitious for the Connexions Servicealone to be charged with the delivery of thestrategy. Perhaps a more likely situation is thatthe challenges faced by the strategy are nowrecognised to have a much wider relevance toservices for children and young people across allage groups, and that the mechanisms throughwhich these will be faced require differentstructures and processes than the ConnexionsPartnerships alone can provide.

The policy context for Connexions changedconsiderably during the lifetime of this research,and the emergence of a new set of initiativesoffers a possibility that the Connexions Strategycan be reshaped and revitalised. Three maininitiatives suggest this.


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Children and Young People StrategicPartnerships (CYPSPs)

The first concerns the development within localauthorities of Children and Young People’sStrategic Partnerships (CYPSPs). These were atvarious stages of development in each of ourresearch sites. Because this included children aswell as young people, more services wereinvolved than was covered by ConnexionsPartnerships, although Connexions (as a majorcommissioner of services) was certainly included.

The similarities between CYPSPs and the initialprospectus for the Connexions Strategy lie in therange of anticipated partners, such as schools,health, social services, police and YOTs. Themajor difference, however, lies not so much inthe age range covered or the number of servicesinvolved (Sure Start, Early Years Partnerships,Children’s Fund and so on), but the fact that theCYPSPs were conducted by, and for, single-tierlocal authorities. This is important for a numberof reasons. First, local authorities have theauthority to persuade, and if necessary toinstruct, their constituent departments andmanagers to become involved. Those from otheragencies within CYPSPs, such as health, youthjustice and the voluntary sector, are quasi-autonomous. But these often have along-established relationship with the localauthority and a history of working together. Thisis in contrast to subregional ConnexionsPartnerships where, as we have already noted,partners could not compel their constituencies tocooperate. Within some Connexions Partnershipssome partners offered resistance and, onoccasions, downright hostility to the Partnership.There is, therefore, a real possibility that thegrand ambitions for the initial ConnexionsStrategy may dissolve in the face of an alternativeand more mandatory partnership arrangementbeing developed. CYPSPs do not set outdeliberately to replace or undermine theConnexions Strategy. But CYPSPs are basedacross structures where frequently there arecommon local identities, loyalties, a history ofpartnership, and most importantly, are promotedby those with authority, access to resources andteeth.

The Every child matters policy agenda

The second set of initiatives seem to reinforcesuch developments. The Green Paper Every childmatters produced in the wake of an inquiry intothe death of Victoria Climbié promisedconsultation on better systems of informationsharing and a structural reconfiguration ofresponsibilities and services for children andyoung people (Chief Secretary to the Treasury,2003). These developments have someresonance, both with the findings of our researchand with the development within localauthorities of CYPSPs as outlined above. Anumber of the suggested reforms deservecomment.

The first reform concerns the proposal for thecreation of Children’s Trusts. These are designedto play a central coordinating role within asingle-tier local authority in commissioningservices for children and young people. All localauthorities will be required to appoint a Directorof Children’s Services, accountable for educationand social services and responsible foroverseeing services commissioned fromelsewhere. This Director will be supported by anelected council member who would bedesignated as the lead council member forchildren. Children’s Trusts will be responsible forthe full range of outcomes concerning childrenand young people’s welfare, planning andcommissioning services supported by pooledbudgets.

The range of institutions covered by Children’sTrusts include minimally: all the educationalfunctions of the LEA (including schools,educational welfare, educational psychology,special educational needs, child care and earlyyears provision and youth services); children’ssocial services (including assessment, fostering,residential care and adoption, child protectionand services for care leavers); and communityand acute health services (including communitypaediatrics, Drug Action Teams [DATs], teenagepregnancy, Child and Adolescent Mental HealthServices [CAMHs], health visiting and speechtherapy). In addition to this range, the GreenPaper encourages Children’s Trusts to considercovering the coordination of YOTs and theConnexions Service. This suggests that theplanning of services would be clearly in thehands of the Children’s Trusts. The Green Papersuggests that the Children’s Trusts could also act

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as the LMC for Connexions, that the totalConnexions resource available to the authorityshould be clearly identified, and that, althoughthe final say concerning these lay withConnexions Chief Executive Officers,Connexions business plans should be signed offby Children’s Trusts before ministers are asked toagree them. This suggests that, particularly inareas where there were continuing disputes, theemergence of Children’s Trusts would signal arebalancing of power away from subregionalpartnerships and back towards single-tier localauthorities. Following the consultation period,this became even clearer as the governmentannounced its Next steps (DfES, 2004a):

… strengthening the business planningguidance to ensure that ConnexionsPartnerships increasing delegate fundingand planning decisions down to theLocal Management Committee.

It also announced that pilots would take placethrough which PAs would have not onlybrokerage and advocate roles, but purchasingpowers with discretionary budgets to purchaseservices for young people.

Another important concern relates to thedevelopment of electronic records and proposalsfor information sharing between agencies. Thishas become know as IRS as it is intended that itwill cover identification, referral and support. Aprecursor of this, IRT (identification, referral andtracking) has been piloted by 15 local authoritiessince autumn 2002 and an interim report onprogress was published in 2004 (Cleaver et al,2004). Many of these pilots were based on theuse of the Common Assessment Frameworkpublished by the Department of Health, DfESand Home Office in 2000, rather than eitherASSET or APIR. However, the research on the IRTpilots has some similarities with the findings ofour research: that practitioners were uncertainabout what information they could legally share;the lack of compatibility of computer systemsbetween agencies; variability in the competenceof front-line staff; but little reluctance on the partof young people for information to be shared(indeed some surprise where it was not). Clearlydecisions need to be made as soon as possibleabout a framework for information sharing andhow the major systems including those used byYOTs and Connexions will fit into these. Thecurrent proposals are for an ‘information hub’

with basic data for all children and young people(with a unique identification number) also beinglinked to a ‘flag’ system indicating if the person isknown to other agencies and giving the contactdetails of the worker(s) involved.

The proposed improvements to informationsystems are also closely linked with identificationand allocation of the ‘lead professional’.Connexions spent a great deal of effort providingoptions for the coordination of different workersand in determining who should play the leadrole (Connexions, 2002a-e). Yet as our researchhas indicated, there are still examples of workersnot being coordinated, and consequentlyinstances of both duplication of effort, andyoung people falling through the gaps, andinformation not being shared. The Green Paperargues for the co-location of multidisciplinaryteams around places where young people spendtheir time and the importance of embeddingtargeted services within universal, non-stigmatising, service settings. ConnexionsOne-Stop-Shops offer an opportunity to do this,but our research has indicated some difficultiesin the process. Locating PAs in other agenciesopened the door to information sharing for thePAs so located, but often did not provide moregeneral access for all relevant PAs across thePartnership.

