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Communicating positive activities

We recently exhibited and ran a workshop at the annual Children & Young People Now show held at Earl’s Court London. It was an action packed two days with over 3,000 delegates from a wide cross section of the children, families and youth sector.

Our focus for the event was how to ‘Communicate Positive Activities’- and it would seem that this is a pretty hot topic! Communicating in an interesting, relevant and enticing manner; engaging young people in the activities & services you have to offer is as diverse as the individuals themselves.

We ran a workshop at the event to explore this subject in more detail; we fed back the results of  a small online survey we ran in the weeks running up to the show. [thank you to all those who completetd it!] Whilst nearly 50% of the public sector use their general website to promote services for young people encouragingly just over 40% stated that they had a specific young peoples site.

Hard copy promotional materials such as posters/newsletters & brochures are still the prominent medium with 78% of the publc sector using these to promote their positive activities with schools and Youth outreach workers being used as the main outlet for the promotion of services.

The answers that begs the questions is although these channels might be in place… how effective are they? Do young people know about them? Do they use them? and do they offer genuine support in their day to day lives? These are all questions that we are really interested in and in our work we look to explore these and find the channels that can meet these outcomes.

If you have areas of best prcatice or are challenged with this subject we’d love to hear from you.

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By Kate Warboys
May 27, 2009

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FIS Development Project May e-bulletin now available

The latest edition of the FIS Development Project e-bulletin pulled together by the FIS Development Project Team is now available and can be accessed by following this link.

This edition contains further information on the Parent Know How Directory and links through to the email sent out last week from the DCSF that distributed an annex to the Sure Start Early Years and Childcare Grant Memorandum of Grant with an accompanying guidance note, which relates to FIS, Section 12 and PKHD.

Over the last couple of weeks each FIS should also have received a package with hard copies of the new ‘Planning to Inform’ document plus the evaluation report & PKH leaflet. 

If you require any further information or clarification please do not hesitate to contact us at FIS@opp-links.org.uk

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By Heather Adam
May 11, 2009

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FIS Development Project

The FIS Development Project is a Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) funded project, delivered by Opportunity Links. The team works in partnership with DCSF, the National Association of Families Information Services (NAFIS) and other relevant regional and national agencies to raise awareness of FIS and duty set out in the Childcare Act 2006 to provide information, advice and assistance to parents.

As part of this project, four Development Sessions took place in March, entitled ‘Moving Forward Together’ these events were designed to respond to key challenges identified by FIS over the last year and were again delivered in partnership with the regional Government Offices.  In addition, the event drew together work underway on a number of related projects, including the Parent Know How Directories enabled by the Information System for Parents and Providers (ISPP) and the NAFIS Families First Standards.

The events were run in Birmingham, Leeds and two in London, all being well attended with nearly 150 people coming along to all four days.  From the evaluations and feedback on the day the events were a great success, much was learnt and many took back information and ideas to share with their teams.  The comments below from those who attended really sum up the days!

 ‘A very helpful day in term of setting out agenda and picking up on good practice from other FISs.’

 ‘Always useful to attend these sessions for clarity and peace of mind’

 ‘Thoroughly enjoyed the session - good chance to network with other FISs’

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By Heather Adam
May 7, 2009

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Young people as social reporters

We recently held our final session of the Young People as Social Reporters project with 6 students from a local college.  The session included showing the two films created from their time as ’social reporters’, reviewing the raw footage of the film they took and asking them their feedback. We wanted to know what they thought of the project, what they liked, disliked and if their behaviours have changed over the project in terms of their social media useage plus the content they create online.

How the project started - 11 Million Takeover Day 2008 - 7 November 2008

Six young people from Cambridge Regional College were invited into Opportunity Links offices as part of the national 11 Million Takeover day activities.  They were trained in social research techniques and participated in a number of creative activities - including interviewing OL staff on their use of social media! 

They then spent the next week using these skills and interviewing friends and families on the use of the internet and social media.  This footage was then turned into a short film which was shown at our joint conference with 4 Children: ‘New generation, new media. new challenge! Engaging with young people through social media’ - on 27 November 2008.

The young people attended our conference and while there interviewed and filmed the delegates on their views of the conference, the internet and social media.  This was made into a second film.

Feedback session - 23 February 2009

Six of the young people and their tutors fedback to us. They really enjoyed taking part in the project and believed they have benefited from the new skills they learnt.  It has given them increased confidence and they have also tried new social media sites after talking about this subject.

