3.3 The Difference Your Work Makes

Fictional extract. Project figures, quotations and grant details are illustrative.

Outcomes framework overview

Our work delivers measurable improvements in young people’s emotional regulation, confidence, school attendance and safety outside school hours. Shaped by youth consultation circles, parent feedback and termly review meetings with partner secondary schools, our outcomes framework tracks change across four connected levels:

1. Outcome 1 (Primary beneficiaries: Open-access Youth Club members): Improved emotional wellbeing, social confidence, positive peer friendships and access to a trusted adult outside school and home.
2. Outcome 2 (Targeted beneficiaries: Mentored young people at risk of exclusion): Reduced fixed-term school suspensions, improved school attendance, stronger emotional self-regulation and re-engagement with learning or post-16 pathways.
3. Outcome 3 (Secondary beneficiaries: Parents, carers and partner schools): Reduced family stress around after-school safety and school behaviour crises, and better-coordinated pastoral support between home, school and community.
4. Outcome 4 (Community and organisational level): Reduced anti-social behaviour on target estates during outreach evenings, and a sustained local progression pipeline of young alumni moving into volunteering, youth work qualifications and paid delivery roles.

Outcome 1 in detail: Youth Club members

• Young people feel safe, respected and part of a positive peer community during high-risk after-school and evening hours.
• Young people build communication skills, self-worth and at least one consistent, trusted adult relationship they can turn to before problems escalate.
• Reduced boredom-driven drift into anti-social behaviour or unsafe street congregation.
• Consistent Tuesday evening opening at Mayesbrook Park Pavilion staffed by the same familiar, locally rooted youth work team every week.
• Shared, non-competitive activities (cooking a hot meal together, music production, boxing fitness and group games) that allow young people to build competence and talk naturally with adults without feeling interrogated.
• 2025 Termly Youth Survey (48 respondents): Members scored the project an average of 4.3 out of 5 for feeling safe at the project and 4.1 out of 5 for having an adult at the project they trust to talk to when something is going wrong.
• Youth worker observation logs record consistent improvements in peer conflict resolution, willingness to ask for help with school or home pressures, and sustained attendance (with a core group of ~40 teenagers attending most weeks across the academic year).