The Green Paper also calls for discussion aboutradical proposals for workforce reform. One ofthe key strategic aims is that those working withchildren and young people should be enabled towork across professional boundaries, are trainedto do their own job well, but also understandhow it fits in with the work of others.Connexions has its own training programmes: alevel 3 diploma course for PAs and an‘Understanding Connexions’ course for otherworkers. However, as more and more PAs havecompleted their diploma training, thecontinuation of the programme itself is in doubt.In addition to taking the diploma course, PAs arealso expected to have their own professionalqualifications in areas such as youth work orcareers educational guidance. The Green Paperannounced a new Children’s Workforce Unitwithin the DfES to support professional trainingand to help build bridges between differentqualifications and enhance promotion prospects.But, as the Paper recognises, “As joint workingbecomes the norm, clarity about roles and


44


responsibilities will become all the moreimportant”.

The development of the ‘youth offer’

A third set of policy initiatives emerged in thesummer of 2004 with the publication of a five-year plan by the DfES (DfES, 2004b). Chapter Sixof the Plan deals with 14-19 education trainingbut it is most concerned with the post-compulsory education years. Internationalcomparisons show the UK as low on the leaguetable for participation among 17-year-olds andthis is argued to be the precursor to low adultskills. The proposed solution is a mixture ofmore choice, higher standards, a better mix ofacademic and vocational courses and goodsources of advice, guidance and support. Thereare proposals too about a new integrated ‘youthoffer’ related not only to post-16 courses butmore positive “exciting and enjoyable activities todo in and out of school or college”, “chances toget involved”, and places to go in thecommunities in which young people live (DfES,2004b). There is, of course, also mention ofgroups known to be vulnerable and seriouslydisadvantaged. It is difficult not to recognisewithin this portfolio the prospectus for the 1999Connexions Strategy. Yet there are somedifferences of emphasis. The use of the term‘offer’ is close to both the ‘youth pledge’developed for the Youth Service (DfES, 2002) andto ‘entitlements’ and ‘rights’ – terms used inWales when they chose not to go down theConnexions route but to develop their ownstrategy for children and young people (WAG,2002, 2004). This provides another opportunity tobuild a closer alliance between Connexions workand the wider and more voluntaristic leisure,personal and social developmental activitiesassociated with youth work.

Another key consideration is how the ‘youthoffer’ will be delivered. The plan recognises thattoo much support for young people is currently‘fragmented’; worthwhile, but with overlappingaims and too many funding streams. It contendsthat better coordination of effort is required.Again, the lead bodies proposed to develop thisare not Connexions Partnerships but Children’sTrusts, although the plan does emphasise thatthese should “build on the principles and successof multidisciplinary and collaborative workingintroduced by Connexions” (DfES, 2004b). A

further Green Paper on Young People ispromised for the autumn of 2004. Given that thefive-year plan was announced simultaneouslywith the 2004 Comprehensive Spending Review,whatever rearrangements are to be proposedmust be found within an overall budget thatalready has been set. Three main fundingpriorities now compete within the generalparameters of Connexions work: mainstreamcareers education and guidance; targeted supportfor vulnerable groups; and activities programmesfor young people including school and non-school-based sports and personal development.

Rebuilding better Connexions

The combination of the policy initiativesreviewed in this chapter calls into questionwhether subregional Connexions Partnershipsmay soon be eclipsed by Children’s Trusts andhow the Connexions Service will be reconfiguredonce Children’s Trusts have been developed. Toaid this latter process and to help promote betterinteragency work in future years we offer thefollowing recommendations:

R13. Guidance is needed from governmenton the links between the ConnexionsStrategy, the Connexions Service and theroles and responsibilities of Children’sTrusts.R14. Discussions between Connexions andthe statutory and voluntary youth serviceswould be useful to explore how theirservices could be more closely integratedunder the ‘youth offer’. Some coordinationwith these with the activity programmesfunded by the Youth Justice Board and localYOTs would also be useful.R15. Direction must come from governmentabout the extent to which pooling of budgetswithin Children’s Trusts will be mandatoryor discretionary.R16. Exemplars from government would behelpful on protocols for information sharingand guidance on the circumstances in which‘need to know’ criteria are triggered.R17. It would be wise for early negotiationsto begin between Connexions Partnerships,Children and Young People StrategicPartnerships and Children’s Trusts on theallocation of roles and responsibilities.Experience from the development ofConnexions suggests this might best take the

45

form of a series of bi-lateral meetings toallay anxieties and fears.R18. It would be helpful to have an openreview between Connexions seniormanagement and Children’s Trusts abouthow decisions about ‘lead professionals’ willbe reached and reviewed and what thismeans for the role and responsibilities ofConnexions PAs.R19. There remains a need for thedevelopment of mechanisms through whichadvocacy for young people can besupported and disputes between agenciescan be resolved.R20. There is need for discussion aboutwhat range of services and supports needsto be organised at a subregional level andwhat might best be delegated to localauthorities and Children’s Trusts. This mayalso have implications for the size of theConnexions Partnership top-slice of thefunding they receive and the size of thesubregional team.

This research has revealed mixed fortunes forConnexions Partnerships in their first years ofoperation. There is evidence that the Partnershipsare well on their way to meeting their key targetof reducing the numbers of young people whoare NEET (NAO, 2004). At their best, ConnexionsPAs have provided much-needed support foryoung people, have brokered opportunities forthem and have acted as powerful advocates ontheir behalf. Yet in none of the three Partnershipshas the work of PAs in this regard beenstraightforward. The arrival of Children’s Trustsand the proposals for the transformation of theprofessions working with children and youngpeople offer new opportunities for the boldambitions of the Connexions Strategy to be givena fresh lease of life.


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Atkinson, M., Wilkin, A., Stott, A., Doherty, P.and Kinder, K. (2002) Multi-agency working: Adetailed study, Slough: National Federation forEducational Research.

Bentley, T. and Gurumurthy, R. (1999)Destination unknown: Engaging with theproblems of marginalised youth, London:DEMOS.

