Key information
Executive summary
The Greater London Authority (GLA) is proposing to create a youth-focused, social action and volunteering programme in London offering young people volunteering opportunities in schools, their community and beyond. The programme will be match funded through the ‘#iwill’ fund administered by the Big Lottery Fund; this match funding was approved by the #iwill board on the 5th September 2017.
The programme will reach young people new to volunteering and keep them actively volunteering between the ages of ten and 20. It will also test innovative approaches to recruiting, supporting and sustaining the volunteering activity of individuals and communities from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The programme will have three strands: Team London Young Ambassadors, ‘v•Rewards’ and a grants fund. Expenditure will total £1.7m over three years, with a net cost to the GLA of £883k.
The programme will be delivered in partnership with v•inspired and Thrive LDN.
Decision
That the Mayor approves the GLA’s:
1. receipt of #iwill funding from the Big Lottery Fund as follows:
(a) £450k as a 50 per cent contribution towards the costs of its Team London Young Ambassadors programme 2017-20;
(b) £383k as a 50 per cent contribution towards the cost of its small grants programme 2017-20; and
2. expenditure of up to:
(a) £900k (£450k coming from existing planned GLA resources) on the Team London Young Ambassador programme 2017-20;
(b) £766k (£383k coming from existing GLA resources) on the small grants programme 2017-20; and
(c) £50k, in the form of grant funding, from the GLA to v•inspired as a contribution to the costs of its v•Rewards project.
Part 1: Non-confidential facts and advice
1.1 Team London has been working with Step up to Serve’s (SUTS) #iwill campaign which is administered by the Big Lottery Fund on a solicited bid to bring in matched funding to create a new programme of youth focused social activity across London. This will take lessons learned from existing programmes, such as our Team London Young Ambassadors and small grants programmes, and bring them together with new ideas.
1.2 The aim of the programme is to create a London-wide environment where all young people are supported and encouraged to take part in volunteering and social action and can do this through the different activity types and support provided by the programme structure. These consist of a school based social action programme (Team London Young Ambassadors), a small grants programme which will allow young people and organisations the chance to access or create a funded project to address mental health and other wellbeing outcomes, and the v•Rewards strand, which is looking at reward, recognition and how to change behaviour around volunteering and social action.
1.3 Many young people are unaware of the benefits of volunteering and youth social action; and of how or where to get involved or find out about the different options available. Conversely, there is a lack of understanding among those organisations which provide volunteering opportunities about how they can help a young person start a volunteering and social action journey; and little consideration given to the type of incentives that might encourage young people to continue participating. Our programme will provide evidence of the barriers and provide insight into rewards to show which incentives work in terms of behaviour change.
Programme streams
1.4 The programme contains three complementary streams to create accessible, supported pathways for all young people in London to engage with social action and volunteering. The streams create a pathway of involvement for young people, starting from the base of school and working through to the ability to participate in or self-organise a project and gain funding for it – while being rewarded and recognised throughout this journey.
1.5 Stream 1 is Team London Young Ambassadors programme (TLYA), working across a network of 2,100 schools. The programme will work with a delivery partner to reach young people new to volunteering and embed social action as a habit. Learning from within the network from the most engaged schools will provide insight into supporting schools to embed good practice, ensuring school-aged children in London can access an impactful and inspiring social action programme.
1.6 Stream 2 is the Team London / Thrive LDN Small Grants fund, a fund totalling £600,000 that will support youth focused social action projects addressing mental health and other wellbeing outcomes. The fund will be open to community groups, charities, schools and individuals. In addition to the health outcomes of young people taking part in social action, this grant will be for activities in line with the thematic areas identified in the #iwill health and social care action plan:
• Keeping healthy: health champions, peer educators and social prescribing
• Having your say: co-producing services, youth forums and campaigning
• Supporting your community: community activities, befriending and helping patients
1.7 Applications for grants will be evaluated by officers from across the GLA within Team London and the Health team. A shortlist of the highest scoring applications will be recommended to the advisory board, drawn from programme stakeholders. Recommendations will be put to the Deputy Mayor for Social Integration, Social Mobility and Community Engagement and the Mayor’s health advisors, Dr Tom Coffey and Dr Yvonne Doyle for approval.
