Our Impact

Evidencing best practice

Why is evaluation so important?

Here at Upskill we bring a fresh, innovative and ground-breaking approach to working with young people at risk and its making a difference. In this world of funding and commissioning, evidencing the impact of your work is crucial to the success of every organisation.

Upskill take monitoring and evaluation very seriously. It not all ensures our quality control of our service delivery, outputs and outcomes in line with our Theory Of Change and proves what we are doing works. This why every single intervention, treatment and support we deliver is evaluated.

With the market flooded by so many providers its vital that we can demonstrate what sets us apart and why our methodology involving such a rich mix of therapeutic approaches underpinned by restorative practice is so unique.

So what has been the impact

Upskill have work with 1000’s of young people since our launch and the accumulative data in terms of attitudinal change and how this translates into behavioural and or offending change speak volumes.

100% improvement in attitudes around serious violence, group offending including gang involvement/ affiliation.

5% positive improvement in attitudes around healthy peer relationships

100% increase in awareness and empathy towards their victims

75% improvement in attitudes towards family/carers

5% improvement in attitudes around offending behaviour and critical

decision making

5% improvement in attitudes around their own personal safety

5% increase in attitudes around wellbeing including their own mental Health

Through our key partnerships with the police and other multi Agencies we are able to capture data on hard outcomes for out participants.

The data illustrates the positive impact the EXODUS interventions have had on young people involved in relation to offending behaviour. In every area there is significant reductions in levels of offending

(-42%) arrests

(-52%) stop and search

(-43%) suspicion of being involved in criminal activity

(35%) and being victims of violence (-44%).

A big part of our interventions aims to develop the young people’s understanding of the impact and consequences of their offending on victims, family, the community, and self. Key outcomes include building personal resilience and developing practical skills and strategies to reduce recidivism, manage their own risk and make appropriate lifestyle changes. Whilst EXODUS focuses on serious youth violence and child crime exploitation (including county lines) the programme also focuses around personal development and character building.

The EXODUS skills Framework has been designed to help young people enhance their:

Communication
Problem Solving
Self-Belief
Self-Management
Teamwork

So what Evaluation Methods do we draw on ?

The findings included in this report are based using a mixed-methods research (MMR) design, which draws on eight sources:

Theory of change development with both of the delivery partners plus delivery partners at programme level
Evaluator attendance and observation at key project sessions
Desk research on the background to the programme,
Qualitative, semi-structured interviews with programme partner schools/colleges (face to face and virtual Interviews with the key staff who supported the project delivery).
Qualitative, unstructured in-depth interview with a senior manager from one of the participating Colleges at the end of the programme.
Focus groups with students who participated in the programme (5 independent focus groups taken from the six Schools). The focus groups explored the student experience and satisfaction with the programme in terms of content and delivery.
Attitudinal Self Evaluation EXODUS STAR completed by all participants at the beginning and end. Designed to measure the impact of the programme on participants attitude around behaviour and social change.
Strength and difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) focused around - Active lifestyle happiness and wellbeing.

Most recently we have started to test and pilot multi-site randomised control trials to evaluate the impact of mentoring practice, where the mentoring is carried out across a range of partnerships and the delivery settings/contexts are likely to vary. Multi-site trials are innovative because traditional randomised controlled trials (RCTs) usually take place with one organisation that delivers one programme or project.

One of the most crucial parts of our evaluation work is to capture the child/ family which is where case studies are so important.

Our Impact

OUR IMPACT

Evidencing best practice

Why is evaluation so important?

So what has been the impact

So what Evaluation Methods do we draw on ?

Meet our Expert Team