Britton, L., Chatrik, B., Coles, B., Craig, G.,Hylton, C. and Mumtaz, S. (2002) MissingConnexions?: The career dynamics and welfareneeds of 16-17 year olds, Bristol/York: ThePolicy Press/Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury (2003) Every childmatters, Government Green Paper, Cm 5960,London: DfES.

Cleaver, H., Barnes, J., Bliss, D. and Cleaver, D.(2004) Developing identification, referral andtracking systems: An evaluation of the processesundertaken by trailblazer authorities: Interimreport, DfES Research Report No 521, London:University of London.

Coles, B. (2000) Joined-up youth research, policyand practice: The new agenda for change?,Leicester: Youth Work Press/Barnardo’s.

Coles, B. (2004) ‘Better connections? Welfareservices for young people’, in J. Roche, S.Tucker, R. Thomson and R. Flynn (eds) Youthin society (2nd edn), London: Sage Publications.

Coles, B., Hutton, S., Bradshaw, J.R., Craig, G.,Godfrey, C. and Johnson, J. (2002) Literaturereview of the costs of being ‘Not in Education,Employment or Training’ at age 16-18,Sheffield: DfES.

References

Connexions, (2001a) Connexions Service businessplanning guidance October 2001, London:DfES.

Connexions (2001b) Connexions for all: Workingto provide a service for all young people,London: DfES.

Connexions and the Rough Sleepers Unit (2002a)Working together: Connexions and youthhomelessness agencies, London: DfES.

Connexions and the Social Services Inspectorate(2002b) Working together: Connexions andsocial services, London: DfES.

Connexions and the Teenage Pregnancy Unit(2002c) Working together: Connexions andteenage pregnancy, London: DfES.

Connexions and the Youth Justice Board (2002d)Working together: Connexions and youth justiceservices, London: DfES.

Connexions (2002e) The Connexions Service: Abriefing guide for Drug Action Teams, London:DfES.

Connexions (2002f) Working together:Connexions with voluntary and communityorganisations, London: DfES.

Connexions (2002g) Youth support services for 13-19 year olds: A vision for 2006: HowConnexions will deliver this, Sheffield:Connexions Service National Unit.

Connexions (2003a) Working together:Connexions supporting young asylum seekersand refugees, London: DfES.

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Connexions (2003b) Understanding Connexions:Participants’ file, Sheffield: Connexions.

Connexions (2004) Diploma for Connexionspersonal advisers: Module 4 Handbook,Sheffield: Connexions Service.

CRG Research (2002) An investigation into theuse of the Connexions Assessment, Planning,Implementation and Review (APIR) framework,Research Report RR372, London: DfES.

DfEE (Department for Education andEmployment) (1999) Learning to succeed: A newframework for post-16 learning, Cm 4392,London: The Stationery Office.

DfEE (2000) Connexions: The best start in life forevery young person, Nottingham: DfEE.

DfES (Department for Education and Skills)(2002) Transforming youth work: Resourcingexcellent youth services, London: DfES.

DfES (2004a) Every child matters: Next steps,London: DfES.

DfES (2004b) Department for Education andSkills: Five year strategy for children andlearners. Putting people at the heart of publicservices, London: The Stationery Office.

Godfrey, C., Hutton, S., Bradshaw, J., Coles, B.,Craig, G. and Johnson, J. (2002) Estimating thecost of being ‘Not in Education, Employment orTraining’ aged 16-18, Research Report RR346,London: DfES.

NAO (National Audit Office) (2004) ConnexionsService: Advice and guidance for all youngpeople, Report by the Comptroller and AuditorGeneral, HC 484, 2003-04, 31 March, London:The Stationery Office.

OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operationand Development) (2003) OECD Review ofCareers Guidance Policies: United Kingdom,Country Note (www.oecd.org/LongAbstract/0,2546,en_2649_34511_4522837_70432_119663_1_1,00.html).

OfSTED (2002) Connexions Partnerships: The firstyear 2001-2002, HM1521, London: OfSTED.

References

Pierce, N. and Hillman, J. (1998) Wasted youth:Raising achievement and tackling socialexclusion, London: Institute for Public PolicyResearch.

Skelcher, C., Mathur, N. and Smith, M. (2004)Effective partnership and good governance:Conformance or performance, ESRC ResearchSummary (Executive summary and full reportavailable online).

SEU (Social Exclusion Unit) (1998) Truancy andexclusion, Cm 3957, London: The StationeryOffice.

SEU (1999) Bridging the gap: New opportunitiesfor 16-18 year olds not in education,employment or training, Cm 4405, London: TheStationery Office.

WAG (Welsh Assembly Government) (2002)Framework for partnership, Cardiff: WAG.

WAG (2004) Children and young people: Rights toaction, Cardiff: WAG.

Williamson, H. (1997) ‘Status Zero youth and the“underclass”’, in R. MacDonald (ed) Youth, the‘underclass’ and social exclusion, London:Routledge.

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This Appendix describes in more detail than waspossible in Chapter 1 the three Partnership areasin which the research took place. It describes thedevelopment of the three Partnerships, and thedeployment and management of front-lineworkers together with the challenges thesepresented to Connexions. We draw on officialdocuments, Connexions business plans, reportsand, where possible, the observation ofmeetings. Based on the interviews with keystakeholders, it also describes some of the waysused to implement the Connexions Strategy andfactors that supported or hindered this beingachieved effectively.

The names of the three Partnerships, and thoseof all those interviewed during the course of theresearch are referred to by pseudonyms only. Asoutlined in Chapter 1, Midlands Connexions wasone of the early pilots and started operating inspring 2001. Metro Connexions had piloted someaspects of Connexions in separate boroughs in2001-02, but did not start as a fully-fledgedPartnership until the summer of 2002. NorthernConnexions started in the autumn of 2002.Within Metro Connexions and Northern weexamined the planning and implementation ofservices in only one of the local authority areascovered by the Partnership. In Metro Connexionsthe borough is referred to as Metborough, andthe Metropolitan District which is the focus ofattention within Northern we identify asNortown.