They enjoyed the experience of the conference but would have preferred to have more opportunity to put their own views forward and take part, which we have taken into account for the future.  Some comments from the young people on the project:

“It’s been really good, loads of fun and enjopyed the experience of interviewing and learning to be a social reporter’”

“I enjoyed the new experience of doing interviews, I was nervous at first but now far more confident”

“It was interesting and a fun experience - and good to hear adults opinions on how young people use the internet especially at the conference”.

This project forms part of Opportunity Links’ ongoing work in helping information providers engage with young people and ensure effective participation and consultation in designing their services.  Through working with young people, we can access fresh ideas - which will inform our work, and in turn, help us to develop a better understanding of their needs and requirements.

To view the films and slides from our social media event, go to http://events.opp-links.org.uk/index.php/category/new-generation-new-media-new-challenge/

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By Laura Cavaliere
April 1, 2009

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Delivering extended free entitlement

From 2010 all LAs are required to provide all 3 and 4 year olds with 15 flexible hours of early education. Currently they provide 12.5 hours (apart from the Pathfinder authorities who are already providing this, such as Peterborough). As a first step, they have to make this available to the 25 per cent most disadvantaged 3 and 4 year olds from September 2009.

This change in free entitlement means that key groups need to be informed of the changes and given an opportunity to understand the implications and benefits. Opportunity Links has been commissioned by Cambridgeshire County Council and Southend Unitary Authority to develop, produce and manage the dissemination of materials to support the first phase of the extended free entitlement by September 2009, putting plans in place to support the roll out across both areas by 2010. The project involves developing and implementing a communications strategy, including developing the capability of LA staff to deliver the plan to its conclusion.

Key audiences for this project are:

  • parents, who need to have a better understanding of their of their statutory entitlements, options and benefits; 
  • childcare providers, who need to understand the local authorities’ policy and plans, the implications for their provision and how they can be involved; 
  • and LA staff so that they can deliver the remainder of the communications plan.
We will be producing a range of tools and material for each of these audiences across online and offline media. The project runs until the end of March, and we look forward to sharing some of the learning as it progresses.

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By Alyson Luff
January 19, 2009

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2008 in review at Opportunity Links

It’s been a busy year for us all at Opportunity Links, driven by an increased focus within government on the challenges of delivering information to citizens. 2008 has seen councils take on the duties of section 12 of the Childcare Act to deliver comprehensive information to parents, whilst centrally the 44m DCSF parent know-how project kicked off its many strands and the power of information task force asked us to show it a better way to improve the way public information is communicated.

At home we started the year deep into the development of evince, our new information management system and our first large scale web application deployment. During 2008 we’ve learnt much about the challenges of developing a full web-based back-office system for government that has to compete head-to-head against native desktop applications, but our most important lesson to shout about is that the technology is mature enough and it can be done, even in the government space.

evince was created as a response to the pending decommission of the iChIS system (sadly the last ever release was successfully delivered in October) which we currently provide under contract with the DCSF to over 100 local authorities (LAs). As part of the parent know-how project, each LA has been tasked with procuring a replacement system which will eventually upload information to the new ISPP national aggregator due in 2009. So early in the year we successfully restructured to allow us to move from an operational focus on the central government contract, and regain the flexibility necessary of a direct supplier to the local government market.

In March we traveled the country to deliver evince workshops in five locations to over 90 LAs, and in April we released a first version to our pilots and kicked off the sales visits which are still going strong as the year draws to a close. At the same time we successfully refreshed our ISO27001 accreditation for our hosted infrastructure and in July celebrated becoming eGif accredited providing peace of mind to those who were less familiar with the web application model.

Our first evince sale, to Salford, was secured in June, and in August Darlington was our first LA to go live on the evince platform. Since then it’s been a procurement marathon to respond to over 100 LAs and as 2008 draws to a close we have secured over thirty customers for evince with roughly a third of LAs still to make decisions in the new year. 2008 also saw the launch of eight more Family Service Directories, including Sheffield, Manchester and Redbridge, and plans hatched to migrate our FSD product onto the evince platform in 2009.

Meanwhile we continue our consultancy work for the DCSF, securing the FIS development project in April to provide direct support to all LAs in the delivery of their information duty, and hosting three practitioner events for the DCSF in March to raise awareness of the requirements of section 12. We continued to deliver children’s centre consultations to clients such as Hertsmere and Harpenden, and kicked off a major piece of work with Dudley in July to deliver a full information review.

On the research side we explored the field of user generated content through action research with a group of Cambridge teenagers. In September we also secured work with the Personal Social Services Research Unit at the University of Kent into the outputs of information and advice services. Meanwhile our own IAG team continued to successfully deliver the Family Information Services for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, and they expanded this in November with new work to provide a local brokerage service to parents of children with additional needs.

