Young People in Focus

SECTION 3

3.5 Interventions

Young people who were interviewed individually described the interventions they took part in:

It’s fun and helps with communication and family problems. (Sam)

It was just like a place that you can go to and relax and just get everything out of your system. (Debbie)

Helps if you are having lots of arguments it’s like an anger management course. (Simi)

The numbers of young people in the study sample involved in the 5 different interventions is shown in table 2 below:

Four out of the five project sites worked with 20 or more young people from the study sample. Luton YOS Family Therapy project worked with 8 young people.

The ratio of young men and young women attending each project was similar in three of the projects, whereas both the East Berkshire YOTs Individual Parallel project and Luton YOS Family Therapy project worked with considerably more young men than young women.

The numbers of parents in the study sample involved in the 5 different interventions is shown in table 3 below:

Again four out of the 5 project sites worked with more than 22 parents in the study sample and Luton YOS Family Therapy project worked with 12 parents.

Luton YOS Family Therapy had a lower throughput of parents and young people involved in the study sample than the other project sites. The reasons identified by project staff for the lower numbers involved are that there were administrative difficulties proceeding with the recruitment process for additional therapists in the early stages of the project, a lack of referrals in the early stages and additionally that the interventions tended to run over an extended period of time.

All sites worked with a far greater number of mothers than fathers.  The 5 fathers in the study sample attended 3 of the sites, with 3 out of the 5 fathers attending the Centre for Fun and Families Parallel Groups. Two of the sites did not work with any fathers in the study sample.⁷

The project staff were asked to report how much contact time young people had with their project and over how many weeks they were involved with the project. This information is shown in table 4 below.  The amount of contact time varied across the projects and for different young people. For three of the projects the most contact hours they had with young people was between 14 and 18 hours whereas the most time for Luton Yot Family Therapy was 7 hours and with Kinara Famiy Skills Training this rose to 35 hours. Similarly the number of weeks of contact also varied considerably, ranging from 1 week, to contact for up to 30 weeks. 

The average amount of contact which young people in the study sample had with the projects was just under 11 hours and the average number of hours per week was 1.7.

Variations in the amount of engagement young people had during the IYPP project varied as much within individual projects as between the 5 project sites.

* Where there were ‘0’ hours/weeks recorded the young person did not attend the programme but the parent did attend.

The drop out or non-completion rate for parents was 15% (18 out of 119) and for young people was 20% (21 out of 104). 

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