Midland Connexions

Midland Connexions was the smallest of thethree Partnership areas, covering just over 81,000young people aged 13-19 from just two localauthority areas. The area covered by the

Appendix:The (trans)formation of thethree Partnerships

Partnership included one medium-sized city anda shire county, with a number of small- tomedium-sized market towns. Approximately 60%of young people were located in the city.According to a needs analysis conducted in 2003,the young people who were not in education,employment or training (NEET), had complexproblems and needed one-to-one caseloadsupport represented around 10%; those in needof additional support over and above the‘universal service’ numbered around 37%; andthose for whom there was a universal entitlementonly were around 53% of the age cohorts. Morespecific target groups identified in the businessplan included 16- to 19-year-old mothers, 13- to18-year-olds with substance misuse problems, 19-year-old care leavers, 13- to 18-year-oldssupervised by YOTs, and 16- to 19-year-olds withlearning difficulties and disabilities.

Midland Connexions

Midland Connexions Partnership was part of aneconomic and regeneration company, limited byguarantee, which directly employed most of thestaff working for Connexions. As a directdeliverer of services, approximately 78% ofresources were committed to service deliveryitself. Many, but by no means all, of the 316 staffwere previously employed by two careerscompanies (which ceased trading in April 2002)covering the two local authorities. The companycompleted a European Foundation QualityManagement (EFQM) self-assessment report, andwas inspected by OfSTED in the autumn of 2002.

At strategic level, Midland ConnexionsPartnership Board was large compared with theothers. At the outset, it was thought important forthe Board to be as inclusive as possible in order

49

to reassure potential partners of the importanceof their role within the Partnership. Because theBoard covered only two local authorities,originally there was a matching representationfrom each. When the Partnership became moreestablished the frequency of meetings wasreduced, and the Board met three times (termly)a year. In effect, the Partnership Board wasdescribed as having turned into a consultativeforum supporting a more active Executive Groupof 17 members and presided over by the BoardChair.

The two Local Management Committees (LMCs)of city and shire county were originally part ofthe organisational structure. These were not aslarge as the Partnership Board, and the frequencyof meetings was also reduced over time. Changeswere made in respect of chairing one of thecommittees. At one stage, plans were being madeto incorporate the LMCs into a ManagementGroup in order to prevent duplication ofrepresentation. The LMCs met twice a year andprovided a forum for help in shaping thebusiness plan and in reviewing progress. Initiallythese were chaired by the Chief Executive Officerof the two councils, but both were happy todelegate this role to others. As one senior officerput it:

“It was important at the beginning. Butthere is no management in it. It is just asounding board.”

Liaison with the local authorities was carried outthrough informal meetings held around everytwo months between the Chief Executive Officerof Connexions, the local authority ChiefExecutive Officers, and the chief officers ordeputies from education and social services. Thiswas largely seen as an informal ‘taking thetemperature’ meeting.

The Executive Group met more frequently thanother groups (every six weeks), and there wasspeculation at the time of the research that itwould evolve to meet less frequently in thefuture. In addition to these groups, there were:

“… a number of management groups thateither directly manage delivery or helpcoordinate support functions (HR,Finance, Quality). The subregionalsupport managers group brings together

senior delivery and support functionmanagers.”

Services were based on those provided to ‘clientswho are in education’ or those who are ‘out ofeducation’. Specialist staff did outreach work tospecific groups, for example, drug users, youngoffenders and so on. Other staff were locatedwithin partner agencies, such as the voluntarysector and YOTs. There was a policy of sitingboth Connexions and partner agency staff in thesame locations. There were 35 Connexions sitesacross the region, including three One-Stop-Shops and, in total, around 165 PAs.

One form of specialist provision was from a‘Learning Gateway Project’, based at the LocalLearning and Skills Council (LLSC). Thiscontinued after the Learning Gateway wasreplaced by Entry to Employment (E2E) in thesummer of 2003. The project and the team weremainly concerned with supporting the ‘front end’of Gateway (induction and one-to-one support)and also offering support to young peopleinvolved in life skills training – the ‘back end’ ofLearning Gateway. The Learning Gateway Projectstarted in December 2002 and had funding untilDecember 2004. The project involved a smallteam of eight PAs. Six PAs were based with lifeskills providers. This was the first time that PAshad been based with training providers. Thecompany also separately funded ‘enhancedprovision’. This included activities designed toimprove confidence, social skills, and self-esteem, focusing on team-building activities at asports centre, and special residential courses.

A further two PAs were based with the TeenagePregnancy Strategy. One of these worked withyoung fathers, split between two sites where theteenage pregnancy rates were highest. The otherwas working with young mothers. All eight PAswere carrying out work described as ‘firefighting’– emergency work attempting to deal withproblems that might lead young people todisengage from learning and/or training.

The third element covered by the company was‘special services’. One of these was anindependent psychological service that broughtsomeone into the LLSC every three weeks to seeyoung people whom providers thought neededsuch a service. Specialist support such as angermanagement courses were offered. The secondservice was the DDAT (Dyslexia, Dyspraxia,

Appendix: The (trans)formation of the three Partnerships

50


Attention Deficit Disorder Treatment). The youngpeople referred there may or may not have had astatement of special educational need (SEN).Training providers could refer young people tothe centre if they thought they neededassessment and/or support. Other forms ofspecialist support were arranged by linking toYOTs and Drug Action Teams and other suchservices.

During the later stages of the research, links withthe voluntary sector were planned and realised.Four pilot projects were funded and five PAswere allocated to provide support, liaison, andreferrals, as well as to promote opportunitieswithin the sector.

Issues in the development of partnershipworking in Midland Connexions

Senior managers of Midland ConnexionsPartnership told us that they had long recognisedthat building an effective team was notsomething which was achieved overnight. Itneeded a concerted effort at a number ofdifferent levels within the organisation and on anumber of different fronts. They were also clearabout the importance of political negotiationduring the early stages of the development of thePartnership, ensuring that key stakeholders didnot feel threatened by developments, recognisedthe advantages to be gained throughcooperation, and were convinced that the effortinvolved was worthwhile. Most of this wasachieved in individually tailored meetings ratherthan through discussion or debate withinboardrooms. Indeed stakeholders had agreedthat the more formal structures of decisionmaking had become less necessary, and thefrequency of such meetings had been reducedwithout resistance.

As well as this horizontal level of partnershipformation, senior managers were also concernedthat they had a responsibility to work verticallywithin the organisation and to communicate thecompany vision. With hindsight, it was said thatthis had not been as comprehensivelyaccomplished in the early days of operation as itmight have been. But senior managers came toaddress this on a number of fronts: selling thevision; investment in training; rewardinginnovation and progress; and building self-belief,pride and morale.