Delivering information to young people became a significant area for us in 2008, with the reseach mentioned above leading the way to our own conference in November, delivered in partnership with 4Children, on youth and social media. On the way we delivered a project for Darlington, developing their new youth website through a participatory process involving a number of local young people and a fun weekend away. In August we were lucky enough to get to know Mark from Atticmedia and DK from Mediasnackers when we submitted our first partnership bid for the DCSF Information and Signposting Project around innovative ways to deliver information to young people around positive activities. Unfortunately we weren’t successful with the bid, but thankfully this led us to form new friendships with the guys at Substance who did win the project, and who we hope to work with more in 2009.

Other friends we’ve made in 2008 include Dave who joins us as an associate, if he ever finds himself with an uncontracted hour, Tim who has worked with us on a couple of bids and agreed to deliver a blinding session at our conference, Ian the guy behind the ISPP aggregator, the many involved in the ISPP working groups not least the tireless Patrick, the guys at Steria, IBM, Cap Gemini and RTE who we had the pleasure of working on bids with, and too many others to mention here. It’s definitely been a year of partnership and we look forward to doing much more with partners new and old in 2009.

We’ve also enjoyed a rich conference scene this year, exhibiting, speaking and sponsoring a number of events including; ContinYou, 4children: creating opportunities, building futures, Internet World, Safe and stronger communities, Childrens centre and extended schools conference, Summer in the city ‘Big Weekend’, Developing integrated & high impact youth services, and the National children and adult services conference. We also had the pleasure of attending too many events to mention here, but some of the highlights include; Parenting in the 21st century, Innovation exchange festival of ideas, PKH showcase event (hosted by George Alagiah no less!), Showcomotion, After the event, The UKyouth online barcamp, FOWA, Chain Reaction, dConstruct, 2gether08, and the Cambridge business lectures. How did we find time to sit in the office and do some work?

Behind the scenes of course there are many who make all this happen, from the trainers who have spent most of the year on the road delivering technical and IAG courses, to those in the back office who have kept the coffee flowing, the infrastructure alive, the customers happy and the phones answered. Some of the people we’ve said goodbye to this year include: Mary, Rebecca, Fran, Alex and Marina we wish them all well in their new positions. We’re also happy to welcome Angela, Heidi, Katie, Gareth, Emily, Ray, and Ruth to Opportunity Links alongside the return of Laura and temporary support of others such as Pauline, Susan, Ann, Kim and Daishik. 2008 saw us all running around Cambridge for a summer treasure hunt, the first developer hackday, weekly free fruit in the office, and proudly bringing home £450 from the race for life (for some of us more of a walk).

So what’s ahead for 2009? Well we’ll continue to develop our information services for families and young people, delivering technical solutions, consultancy and trying to keep up with the social media revolution. However, a big area for us in 2009 will be information for later life. 2009 sees the publication of the governments green paper on adult social care and a continued emphasis for LAs on transforming social care. In September we held a later life forum in Cambridge to discuss the issues that arise for information delivery from this agenda and we kicked off work to pilot an information system buit upon the evince platform that can support the delivery of the transforming social care agenda. We hope that 2009 will see this product and related consultancy offerings become generally available, giving us an intergenerational perspecitve to information delivery. Exciting times ahead…

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By Mark Cheverton
January 4, 2009

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New generation, new media, new challenge conference

New generation, new media, new challenge

Last month, Opportunity Links, in partnership with 4Children, put on a conference focusing on how government can deliver information to young people using social media technologies. Over 100 people attended to listen to a range of speakers and participate in an afternoon of workshops.

The feedback from the day was impressive with reassuring quotes such as:

“The conference went far beyond my expectations! One of the most interesting events I have attended!”

We have now placed all the video from the day on the Opportunity Links event site, along with the presentations and other materials. Please have a look and feel free to drop by, comment and continue the discussion further.

It was great to talk to so many people about the challenges the public sector is facing and the varied projects underway that work with young people. I’d also like to thank the excellent line-up of speakers who made the day the success it was.

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By Mark Cheverton
December 18, 2008

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Ordnance Survey locks down government spatial data

Almost all government information revolves around two fundamental data types; people and places. In recent years the presentation of many services to the public has benefited from innovations in mapping such as Google’s slippy maps, making information much more accessible and usable.  In particular, when it comes to positive activities for young people, map-based presentation is seen as a vital visualisation tool.

