YPQI - the policy and practice context in the UK

The Youth Programme Quality Intervention (YPQI) is a ground-breaking quality improvement process designed for and tested with youth organisations.

What we do

Developed in the US, extensive research has demonstrated its effectiveness in improving outcomes for young people, promoting a sustainable and supportive culture of organisational reflection and improvement, and refocusing evaluation on the quality of relationships within different settings.

The College's pilot programme covers England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and runs until September 2021. The overall aims for the pilot are to test, adapt and embed the YPQI within youth organisations across the UK, establish the infrastructure required to train and support these organisations, and build the evidence base of the correlation between quality of provision and positive outcomes for young people.

From the outset, it has been clear that the potential benefits of the YPQI will only be realised in the UK if we work in close partnership and collaboration with the sector – practitioners, infrastructure bodies, commissioners, funders and policy-makers – to ensure that the process aligns with, and is complementary to, existing policy and practice at both local and national levels. In order for the process to be adopted and sustained over the long term, it must be suitably adapted and refined for practitioners across the four countries of the UK, as well as understood and endorsed by those who support and resource them.

The briefing documents below are a key contribution to the achievement of this objective. They set out the policy and practice context for youth work in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and provide a summary of how the YPQI process fit within and could support that context in each case. They also highlight some of the key opportunities and challenges for the College and its partners as we proceed through the pilot.