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Completed research

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COMPLETED

This work took place when Young People in Focus (YPF) was callled the Trust for the Study of Adolescence (TSA)

The Community Newsletters Project

Background

Work by TSA (the ‘Spotlight’ newsletter project) showed that newsletters are a highly effective way of getting information and support to parents of teenagers. However, this research also showed that these newsletters did not reach all parents, for example parents with low levels of literacy, those with English as an additional language, those in particularly disadvantaged communities and parents of children with special needs/disabilities. The Community Newsletter project is aimed to provide tailor-made newsletters for these, and other, groups.

What the project involved

TSA worked with seven organisations, who all work with parents of teenagers:

Asian families with disabled teenagers
Fathers of teenagers (two groups)
Parents with disabilities, who are parents of teenagers
Lone parents with teenagers
Parents whose young people are at risk of offending
Parents with lesbian, gay or bisexual teenagers.

TSA worked with parents and practitioners in these groups to develop and write tailor-made newsletters. Each newsletter included articles written by parents, hints and tips, agony aunt/uncle pages, and sources of further information. At the end of the project, each community group was given the newsletter template, in order to produce their own newsletters in the future. The evaluation undertaken of the project showed the newsletters were very well received by parents.

Further information and developments from this project

There were a number of different outcomes from this project, as follows:

A Good Practice Guide was produced to help other organisations to develop their own newsletters. This guide is available for sale from TSA’s publications department.
A full report on the project, detailing how the newsletters were produced and the results of the evaluation, was made available in November 2004.
A detailed programme of dissemination has been completed, including journal articles, conference presentations, and workshops.

Project Workers

Julie Shepherd was responsible for this project, with Debi Roker as project manager.

More information:
Please contact Young People in Focus
Email: info@youngpeopleinfocus.org.uk
Tel: 01273 693311

December 2005