Bespoke consultancy

Our consultancy services will provide you with the confidence to scope local need, identify training or resourcing needs, as well as provide you with signposting to the training courses, CPD and NYA frameworks and tools to help you develop the optimum services for your young people.

About the service

Maybe you want to better understand how to encourage more youth participation within your organisation, or perhaps you need to review a new organisational strategy and ensure that it is in line with national standards. Our team of experts will work with you to identify your specific needs and design a bespoke package.

Support available

Needs analysis

Our Knowledge Team has extensive expertise in the identification, collation and analysis of data and insight around youth work practice and quality. The team can offer support with the development and delivery of your Needs Analysis and provide insight into local provision to better inform service design, providing more effective targeted services, where they are needed most.

Planning

Our Youth Work Specialists and senior team have expertise in using best practice and insight to inform planning and service design. The team can offer expert advice and support in the planning of new and improved services, helping you offer the right support, in the right way at the right moment.

Implementation

Youth Work Specialists and our senior team are available to provide insight and critical friend support during the implementation phase of services, to meet the new statutory duty for local authorities and NYA’s standards, helping great youth work to happen.

Evaluation and review

Our Knowledge Team can help you design an evaluation and review process that enables you to measure the impact of your service. This helps you to understand the difference that your services are making to young people, and how to build on your impact.

Safeguarding and risk

In addition to our free to access Safeguarding and Risk Management Hub our safeguarding experts offer bespoke support to address any specific needs and challenges. Ensuring that young people are safe and supported is at the heart of youth work, and our expert support can help strengthen your service in this area.

Our core consultancy team

Leigh Middleton, CEO

Leigh has extensive experience of commissioning and developing new models of youth work, including social investment models and public sector opportunities. Leigh has a huge passion for experiential learning and development of young people – he particularly champions authentic youth voice and participation and quality assurance of youth work practice.

Alex Stutz

Alex brings a wealth of research experience from across the voluntary and community sector – something that he is passionate about, with much of it helping to bring about change for children and young people.

Kevin Jones

Kevin is JNC Qualified and has been a practicing Youth and Community worker for over 25 years. He has been a leader in both the statutory and voluntary sectors and has a passion for detached youth work and infrastructure projects.

Barry Williams

Barry is an expert in operational leadership responsible for developing and maintaining the systems, processes and infrastructure at NYA that enable a culture of autonomy and accountability. Barry has worked in young people’s services for over 20 years, and he is driven by the desire to support those working directly with young people, to achieve the best possible outcomes.

Karen Self

Karen is a JNC professionally qualified youth and community worker and qualified trainer. She brings expertise in delivering digital, distance learning and face-to-face learning materials, as well as developing projects for the youth sector workforce.

”“The NYA’s robust review has resulted in a commitment from all partners to support a collaborative approach to developing youth provision in the long term. In the short term, the local authority has committed to establishing a new small youth service that supports and facilitates the third sector to increase high quality youth provision across the town.

The relationships and partnerships with the third sector are now far stronger than at the start of this journey, with a clear vision of what we are trying to achieve collectively, which is having a positive impact on both the development of youth provision across the town but also on other agendas that they now have the opportunity to shape and influence. The work that the NYA undertook was of excellent quality and has played a critical part in informing the journey that we are on as a town with regard to youth provision.”
Lisa ArnoldAssistant Director of Community & Environmental Services, Blackpool Council