These Regional Forums Followed on from the 2013 and 2014 National Youth Treatment Forums

Introduction

NCAT and the New Zealand Drug Foundation ran four regional youth forums between July and September in 2015. The forums were held in Rotorua, Palmerston North, Whangarei and Christchurch around the theme of ‘what does a youth relevant service mean?’ The forums were funded by the Ministry of Health to share the learning from the youth exemplar alcohol and other drug treatment services and strengthen networks between community based youth services.

These regional forums followed on from the 2013 and 2014 national youth treatment forums, responding to feedback to host similar forums in regional areas. A key aspect of the regional forums was to invite people outside of the alcohol and other drug sector and extend networks, responding to the existence of co-existing addiction and mental health challenges in young people and evidence around youth development.

The exemplar services, Mirror HQ and Rubicon Youth, alongside the exemplar project Sorted, shared their learnings at the relevant forums. Ben Birks Ang also presented research and evidence of what works in youth development. Around 40 people attended each one-day forum representing a diverse range of social services. The forums were adjusted for each region and planned with assistance from local providers and youth consumer advisors.

The forums had three main components: sharing evidence of youth development and exemplar learnings; learning what other youth services in the community are doing; and a workshop around what is working well, areas for improvement and how services can become more youth relevant.

This report outlines some of the key themes that emerged from the forums and provides recommendations on how to build on ensuring community services are youth relevant.

Exemplar services

The Ministry funded two service providers and four projects around the country for them to become exemplar services or projects for young people. This additional funding was used to hire youth co-existing problem practitioners, develop services and produce models of care.

Main themes of the forums

Across the forums there was energy to ensure youth services are relevant for young people and improve coordination across services. This was reflected in the following areas outlined in the small group discussion about what was working well: a passionate workforce, increasing collaboration, and services becoming more youth friendly. The workshop session also highlighted areas for improvement including the need for better awareness of other services, more regular forums for networking, greater support for regional areas, clarity around privacy and confidentiality, stigma around help seeking to be addressed and an increased focus on the transition from education to employment. Greater detail on discussion points specific to each region are in appendix 1.

The Rotorua forum was held in July and had 30 participants that predominately were addiction treatment practitioners alongside Iwi providers, youth justice, Rotovegas youth-one-stop-shop and DHB planners and funders.

Palmerston North forum was held at the start of August and was more focused on systems and service design, a reflection of attendees including service managers, city council workers, police, Whanau Ora providers, youth workers and regional service managers. This was the largest forum with 45 attendees.

Whangarei forum had 42 participants and was held in late August. This forum had the strongest education focus with principals and youth education providers alongside Rubicon Youth which has a large role in schools. The range of community providers also reflects the more rural area and less presence of government agencies. Issues around supporting rural providers, ensuring engaging activities for young people and enabling the community to define their needs and solutions were key.

The Christchurch forum was the smallest with 27 people and was held in September. This was the only forum in the South Island and the only one in a larger urban area. Participants were more directly involved in alcohol and other drug services, rather than broader community wide youth services. Participants were predominantly addiction service managers, planners and funders, and peer support workers. This forum had a greater focus on management and how the region can reduce the fragmentation of youth services.

Evaluation

Overall 144 people attended the forums, with 48 participants (33%) filling out the follow up survey seeking feedback on the workshop. Most participants rated the forum as ‘good’ or ‘very good’ with an average rating of 4.1 (4 – good, 5- very good). The most valuable part of the forum identified was the presentation at all forums by Ben Birks Ang, outlining the evidence of youth development and linking it to interventions in a really engaging manner. The next most valuable areas for participants were being able to network and learn what other services in their region are doing, showing the value of having cross sector forums focused on a common topic.

Nearly all participants’ awareness of other services in their communities improved and most had an increased understanding of what makes services youth relevant. The forums were successful at meeting the contracted requirements and most participants would attend a similar NCAT forum.

The more in-depth feedback from the survey indicated that most people were going to share what they learnt with their team and that it would have benefit to their service. In addition, some participants requested copies of the presentation by Ben Birks Ang to share with their team. Participants also indicted that the chance to network was going to lead to future collaboration.

