Young People in Focus

SECTION 3

3.11 Next Steps

• Projects piloting or developing new initiatives need a lengthy project development phase built in to ensure issues such as recruitment and the flow of referrals can be addressed
• A larger scale project working with many more families, as well as the inclusion in the project design of comparison or control groups, would enable robust conclusions to be drawn about the benefits, or not, of directly linking work with young people and parents, rather than working separately with just parents and/or just young people
• Additionally, this larger study could also include the interventions piloted in this initiative being tested in a number of different locations with a large enough throughput so that each of the interventions can be separately evaluated and compared to each other. This would mean that the effects of the different interventions could be analysed to see whether there are particular benefits of different types of interventions
• A future study could also explore whether these interventions provided as part of a more intensive package to address multiple issues would be beneficial to families
• A longer term project would allow for the systematic follow up of families to study longer term outcomes
• Projects offering interventions that work separately but in parallel with parents and young people should explore the benefits, or otherwise, of holding some joint sessions as part of the programme
• Conversely, projects involving young people and parents in groups together should explore the benefits of providing separate individual time for parents and for young people

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