Starting with the core of ex-careers advisers andespecially those who welcomed change, theknowledge bases and skills of front-line workerswere broadened to meet the requirements ofConnexions PAs. The PAs interviewed expressedappreciation of the way in which seniormanagers had added to and developed theirskills, largely through training. As a generalprinciple, this was offered to PAs and partners atthe same time, and although some partneragencies were notably enthusiastic (such as thevoluntary sector where fewer courses in generalexisted), other partners remained harder toenjoin. Senior managers put effort into makingtraining fit with the agendas of other agencies,and, in particular, ensuring that the timing ofcourses was appropriate to the needs of others.

More structural changes linked to redrawing theoperational geographic boundaries ofConnexions. Operations managers were drawnupwards in the hierarchy to function morestrategically. As one explained:

“There’s a structural change, part of thatwas our trying to kick-start even furtherthe cultural change that we’ve beengoing through. So we’ve now got peoplewho were Midcity staff mixing withpeople who were Midtown staff from thenew area and breaking down some ofthose city versus county workingpractices and traditions and systems.”

This was part of a wider attempt to bring aboutgreater receptivity to and understanding aboutConnexions across organisations. It was alsogeared towards making cultural change; inworking practices, traditions, and systems withinareas, and towards reducing the feeling of ‘them’and ‘us’ which was frequently experienced whenbringing together different organisations. Staffwere now working across new areas and sites, inan attempt to increase both learning and reach:

“So for instance I went to speak to thechief executive of X County Council [andthen] his 27-strong management team, totell them what Connexions does ’costhey’ve hardly heard of it unless theyhappen to be a parent.… So in that caseit’s telling the borough council what wedo and how we link into the stuff thatthey’re doing, how we’d like to link inand how we’d like to have some joint

51

initiatives, how we’d like to have someadded value by working together. Isuppose a stage on from that is going tothe people who do know about us …which might be ‘What are you doingstepping on our toes, doing the job?’ …and explaining we’re not really doingthat, we’re trying to do the same thingsand work[ing] together would be moreeffective and more efficient.”

Connexions was seen in a positive light by thoseresponsible for delivering services at localauthority level, and the relationship was anevolving one throughout the course of theresearch. Connexions played a part in otherorganisations, for example, in a widerprogramme for young people aged 10 to 13, aswell as a broader strategic multiagency planwhich operated at Partnership level forvulnerable children and young people in one ofits local authorities. As such, Connexions wasseen as considerably influential within thecontext of wider partnerships.

Main issues with partner agencies were aroundlevels of expectations, geographic and practiceboundaries, and prioritisation. Expectationsabout Connexions varied according toorganisations. Some were regarded as too high,some too low. Perceptions as to theencroachment on work territories alreadyestablished prior to Connexions made practiceboundaries sometimes difficult to cross, andgeographic boundaries between partners did notalways quite match. Conveying messages aboutthe potential of Connexions throughout thevertical slice of organisations was problematicinsofar as commitment from senior managers didnot necessarily filter through to individualworkers, who were often dealing with acutecases from wider population groups, forexample, generic social workers dealing withpotential child murderers. At an organisationallevel, some partners still remained hard toengage. This was usually seen to be for reasonsconcerned with their own major reorganisations(for example, health services), althoughindividual workers (school nurses, for example)were more receptive to building links. Selling thevision and transmitting the Connexions messagewas seen as a continuing challenge, and moreresources in terms of staff time were beingcommitted to this. As the chief executive noted:

“I had a piece of feedback very early onfrom [names] and I got a load offeedback from all the staff about me.And they all said ‘[name of CEO], wethink your energy, your vision, youraspirations, your passion, your desire, isabsolutely fantastic and, you know, youjust wow us, but for Christ’s sake getrealistic about what we can achieve in amonth’, you know. And I realised thatI’d gone charging off and left all themiddle managers and all the troops milesbehind me, you know. So I had to goback and pick them all up and get themup off their knees and then move themon again, and that was really frustratingand, actually, it was really painfulbecause my perception of how we weredoing and what was happening and …their perception was completelydifferent. So I had to change mybehaviours, otherwise we’d have beentotally fragmented ... and now the ... Ican see them increasingly taking up thechallenges and moving the challengeson, and all I have to do is just let them.”

Pace, timing, and political sensitivities eachplayed a part in achieving a unified approach.The important point was that MidlandConnexions staff showed keen awareness ofwhat needed to be considered in achieving ashared vision, and this was a major contributor tosuccessful negotiations.

Metro Connexions and Metborough

Metro Connexions covered a number ofboroughs across a section of a very large citycontaining over 100,000 young people aged 13 to19 years. The boroughs varied considerably intheir demographic composition, the problemsthey faced, their political complexion and theirreputation for the delivery of services. One verydistinctive feature of Metborough involved themobility of its inhabitants and the sharp contrastsof wealth and poverty in close proximity. Therewere, for instance, 11 independent schools, morethan the number of secondary and specialschools combined.

Establishing the size of the Connexions (13-19)cohort for Metborough was not an easy business.The careers company estimated it to be around


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6,000, whereas Census data indicates there justover ten and a half thousand 13- to 19-year-olds.This suggested a much higher number ofresidents in the school-based Connexions cohort,although they may, of course, have been inindependent schools or educated outside theborough. Only around half of the pupils inMetborough schools were resident in theborough and many of those resident were ineducation elsewhere, some in areas served byConnexions Services other than MetroConnexions.

Metborough was ethnically mixed with over ahundred different languages spoken in itsschools and more than a thousand refugees in itssecondary schools (around 12% of the schoolpopulation). The second largest group was ‘BlackAfrican’, the third ‘Indian’ and the largest groupof all was classified as ‘Other’ according to thestatistics in the business plan. Metboroughschools have high rates of mobility, non-attendance and permanent exclusions.Non-attendance was a particular problem inMetborough which, at 3.1%, was the highest rateacross the Partnership. Black children, especiallyboys, were over-represented on the childprotection register, and rates of mental illnesswere thought to be much higher than thenational average. There were a large number ofhomeless families in the borough, one of thehighest concentrations of ‘rough sleepers’ inBritain, and a highly visible population of alcoholand drug misusers.

