This campaign has now closed
The Foyer Federation has recently reviewed its role and activities and developed a new strategic plan for the period of 2008 – 2011, which sets out a strong vision for our future development. Our experience over the past 15 years shows that Foyers can and do change the lives of vulnerable young people. At a time when commissioners are shifting resources away from accommodation based services in favour of models using ‘floating support’, we believe the holistic Foyer approach should be adapted to reach out to more young people. In particular, it could be targeted at vulnerable young people who are living either with their families or independently in the social or private rented sector, who nonetheless need support as they make the journey to independent adulthood. We are already beginning to develop and adapt the Foyer model to create a strong asset base among a wider group of vulnerable young people, enabling them to build the resilience they need to meet the challenges of the future. Over the next three years, we want to work with a range of partners to: Develop and test new ideas that challenge service providers, commissioners and funders to ‘up their game’; Influence policy and practice at a national, regional and local level, bringing decision makers into direct contact with young people themselves; Support frontline organisations to ‘raise the bar’ by helping them replicate or scale up successful initiatives; Capture and transfer knowledge about what works within and beyond our network.
Categories
Beneficiaries
Situation
The Transitions Framework will help us to: Join up services, funding and partnerships through our role as a broker between commissioners and delivery agencies. Understand the needs, goals, identities and voice of young people in transition. Lead on the development of an inspiring skills, resource and opportunity base for young people to access and secure in their lives; Invest in the rights and responsibilities of young people to build future communities by reinvigorating the foyer ‘contract’ and the way it is supported; Achieve outcomes which demonstrate impact on social inclusion and wellbeing. Within the Development Framework, there are three key elements: 1) The 3 Ps of Transition that identify support interventions across the transitions trajectory in terms of prevention of risk, preparation from states of dependency, and progression into independence. 2) A Social Contract for transitions, which updates the traditional foyer contract as a social investment in young people’s transition into adulthood, and promotes community and partnership support. 3) The ‘Skills-Resource-Opportunity’ base that defines the social and identity capital or ‘life assets’ which young people need to develop in order to achieve the social equality and mobility associated with positive transitions. We are developing three key initiatives which focus on different aspects of the transitions vision. Rural Transitions focusing on helping to address rural disadvantage as part of our transitions approach, and will enable rural projects to participate in shaping future programmes. A Transitions Centre project that focuses on incubating enterprising approaches to secure ‘last mile’ opportunities that help young people progress in their lives, developing both a national transitions flagship and model to support innovation. Healthy Transitions which addresses an identified need to develop young people’s emotional resilience and wellbeing as key components for a positive transition. Healthy Transitions will help join up services through the Foyer model as an Accredited Centre for transitional wellbeing; will improve our understanding of young people’s holistic health needs, including those of groups such as LGBT youth; will help bolster young people’s skills and resource base through a focus on health; will provide a renewed investment in the Foyer contract; and will improve our capacity to capture outcomes and impact.