Feedback on how the forum could be improved were around having more youth consumers and young people present, and being more targeted with the invitation to ensure the right people attended. The format of the forum worked well for most participants with a mixture of ways the information was delivered.

When asked about future priority areas common feedback was aroundthe “youth development focus extending beyond sector boxes” with better collaboration and youth engagement.

As a single one-off event the forums were closer to being about professional development and information sharing, rather than the start of a commitment to work on solutions of common interest.

Conclusion

The opportunity to run these regional youth forums has been a crucial next step in continuing the momentum around youth relevant services. By involving services and people outside of the normal focus for NCAT and the Drug Foundation these forums had a wider impact and broader community focus. There is a lot of energy in this area and further attention should be given to ensure best practice is developed and then implemented across all services providing support for young people.

Appendix one

Themes from the small group discussions

Exercise One: What’s working well?

The following three themes came up at all the workshops when brainstorming what is working well:

•The workforce has a heart, is passionate and care about what they do (e.g. provide help with practical things like getting drivers licence, etc)

•Collaboration is improving (e.g. relationships and trust is increasing, relationships brokered, referrals and networking improving as is knowledge of referring clinician, services on the same page, right people around the table so good triage)

•Models of service delivery are becoming more youth friendly. (E.g. services go to where young person is, hold youth information and health days, do home visits, spend time together travelling in car, going down the awa)

Along with the above three themes the table below summarises other things that were identified as working well in the small group discussions.

• Youth development framework
• Emphasis on whanau
• Increasing accessibility
• Mobile service
• Building up confidence / competence young people

• Working in clinical Multi Disciplinary Teams (MDT) settings
• Recognition of increased Co-existing Problems (CEP)
• Menu stick clinical records
• DAPANNZ registered clinicians
• Consult liaison
• Positive youth development approach
• Group work (but naturally self selected)
• Peer role modelling
• Providing awards and recognising achievement
• Being Maori and youth culture friendly
• Communication with whanau
• Person gets their own records
• Changing language
• Improving evidence base
• Early indicators / using data
• Youth negative stats going reducing e.g. smoking rates, binge drinking
• Data gathering
• CEP and CAMHS integration more community based
• Youth forums (such as this)

Exercise Two: Areas for improvement?

The following themes came up at more than one of the workshops when discussing areas for improvement

• Having better information of what different services did (e.g. service directory)
• More regular forums for networking
• More support for rural areas
• Increased focus on transition from education to employment
• Confidentiality and privacy
• Addressing stigma

Along with the above themes the table below summarises other things that were identified as areas for improvement in the small group discussions.

• Engagement with young people
• Fragmentation services
• Co-ordination across services
• One form (e.g. consent process)
• Contracting a barrier
• Early intervention
• Support for parents & grandparents e.g. on “teenage brain” etc
• Help seeking culture in schools
• Barriers addressed to meaningful activities
• Better mapping of what is available
• Sense of belonging for young people

• Sole practitioners – isolation lack of support, no Multi Disciplinary Team for AOD
• Limited resource for CEP, lack of training options / capacity /
• FASD gap
• Workforce planning
• Lack of standardisation of age limits across all YP services
• Developmental appropriate environment / focus
• Stigma / language
• Accommodation
• Permission for under 16
• Inviting spaces for young people
• Contractual flexibility – contracts better aligned to need
• Privacy in small communities
• Access to health services
• Costs to access sexual health
• Lack of focus on CEP in many areas (70-90% CEP clients) – need more to embrace CEP and more CEP supervisors
• Better access, engagement and follow up
• Capacity / resources (too many clients / back log)
• Transition from education to employment
• Residential support
• More funding
• Challenges in rural area, isolation, know what’s on
• 13 week stand down for benefit
• Quicker pathways to help
• Build capacity, consistency, supervision
• Talk about stigma
• Build “side by side” stuff
• Education Transition
• Supporting AOD supervision
• Family therapy
• Youth advisor
• Using IT / Facebook

Exercise three: Small group work on topic areas for improvement

Topic One: “Strengthening young people’s individual protective factors”