Post-16 education provision in the borough wascovered by seven comprehensive schools, twoFurther Education colleges, and many youngpeople crossed borough boundaries both pre-and post-16. Work-based learning was restrictedto the two colleges and only one private trainingprovider, although there was a range of otherproviders in adjacent boroughs within reasonabletravelling distance. However, less than a quarterof those following work-based routes enteredModern Apprenticeships, which was around halfthe proportion doing so nationally.

The size of the NEET group varied throughout2003 from about 7.5% of the cohort in theautumn to 13.5% in the spring, although overallMetborough had the smallest number of NEETyoung people across the Partnership areas.Slightly more young men than women were

defined as NEET with a third of the groupcoming from minority ethnic backgrounds.

Metro Connexions

Metro Connexions Partnership commencedoperations in the summer of 2002. Under someopposition from the CSNU, Metro Connexionshad stood out and was operating as a lead bodyPartnership. Given the diversity of the boroughsinvolved, reaching agreement to bid to be a leadbody Connexions Partnership was a majorachievement. The lead body arrangement meantthat the legal ownership of the Partnership andcontracting and financial services were providedby one of the local authorities covered by thePartnership. Like the other models, MetroConnexions had a Partnership Board and a LMCcovering each of the local authorities. However,it was the lead body that supported the smallcentral management team through service-levelagreements with its key departments. Apart fromthese service-level agreements, MetroConnexions contracted for front-line serviceswith a number of different providers. In thissense it was a variant of the subcontractingmodel rather than a direct delivery or transmutedmodel of Partnership delivery. The main contractholders included careers companies deliveringmainstream careers education and guidanceservices to schools and colleges, as they weredoing prior to the arrival of Connexions, togetherwith the constituent local authorities.

Across Metborough there were 36 PAs employedby a number of contract holders. Fourteen PAswere employed by a careers company to carryout work in Metborough, although the companyalso served other local authorities. A further 22were employed by the local authority YouthService. According to estimates of the size of thecohort, this gave a higher PA to young personratio than in either of the other two areascovered by the research. In Metborough the ratioaveraged around 1:300, compared with 1:455 inMidland Connexions and 1:550 in Nortown. Inprinciple this allowed PAs in Metborough muchmore time to spend on individual case studiesand in developing interagency networks.

Initially, PAs employed by the Youth Servicewere managed by the Area Connexions Manager,who in turn was line-managed by the Head ofYouth Services. During the course of the

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research, and following a consultant’s report,these PAs became reorganised into three discreteteams, each with a manager responsible for theday-to-day supervision and support of the team.One of the teams offered extra support toschools, another supported the One-Stop-Shopsand the third was a group of six PAs operating ina number of specialist settings: City ofMetborough College, the Housing Assessmentand Advice Centre, Medical Centre Children withDisabilities Team, the YOT, a Language SupportUnit, and the Leaving Care Team in the socialservices department.

Issues in the development of partnershipworking in Metro Connexions and Metborough

Metro Connexions was one of the largestPartnerships in the country and covered thelargest number of local authority areas in ourstudy. It evolved from a series of pilot schemesin each of the boroughs. The chief executive(appointed in the summer of 2002) was a localmanager of one of the pilots in 2001-02. He wastherefore very knowledgeable about the areas inwhich the Partnership operated. Achievingpartnership and an amicable consensus across allthe boroughs was a remarkable achievement.The boroughs differed greatly in the problemsthey faced, their political complexion and theirreputations for public services. At the time of theresearch Metborough was regarded as having agood record in education and social services.

The lead body model was the least widespreadof the three models described in Chapter 1.Advantages included being able to draw oncurrent expertise and systems such as financialsystems and controls and procedures. There wereclear advantages for the staff employed as PAs bythe local authorities in terms of human resourcestructures, conditions of employment andpensions. Government Office and the CSNU wereinitially not convinced of the benefits and thisopposition may have served to unite theauthorities and careers companies in theirdetermination. As a Board member explained,they knew that given initial opposition theywould be subject to a:

“much more detailed health check fromthe Government Office who did not likethe idea of a lead body whatsoever and

would inspect us to death to prove thatwe’d got it wrong.”

Many of those interviewed were strongsupporters of the model, including some whohad experience of working under differentPartnerships adopting different models. As one ofthe key stakeholders argued:

“If you take the [Metro Connexions]model, all of the legal services, youknow, all of the corporate supportservices, personnel and the like, areprovided on a contract. So the contractruns from the [Metro Connexions]Partnership [and] that contract with the[named] borough buys a service, itdoesn’t buy people … you’re buying aservice contract, that’s out-sourcing, andan extremely successful way ofworking….”

The same stakeholder also commentedfavourably on the way in which the Partnershiphad been developed with a strong voice from thedifferent local authority areas:

“…There’s [also] a lot of subcontractedwork which is managed by theboroughs, some of those people are thendeployed in other places, OK, so theymay … be working on an outreach basiswithin one of the voluntary partners. Butthe thing that I like most about the waythat the Metro Connexions model hasgone is that plans have come up fromthe LMCs. It’s much stronger from theground upwards.”

The location of those PAs not employed by thecareers companies within the local authorityYouth Service was seen by many of thestakeholders to have been a good idea and tohave brought dividends in emphasising youthwork, leisure and personal development as wellas careers education and guidance. It had alsoenabled the development of a service drawing ona number of PAs with different specialist skillsand expertise. A disadvantage was a potentialsplit between the ‘universal service’ provided bycareers PAs and the specialist and targetedservice within the Youth Service. In the latterthere were dangers of careers education andguidance (generic advice on post-16 educationand training opportunities) being regarded as a

Appendix: The (trans)formation of the three partnerships

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taken-for-granted skill. Efforts were made duringthe course of the research to avoid this split inthe service developing and to ensure properreferrals between the teams where appropriate. Aprotocol on referral and work sharing was beingdrawn up and joint meetings and away dayswere scheduled to take place.

Starting in 2004, Metro Connexions began aspecial project funded by the European SocialFund aimed at reducing the number of youngpeople who were NEET. This enabled access tospecial funds of up to £1,000 per person on theproject to help overcome barriers to work ortraining. There are similarities between this andthe participation trial operating in Northern.