1.8 The grant will be divided in to three funding pots:
• Multi-year projects each of up to £50k
• Annual small grants of £5-10k
• Micro grants of up to £400
• In addition, there will be a grants conference each year and a dedicated member of staff within Team London, match funded by #iwill to manage the grant portfolio and associated programme activity
1.9 Stream 3 is v•Rewards, pilot project to test an incentives and rewards package for young volunteers in partnership with v•inspired. It will incentivise young people to explore and carry out volunteering and social action, providing a developed understanding of the motivations and barriers to participation. The #iwill board, having looked at the project on a preliminary basis, will be looking at the proposal in more detail at their December board. Until that point v•inspired will fund the vast majority of the development cost of the project, the amount of which is set out at part 2 of this MD.
2.1 As set out above, the Young London Inspired programme will have three streams of activity, the Team London Young Ambassador programme, the Small Grants Fund and the v•Rewards programme. The headline objectives of the programme are as follows:
• More young people from diverse backgrounds get involved in and lead volunteering and social action activity
• Young people gain reward experiences related to their interests and ambitions, personal, volunteering or career based
• Improvements in community health outcomes by increasing volunteering and social action focussed on wider determinants of mental health through grants activity
• Better awareness and communication of the benefits of volunteering and social action amongst young people and between organisations
• Improved access to volunteering and social action by building organisations’ capacity to create appropriate and appealing opportunities
• Build a cross sector network of collaborators from community, public, charity, cultural, academic organisations to share learning and embed new youth focused approaches
2.2 This integrated pathway to volunteering and social action will aim to remove the current barriers encountered by creating accessible routes to participation for young people in London that can be accessed easily and autonomously. Barriers such as:
• Lack of awareness of volunteering and social action, the opportunities available and their benefits
• A perceived lack of time to carry out social action
• A perceived lack of recognition and incentive to carry out social action
• Limited opportunities to carry out volunteering and social action with youth ownership
• Low levels of funding for smaller scale social action projects
• Practical and physical barriers (transport etc.) through flexible and accessible opportunities
2.3 The programme is built on testing and learning, mixing more established approaches to supporting social action with a new stream (v•Rewards) and new ideas. This ‘process learning’ will allow the approach to be refined throughout. In particular it will test:
• The ways in which barriers to entry for those most disadvantaged can be successfully broken down
• How to improve the volunteering and social action experience from the perspective of the young person
• How to improve support to disengaged groups to help them recognise the value of volunteering and social action
• How we gather and share data around volunteering and social action so that it is more consistently recorded and can be better analysed
• How we can make volunteering and social action part of a “being a Londoner” and core to identity for young Londoners
• How to better understand the role of the family in establishing a habit of service
2.4 The programme will help us understand:
• How a targeted and incentivised programme of support can be created to facilitate young people’s progression along the volunteering/social action journey (from reluctant, to potential, to committed) and lead to an increase involvement in volunteering and social action
• How the programme supports young people to have a positive experience and become committed to volunteering and social action - sustain involvement in volunteering/social action
Programme KPIs
3.1 Equal Opportunities are enshrined within Team London’s programmes. Team London volunteering projects aim to ensure that all Londoners can access volunteering opportunities and indeed by doing so support other Londoners equally throughout the city.
3.2 Our projects particularly promote equal life chances; reducing barriers to social mobility, demonstrating improvements in social integration and effective community engagement. This programme will involve working with young people, under-represented and disconnected Londoners to connect them through volunteering, with education, training, the world of work and other opportunities to enhance their life chances and improve social mobility and social integration.
3.3 Our work also embraces London’s diversity by connecting Londoners from a variety of demographical and geographical backgrounds together in support of commons causes. In addition, we recognise volunteers from every area in London through our Awards ceremony.
3.4 This programme will particularly focus on young Londoners from more diverse and deprived backgrounds who might experience significant barriers to participating in social action and volunteering. It will look at how to overcome these barriers and also how to motivate and reward young people in ways that support them to grow.