So I was very pleased recently to see the announcement from ESRI to open up its GIS system for use in Google maps mashups. ESRI is one of the biggest GIS vendors in the government space, but until now that data has been difficult to access in web applications except through ESRI’s own web products. With increasing numbers of councils looking to services such as Google maps as cheaper, more usable alternatives to the GIS vendors, ESRI has done the right thing to move to a more open model making the government’s heavy investments in GIS technology accessible to the public.

However, the Guardian’s Free Our Data campaign reports that the Ordnance Survey has recently contacted local authorities to make it clear that any data derived from their data, which means any points, areas etc. captured over the base maps, cannot then be used on Google Maps. Whilst I sympathise with the OS’ objections to Google’s terms and conditions, this constitutes a significant backward step for all those government projects which were seeking to release data to the public in a more digestible form. It also seems to put the breaks on use of the ESRI integration just as things were looking more hopeful in the public sector GIS arena.

The comments to the Free Our Data blog post indicate that Google may have acted quickly to change its terms and conditions, and I would call on the OS to do the same to give an innovative tool back to government and show some support for the principles of open public sector data.

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By Mark Cheverton
November 14, 2008

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11 million takeover day

The second national 11 MILLION Takover Day was held on Friday 7 November and Opportunity Links opened their doors to six Higher Creative and Media Diploma students from Cambridge Regional College.

During the morning the young people were trained in social research techniques and participated in a number of other creative activities, they were then provided with Flip video cameras and practiced their newly learned interviewing skills on each other.

In the afternoon Opportunity Links staff were put in hot seat by the students as they conducted interviews with the cameras and investigate their opinions on the internet and social media.

Over the next week the young people will be let loose on their friends and family to find out how they are are using the internet and social media. 

The footage will then be edited to create a video which will be shown at Opportunity Links conference in London on the 27 November, ‘New Generation, new media, new challenge!  Engaging with young people through social media’. There the students will once again act as journalists; tasked with gathering information, filming and recording interviews during the day, and publishing it over social media networks.

The whole day was declared a fantastic success, the young people got a chance to learn new skills and build their knowledge and experience and Opportunity Links will gain through accessing fresh ideas to help inform our work in this sector.

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By Sue Curtis
November 10, 2008

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A focus on youth and social media

 

Image credit: hypertypos @ flickr

Recently there has been a flurry of activity around the potential of social media technologies to support the government’s work with young people. Last month we saw the launch of the National Youth Agency’s social networking report, closely followed by the UKYouthOnline barcamp held at DIUS, and the week before I was busy giving a talk on youth and social media at the Delivering High Impact Youth Services conference.

Social media has always been a hard sell to government. Just when managers have finally got to grips with web commissioning, happily signing off briefs secure in the knowledge that they’ll have a nicely designed website to show for their money, along comes the social media crowd with a core message that only by engaging with young people on their turf will government be successful at getting its information across.

However, on the ground youth workers seem keen to engage; feedback from my talk, and the enthusiasm evident at the NYA event show that youth workers are very aware of the need to adapt to the changing social behaviors of the digital native generation. This is in sharp contrast to the response from a recent Society of IT managers (Socitm) event I attended where regardless of the best efforts of Ewan McIntosh to enthuse the crowd as to the potential, much of the talk remaining firmly risk averse focusing on safety, trust, information hording and cost. When Tom Steinberg of Mysociety presented their customer-focused Fixmystreet service, rather than congratulations on delivering added value to the citizen whilst reducing front-office costs to LAs, the Q&A instead focused on the increased cost of dealing with the issues generated, and the inflexibility of LA infrastructure to loosely couple with any outside services such as this without generating huge bills from their suppliers of closed systems.

Maybe I’m being a little harsh; having worked in local government IT I know the pressures managers are under just to keep everything ticking over and in line with legislation. However, I do think that for government to fully benefit from the social media revolution, these blockages at the political and IT level need to be tackled. No matter the enthusiasm shown on the ground from the youth workers starting up their blogs and engaging with social networks, whilst services such as YouTube are blocked at most LAs and there remains a strategic veto on the use of any services that weren’t procured from the big name back-office suppliers, LAs will fail to make these tools core to their interface with young people.

So to keep the momentum and support the dialogue, we have teamed up with 4Children to run a conference in November specifically focusing on Youth and social media. We’ve invited along some of the key players in this field to talk about what they do and the potential for revolutionising the way government communicates with young people, and we’re hoping that participants will walk away from the conference equipped with knowledge, contacts, and best practice to drive forward change within their organisations.

More information on the programme can be found on upcoming.org and I look forward to seeing you all there for some great discussion and debate on the day.

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By Mark Cheverton
October 17, 2008

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