Northern and Nortown

Northern Connexions Partnership was large,complex, and covered around 180,000 youngpeople aged 13-19 drawn from a number ofdifferent local authorities. It was served by fourseparate careers companies. Nortown wasconsidered by the Chief Executive Officer ofNorthern Connexions as one of the biggestchallenges. It had around 50,000 teenagers,spread across a large city, a number of smalltowns and a large rural area – three quarters ofthe district was classified as rural. Overall thedistrict did not have a good record of educationalachievement and also had clusters of youngpeople from minority ethnic groups, constitutingaround one third of the school population. Theanalysis of need covered in the Connexionsbusiness plan did not indicate any over-representation of young people with SEN, orlooked-after children in Nortown. However, thenumber of live births to women under the age of20 and detected young offenders was asignificantly higher proportion of the cohort thanelsewhere in the subregion.

It was in the urban wards in Nortown whereconcentrations of non-white (mainly Pakistani)minority ethnic groups were to be found. TheLLSC published an area-wide inspection of all 16-19 education and training provision in November2002. This drew attention to different ethnicconcentrations in adjacent schools. In one townwithin the district, for instance, 83% of its pupilscame from minority ethnic groups whereas inanother school (a religious foundation school)only 12% came from minority ethnic groups.

Promoting social cohesion was one of the fourstrategic aims and objectives of the LLSC five-yearplan. While this social cohesion agenda wasstrongly represented in the LLSC planning, it didnot appear to figure strongly in Connexionsbusiness planning. There appeared to be verylittle representation of the ethnic communities onthe Connexions LMC in Nortown.

The LEA for Nortown had been regarded as a‘failing’ authority in two recent OfSTEDinspections and the education service was nowrun by a private company. Nortown had one ofthe lowest educational achievement rates in thesubregion, although the Careers DestinationsSurvey for 2002-03 suggested some improvement.Pupils in Year 11 had low levels of achievementcompared with the subregional and nationalaverages. Just under 80% of 16-year-oldsprogressed into full-time education or training,although a comparatively low percentageproceeded to Further Education colleges. Acareers destination survey indicated thatapproximately 14.5% of 16- to 18-year-olds werecategorised as NEET in 2003 (a drop of 3.3% onthe previous year). Minority ethnic groups werethe least likely to find employment or higherlevels of government-sponsored training butwere much more likely than their whitecounterparts to be in general foundation trainingcourses where they represented two thirds of allthose placed in that sector.

Connexions in Northern

Connexions Northern was a subcontractingmodel of Partnership, and was a not-for-profitcompany limited by guarantee. The chiefexecutive started in post in the spring of 2002and the Partnership started operating in theautumn. A Partnership Board was responsible forthe development of the Connexions Strategyacross the subregion. The Board had 13 directors(and 22 members overall) and was composed oftwo directors from the careers companies, twofrom the local authorities, two from the voluntarysector, a head teacher, a representative from thestrategic health authority, the police, and twodirectors from commercial organisations. It hadan independent chair and vice-chair who,together with the chief executive, constituted thedirectors of the company. Members whoattended the Board meetings as observersincluded the chairs of the LMCs. The Partnership

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Board was supported by an ExecutiveManagement Team with around 30 staff, whichwas resourced by a 10% top-slice of the budgetretained for central services and the strategicpartnership.

The Partnership was seeking to promotemultiagency work across the subregion throughthe issuing of multiple contracts to a variety ofdifferent service suppliers in the different localauthorities. In each LMC area the major contractholders included a careers company, the LEA, theYouth Service and voluntary sector bodies. Somecontracts were issued for the development ofservices across the subregion including, forinstance, one to a voluntary sector organisationfor support to young people in rural areas usingmobile facilities.

The Board also supported a national initiativefunded by the national Learning and SkillsCouncil – a one-year ’participation trial’. Thisprogramme focused on support for four distinctgroups of young people: those earning but not inlearning; those at risk of dropping out from post-16 learning; those pre-16 at risk of not continuingin learning; and the ‘hard-to-reach’ NEET group.The ‘trial’ came with eight million pounds ofextra resources to the subregion. This allowedfor the employment of front-line workers whowere called Key Workers (as distinct fromPersonal Advisers). As well as working with asmall and targeted caseload, Key Workers couldalso access funds to help, support and rewardyoung people’s participation, and wherenecessary their learning or training costs. Thefunds could be used to support transport costs,or small items such as clothing or equipment thatmight make the difference between sustaininglearning and dropping out. The Key Workerswere employed directly by Connexions Northernand were located in a number of host agenciesspread across the LMC areas. Nortown had a totalof 11 Key Workers between April 2003 and March2004 and reduced to four thereafter.

Connexions in Nortown

Each local authority had a ConnexionsPartnership Manager who was responsible forcontract development (under the direction of thePartnership Board and the Chief ExecutiveOfficer) rather than managing the PAs employedby contract holders. In Nortown, the manager

was also the key link between the subregionalBoard and the LMC. In line with similardevelopments across the subregion, the Manageralso chaired an Implementation Group made upof the main Connexions contract holders in thedistrict.

The major contract in the city of Nortown waswith Careers Nortown, a private careerscompany. A ‘core contract’ funded a total of 61full-time equivalent PAs at a cost of just under £3million per year. Most of these PAs were workingwith young people in mainstream education andwere school-based, although they also manageda Connexions Centre in Nortown. Only careerscompany PAs seemed to be based there andlong-standing plans to locate others (includingJobcentre Plus benefits staff) did not come tofruition over the course of the research. CareersNortown PAs included a Community Teamcomposed of seven PAs from a variety ofdisciplinary backgrounds who previously workedwith Learning Gateway clients. Now rebadged asConnexions PAs, they were working with youngpeople at levels two or three of need (seeChapter 1). Half of the Nortown case studies (seeChapters 2 and 3) were drawn from this team.There was also a ‘virtual team’ working withyoung people with SEN, although mainly withthose in special schools.

As well as these two teams, Careers Nortown alsomanaged one PA seconded to the IndependentLiving Team, located in the social servicesdepartment, who was working with care leaversand young people who were homeless. AnotherPA was seconded to the local YOT. However,these latter contracts were not issued untilAugust 2003 so working practices and caseloadswere not well-established. Careers Nortown hadtwo additional PA posts, one to improve theinvolvement of young people, and another tohelp coordinate PAs across the area and promotea good practice forum.

The various Connexions contracts issued forNortown covered the provision of just over 90full-time equivalent PAs. Given the total numberof 13- to 19-year-olds, if spread across the PAsequally, this would give a caseload ofapproximately 550 each. Some PAs, however,worked either with ‘hard-to-reach’ groups (thosein danger of disengaging from education,employment and training) or with those whorequired intensive, and sometimes multi- or


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interagency, support. These PAs and the KeyWorkers were more likely to have a caseload ofbetween 20-35, leaving those dealing with youngpeople in mainstream education with caseloadsof around nine hundred.