Key risks and issues
Links to Mayoral strategies and priorities
4.1 The Young London Inspired programme will contribute towards:
• Working with communities and civil society groups across London to encourage active participation in community and civic life from young Londoners
• Encouraging more young Londoners to get involved in volunteering for, and connecting with, others in their community
• Building strong partnerships between the public and voluntary agencies working with young people, across the fields of mental health and wellbeing, and the fields of social action and volunteering
• Inspiring young people to foster valuable life skills by becoming active citizens in their local area, and bringing communities together in a way that is now more important than ever
• Supporting innovation in looking at ways to tackle barriers to participation in volunteering and social action and working with colleagues from Culture and Communities and Social Policy to ensure alignment between department activity on participation, identity and belonging
Impact Assessments and consultations
4.2 We consult relevant groups and stakeholders when undertaking any new programmes e.g. we scoped out existing reward and recognition programmes working across London, explored the ideas in a roundtable with voluntary sector organisations and think-tanks and are using a test and learn approach to this work so that we can adapt and flex the work as we go.
4.3 There is an established Advisory Board for Team London to ensure we have the voice of all relevant parties shaping the future of the programme to ensure it is relevant, efficient and delivering the best volunteering related outcomes for Londoners.
4.4 The #iwill and SUTS board will require monitoring and evaluation of impact and proactive working with the independent #iwill learning hub which is being established. There will be distinct programme strands to look at the individual outcomes and outputs and we are working with the Intelligence Team to establish an overall measurement framework for the programme. There will be a programme advisory board drawn from across the GLA and external organisations.
5.1 Approval is being sought for the following:
• Expenditure of £900k on the Team London Young Ambassadors Programmes, with costs incurred over 3 financial years in 2017-18 (£300k), 2018-19 (£300k), and 2019-20 (£300k). £450k will be funded by the GLA and the other £450k will be funded by grant income from #iwill. For the year 2017-18, £50k was approved by the Mayor under cover of MD2124, with the balance to be funded from the Communities and Intelligence’s Minor Programmes Budget for 2017-18
• Expenditure of £766k on the Small Grants Programme, with costs incurred over 3 financial years in 2017-18 (£255k), 2018-19 (£255k), and 2019-20 (£256k). £383k will be funded by the GLA and the other £383k will be funded by grant income from #Iwill. For the year 2017-18, £128k will be funded from the Third Sector Support Programme budget as approved by the Mayor under cover of MD2124
• Expenditure of £50k in grant funding to v•inspired to support the v•Rewards strand of the Young London Inspired programme. This will be funded from the Rewards and Recognition Programme budget for 2017-18 as approved by the Mayor under cover of MD2124
5.2 With regards to future years’ budget, these have been earmarked within the GLA’s draft spending plans for each year, but will still be subject to the Authority’s annual budget setting process.
6.1 The foregoing sections of this report indicate that:
6.1.1 the decisions requested of the Mayor concern the exercise of the GLA’s general powers, falling within the statutory powers of the GLA to do such things as may be considered to further, and or be facilitative of or conducive or incidental to the furthering of, the promotion of social development in Greater London; and
6.1.2 in formulating the proposals in respect of which a decision is sought officers have complied with the GLA’s related statutory duties to:
(a) pay due regard to the principle that there should be equality of opportunity for all people;
(b) consider how the proposals will promote the improvement of health of persons, health inequalities between persons and to contribute towards the achievement of sustainable development in the United Kingdom; and
(c) consult with appropriate bodies.
6.2 In taking the decisions requested, the Mayor must have due regard to the Public Sector Equality Duty; namely the need to eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct prohibited by the Equality Act 2010, and to advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic (race, disability, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion or belief, pregnancy and maternity and gender reassignment) and persons who do not share it and foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it (section 149 of the Equality Act 2010). To this end, the Mayor should have particular regard to section 3 (above) of this report.
6.3 Should the Mayor be minded to approve the recommendations in respect of which decisions are sought officers must ensure that:
(a) they are content that the GLA can meet the conditions to which the provision of #iwill funding is subject, seeking legal and finance advice as necessary;
(b) do not act in reliance of that funding until legally binding commitments are in place in concerning the provision of the same;
(c) ensure any supplies and/or services required for the delivery of the programme are procured by Transport for London Procurement and officers should liaise with Transport for London Procurement in this regard and ensure that appropriate contract documentation is put in place with and executed by proposed service providers before the commencement of the required supplies and/or services; and
(d) to the extent that the GLA intends to award grant funding to third parties in respect of projects that align with the aims of the programme that funding agreements are put in place with and executed by the GLA and the recipients before making any commitment to the award of the same.
Signed decision document
MD2171 Young London Inspired (signed) PDF
Supporting documents
MD2171 Part 2