Voluntary and community organisations in Cumbria: assets for young people’s decision-making?

Grimwood, Tom ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8099-6191 , Goodwin, Victoria ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2372-9067 and Grabrovaz, Meaghan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0309-2890 (2020) Voluntary and community organisations in Cumbria: assets for young people’s decision-making? Health and Society Knowledge Exchange (HASKE).

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Abstract

Hello Future forms part of the Uni Connect programme (previously known as the National Collaborative Outreach Programme until January 2020), funded by the Office for Students. The programme aims to drive rapid progress towards achieving the Government’s goals to double the proportion of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds in Higher Education (HE) by 2020, increase by 20 per cent the number of students in HE from ethnic minority groups and address the under-representation of young men from disadvantaged backgrounds. Hello Future is a partnership of local universities, colleges and employers who are committed to improving access to HE for young people in Cumbria.

Previous reports commissioned by Hello Future (see HASKE 2020) have argued that an asset-based approach to widening participation is a key strategy for improving access and participation in higher education in Cumbria. In previous work this has been explored from the perspective of schools and outreach officers. This report seeks to develop the asset-based approach to widening participation and outreach by examining the roles of voluntary organisations – sports, arts, scouting and so on – which often form key assets for young people’s decision-making regarding future careers.

Currently, very little resource or training exists for such organisations in this specific context. The aims of this research are, then, to:
• Map the organisations available to young people in different areas of Cumbria (building from the work HASKE have already done on what constitutes “the rural” within the Cumbrian context).
• Identify how organisations view their own roles in young people’s potential journey to Higher Education; how their roles constitutes assets for outreach programmes to engage with; and in what ways they “gate” these assets to particular groups of young people (building on the work HASKE have done on widening participation, cultural capital and asset-based approaches).

The aim of this report is:
• To articulate the ways in which VCOs can be seen as assets for FE and HE outreach, by
- Demonstrating the variation in VCO types and activities across Cumbria;
- Articulating the different ways in which they engage with young people in general, and in discussions about their potential future decisions in particular;
• To identify the ways in which these assets are gated, in order to inform any potential interventions from outreach teams.

Item Type:	Report
Publisher:	Health and Society Knowledge Exchange (HASKE)
Departments:	Health and Society Knowledge Exchange (HASKE)
Additional Information:	This research was commissioned by Hello Future and conducted by Health and Social Knowledge Exchange (HASKE) at the University of Cumbria.
Depositing User:	Laura Snell
Date Deposited:	19 Feb 2021 09:20
Last Modified:	13 Jan 2024 11:02
URI:	https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/5946

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