The appointment of specialist PAs other than theCareers Nortown Community Team was delayeddue to difficulties in identifying and agreeing ontheir deployment and contracts. However, by theend of the fieldwork period, Further Educationcolleges had a contract to recruit a total of 4.5full-time equivalent PAs, and the privatised LEAhad a contract for nine PAs to work with schoolfederations (issued in March 2004). SinceNovember 2003, Nortown Youth Service andvarious specific organisations within thevoluntary youth sector (since early in 2004) hadcontracts for a total of 14 PAs to carry outcommunity-based work with the NEET group,although most were not in post until the spring.The full complement of PAs was, therefore, notin post until 18 months after the start date ofNorthern Connexions.

Issues in the development of partnershipworking in Northern and Nortown

From the outset there was a reluctance to acceptthe need for Connexions to be organised on asubregional basis. The cities (including Nortown)had hoped they were big enough to organisethemselves (as they had done with YOTs andDrug Action Teams and other Partnerships) andsought to minimise the subregional influence ofConnexions. The smaller boroughs were morepositive about being part of a large subregionand saw dangers in being linked with only onebig city. But they also saw few positive benefitsof subregionality and many disadvantages. Allthose involved in the initial planning ofConnexions in the subregion had hoped that thesubcontracting partnership would allow for verysignificant delegation of authority and control toLMCs. The newly appointed chief executive,however, did not see his role or that of the Boardas simply ratifying delegated decisions andpassing on the resources:

“As I said at my interview, so I was quiteclear. I said, ‘Do you want somebody tomanage the subcontracting process andbe a conduit for the money. If you wantthat – employ a pipe, all right!’. If you

want somebody to drive forward theStrategy and as part of that processoperate a subcontracting model, thenthat’s what I’m here to do.…”

The first two years of the Partnership at Boardlevel had been a site for conflict and acrimony, areminder that forced collaboration betweenagencies can occasion antagonism, bitterness anddysfunctionality as well as cooperation, harmonyand partnership. A number of different areas ofgrievance emerged. Those representing localauthorities grumbled about the lack ofconsultation on the content of the secondbusiness plan, poor coordination of efforts in thecontracting and deployment of the outreachfacility, the direct employment of Key Workersunder the participation trial, the need for asubregional computer system, and the longdelays in the development of contracts to coverthe full complement of PA posts across thedistricts. One of the avoidable sources ofirritation and conflict concerned outreach work.News of the allocation of a Connexions contractfor this ‘leaked out’ through an informal contactbetween youth work staff across the region withthe vehicle supplier. When outreach finallystarted operating in Nortown, it did so in waysand at locations in which other interested partiesthought to be singularly inappropriate and poorlytargeted, and about which they had not beenconsulted. This caused some distrust andexasperation and was one of several instanceswhere there was posturing and muscle-flexingbetween the subregion and the various membersof Nortown LMC. The issue appeared to beresolved amicably when the interested partiesfinally met.

There were many accounts given to theresearchers of how these and more fundamentalissues had soured relationships between some ofthe major players. Frequently those within thecareers companies, although supportive of theConnexions Strategy, saw it as a means ofundermining the value of their activities. Forinstance, one said:

“[Connexions] is a super concept andidea.… It’s right [pause] but inimplementation a great idea is beingbotched, and it’s being botched for anumber of reasons. One of which is Iperceive that somebody somewhere has

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decided they wanted to have a go atsome of these careers companies.”

All the careers company representativesinterviewed initially saw Connexions as anopportunity for them to build on pastexperiences working with vulnerable groups butfound that contract negotiations meant they wererestricted to their previous responsibilities. As anexample of some of the consequences of theseconflicts, another Board member, not involved inany of these major battle fronts, told us:

“It’s felt frustrating, it’s felt irritating, I’vefelt as if people were defending theirown power and influence and notinterested in … looking at how theservice was delivered to young people.I’ve felt that people were using ... theirposition on the Board of Northern not inany way for the best interests ofNorthern-led Connexions, but simply todefend their local authority. I’ve felt as ifI was attending a 1958 meeting of theTUC.… In some senses I felt there was adetermination to actually underminewhat Connexions, Connexions Northernand that, you know, there was, thestrategy was to make absolutely sure thatit didn’t work, if I’m totally honest withyou.…

“I have the choice of resigning from theBoard of Connexions Northern, and Ihave seriously considered it …, notbecause I can’t deliver the loyalty, I can.It’s because I am not sure I want to bepart of such a, a vindictive andunpleasant battle of … wills.”

Some members of the Board clearly sawthemselves as delegates of ‘power blocks’ (localauthorities or careers companies) and networkedaccordingly. Other members ‘representing’important spheres of activity (schools, youthjustice and health, for instance) had no means ofcommunicating with their ‘constituency’ and didnot make any attempt to do so. They saw theirBoard membership as a means of bringing a‘perspective’ or ‘skills’ to the Board rather thanrepresenting and/or communicating with interestgroups.

One consequence of this was that theinvolvement of spheres of interest in Connexions

developments at a local authority level inNortown was a little ‘hit and miss’. For instance,the LMC had been unable to securerepresentation from schools and there remainedconsiderable misunderstanding within schoolsabout Connexions. Nortown YOT, the police, theYouth Service and the voluntary sector had activerepresentation on the LMC but there was nodirect representation from the Drug Action Teamor Teenage Pregnancy Strategy. A wider groupacross the local authority covering health,education, social services, leisure, children’sservices had all cooperated in the developmentof a Children and Young People Strategic Plan(CYPSP), the coordinator for which was also amember of the LMC.

Many of those interviewed hoped that theconflict which was a feature of the first two yearsof the Partnership Board had come to a close.But it is worth noting that, as the fieldwork forthe research was concluding, a furtherdevelopment in the relationships between thePartnership Board and the LMCs took place. Asreported in Chapter 1, in January 2004 allConnexions Partnerships were told they were nolonger eligible for VAT exemptions and wouldhave to find the money from other sources. Thisprovided yet another issue around whichacrimonious disputes within the Partnershipcould reoccur. Bitterness and conflict betweenBoard members, it seemed, persisted.


Building better connections: Interagency work and the Connexions

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