• They would know how to keep themselves safe e.g. bullying
• Strengthen their whanau / family – how to support healthy whanau, celebration potential to change and improve
• Accessible, possible opportunities
• Sustainable community / cultural change e.g. new attitudes / practices around alcohol, environments young people are in being response to change
• Clearer pathways education to work
• Whole school approach – community connections, partnering in the interests of young people, collective commitment to young people
• Making connections “outside of scope” or the square, moving beyond funding silos
• Vibrant engaged, know strengths, believe in themselves
• Whanau supporting them
• Strong social interaction skills – know how to move past / resolve conflict
• Respectful personal boundaries
• Connected with identity

• Acknowledging more than one support person – space for whanau to join
• Less stigma towards help seeking and being young – more empowering language with less clinical labels
• Strengths based approach
• Making mistakes is ok
• Early engagement
• One point of entry focused on what is best for the young person – Listening
• Consistent longer term funding
• Better training / response to crisis
• Follow up after a crisis – reflecting / learning
• Funding specifically for violent youth

Topic Two: “Building young people’s vocational pathway and educational achievement”

• Solution focus
• Early IEP development
• Mentoring with / by retirees
• Have support before it becomes a problem
• Goal setting
• Peer mentoring
• Exit placements for youth in between education facilities / transition
• Where are the employers during career advice
• Involve business / employers in vocational pathway
• Here and now / in the now

• Building young people’s vocational pathway and educational achievement
• Healing perspective at school – strengths based
• Independence and contribution is as valuable as NCEA results
• Work experience and transition to work programmes
• Personal knowledge of my strengths and potential
• Planning vocational goals and the steps involved in getting there
• Identifying the personal changes that will increase my job prospects
• Good local enterprise funding and support for young people’s employment
• Helping to see my future as important
• People to inspire young people to think ahead

Topic Three: “Creating opportunities for young people to be involved in their community and community development”

• Offer opportunities to build confidence through work experience in our organisations / agencies or other networks. This offers experience on CV’s
• School, community champions
• Support a forum for youth voice on their success / input
• Community involvement
• Feeling trusted, valued, understood and supported
• Reliable support from family and community, school
• Able to progress and achieve
• Able to contribute
• Taken seriously
• Increased resilience
• Sense of belonging
• Ask young people
• Youth leadership co-ordinated facilitated participation
• Youth forums, expos one stop shop;
• Champions
• Youth rep on council
• Visible sub culture
• Youth voice in media (print and radio)
• Zero unemployment
• All are engaged
• Have purpose
• Experienced
• Responsible citizen
• Contributing member
• Roles and responsibilities are clear
• Set of good values, ethos
• Setbacks and challenges are dealt with in a healthy way
• Whakakotahi – belonging
• Does not falter
• Elders as advisors and young taking action (Harmonious relationship)
• Consequences, boundaries, rules
• Communication
• Long-term stability.
• Promises are met

• Community development and opportunities
• Immediate and reliable access to services / specialised services
• Affordable and support access to higher education
• Timely processes – referral
• Parental education – increases modelling and ability to pass skills to youth and other adults in community
• Educational opportunities for when ed system fails youth
• Creating opportunities for meaningful activities

Topic Four: “Making it easy to access support and skilled developmentally appropriate providers when needed”

• Youth knowing where to go for help
• When accessing help the experience is positive
• Easy accessible and fast response. Safe and trustworthy
• Free confidential advice
• Good fit for youth
• Tell the story once
• People supporting me and are available in a safe place
• If I like you and trust you I want to work with you. If I have to see other people can you come with me
• I want to talk about what’s important to me, not what your work focus is or your paper work
• If I don’t turn up can you sent me a text to check if I am ok
• Give me choices and see me in a place that I choose
• Have a sense of humour
• Help me get my whanau support if they need - come with me to talk to my whanau
• Be professional but friendly and approachable
• Don’t judge me / believe in me
• If we have sorted stuff and finished, can I come back later and see the person that I trust
• Connect with me electronically
• Can you see me when I need it
• I need you to be well connected with other people who can support me
• Location – safe, trusted, non stigmatised
• Hours to meet peoples needs
• Drip in
• Confidentiality
• Hope and positive
• Range of IT and technology

• Outreach – locations willing to host and resource
• Youth friendly, visible and welcoming
• Public transport
• Youth participation in service design and management
• Community connectedness and service navigability
• Friendly staff
• Role modelling by adults of positive behaviours

Topic Five: Making it easy to access support in rural areas