Make 'evidence based' approachable

Youthline applauds the move to ensure work with youth is evidence based and evaluated but says this must be made approachable and achievable.

The recently released Gluckman report on youth morbidity notes that there is very little scientific evidence for effective interventions with teenagers and calls for policy makers to ensure that programmes are well researched, piloted, verified by randomised control trials and subject to ongoing monitoring and evaluation.

Youthline spokesperson Stephen Bell says that while an ideal situation, this level of scientific rigor is unachievable for many community agencies and risks sidelining programmes that are working well.

"Youth work is a relatively new field that has grown from a grass roots approach with skilled people doing what they see works, often with very limited resources, and because of this there is not much research to back it up."

Bell says the answer lies in academics and agencies working together to verify the outcomes of their work from a non-biased perspective.

"We need to move from simply going on gut feeling to working from an evidence base but it is important not to scrap good programmes just because they're not yet validated from an academic perspective."

Youthline is currently piloting a measure based on a questionnaire developed by Dalhousie University in Canada to understand how their programmes contribute to the development of resilience, and the ability to resist and rise above risk.

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