Knowledge Transfer Workshop Toolkit How to develop effective models of cooperation by establishing and articulating Local Partnerships for the Advancement of Youth Employment and opportunity Ian Goldring, JOBTOWN Lead Expert

ABOUT THIS TOOLKIT This toolkit builds on the contributions to and case studies from the JOBTOWN June 2013 Transnational Workshop in Avilés Spain, made by:

. Lucy Pyne, from the OECD Local Economic and Employment Development programme (LEED) . Nadine Schrader-Bölsche from the Department of Regional Development and Spatial Planning, University of Kaiserslautern (Germany) . Councillors Del Goddard (London Borough of Enfield) & Andy Smith (Thurrock Council) . Aviles Avanza Pact (Aviles advances pact) representatives . Avilés Youth Commission: Empléate Joven . Participating JOBTOWN partners

This toolkit is supported by a Video available on the Online Mutual Learning Helpdesk.

All workshop presentations are available for download from the Online Mutual Learning helpdesk

JOB TOWN: A European Network of Local Partnerships for the Advancement of Youth Employment and Opportunity

Purpose of this document

. To provide a sort of toolkit, you are encouraged to make use of but are not obliged to slavishly apply from beginning to end – take what’s useful to you. . To support transfer of main Workshop learnings to your local organisations and those unable to attend the Workshop themselves. . To facilitate getting you to articulate your own model of cooperation and form a clearer idea of what sort of partnership suits your needs and what you want from it – using this support as a springboard. . To learn from you, so as to monitor and improve the Transfer Workshop methodology continually, throughout the project lifecycle. To this end I will be contacting each of the Local Coordinators after the KTW to find out how the process went (what worked and what didn’t, and any pertinent observations).

Important: There is no one right model for how to structure your own local cooperation; it all depends on your needs, circumstances and possibilities. The intended method here is to lead you through a consideration of a series of factors and issues – your responses to which will be the basis for you articulating your approach to partnership locally. 1) The LEED checklist for evaluating effective partnerships The Local Economic and Employment Development programme LEED recommends using this list of 8 points as a basic tool for evaluating effective partnership; it might be useful to you as an ‘off the rack’ structure for kicking off evaluative discussion with your partners and associates. I.e. as Local Coordinator you lead them through a discussion of the following, with the participants asking themselves if they are able to:

1) Agree strategic priorities? 2) Exert strong leadership? 3) Demonstrate clear accountability? 4) Develop effective links and relationships? 5) Agree and set clear indicators of success*? 6) Monitor and report on performance effectively? 7) Manage and improve performance? 8) Plan delivery effectively?

* Careful the tail does not wag the dog, you cannot let your goals be determined by what you can most easily demonstrate as successful (i.e. due to pressure to be accountable and the convenience of certain simple clear quantitative indicators such as ‘number of people attending event’ etc. – this happens more often than one might think), rather than what you need. You may need to consider how to do qualitative evaluation, particularly where you are creating nothing new, but rather trying to improve existing services and processes. We will be discussing this throughout the project. JOB TOWN: A European Network of Local Partnerships for the Advancement of Youth Employment and Opportunity

2) “Where can partnerships go wrong?” Now for the negative. The presentation Ms Pyne from the OECD LEED programme made in our first Workshop included a slide on “Where can partnerships go wrong?” which describes situations one might easily recognise, and it seemed worth quoting in its entirety (bold added): 1. ’Fair weather’ partnerships set up during the good times and perhaps lacked consensus but partners able to rub along together as money was flush. Now harder to agree on priorities. Discussions can activate tension and create confrontation (note: as Ms Pyne pointed out, there might be an eventual upside to this, if handled right, in terms of getting such tensions brought out into the open and somehow dealt with, as long-term it “could be more dangerous to skirt around contentious areas”). 2. Partner ‘domination’. All bodies might be involved in setting up partnership but objectives defined too much according to the prime concerns of the leading agents, at the cost of local needs; 3. Establishment often begins with high enthusiasm from policy makers and individual organisations but find it too difficult to maintain the partnership; 4. Partnerships can usurp the authority of individual partners, and accountability, risk and responsibility are not shared equally; 5. May be hidden agenda or it was created just to ‘keep up appearances’; 6. Can have divided loyalties. E.g. Some actors may be accountable to the national level in relation to targets.

It’s healthy to keep these ‘reefs’ in mind as you develop your partnership and more specifically your ULSG roadmap.

3) Differing structures of partnerships The issue of how the partnership is structured is particularly sensible to think about at the beginning when you are choosing a structure to operate with (i.e. you can make changes later, but it’s not as easy to do so as now). Factors to consider regarding partnership structure:

The following is drawn from the LEED and University of Kaiserslautern presentations, heavily re-edited with additional comments in blue. The point is not to tell you how to structure your local cooperation, rather it is to set out a series of key factors, allowing you to consider – and discuss with your partners – how you structure your cooperation locally:

JOB TOWN: A European Network of Local Partnerships for the Advancement of Youth Employment and Opportunity

⇒ How binding or obligatory do you want cooperation to be? There’s no one right answer, rather you must identify what best suits your circumstances. Consider:

Binding cooperation

- Pro: Clearly defined rules and responsibilities, results guaranteed (they must) - Con: Formal and bureaucratic, rigid, feeling of obligation not desire

Non-binding cooperation

- Pro: flexible and freer, - Con: Roles and responsibilities not clear, requires lots of self motivation, no guarantee of quality of work or fairness of work burden

Semi-binding

- Some combination of the above - Essentially it’s voluntary to participate with obligations if you do - Allows for flexibility of roles and adapts to different types of participants (e.g. those with differing capacities to deliver or participate, such as a business person who comes only occasionally but whose involvement is worth obtaining) - Defined structures that can be changed.

⇒ You want an agile response system, which is adaptable to constant change and new challenges. One way to get this is to set up an operative core group separate from a larger constellation of stakeholders. - However this entails a risk of excluding necessary actors, who may then lose interest, oppose or generally become difficult. – Conclusion: Watch out.

⇒ Enough scope (amplitude, breadth, range) to suitably involve all relevant or necessary actors. – Considering this will be part of your thinking how to avoid the above-described risk.

⇒ A stable structure - JobTown gives you some budget for this – think about how any post-URBACT cooperation structure will be financed/resourced.

⇒ Designated full-time partnership coordinator to manage partnership - In JobTown this would be the ULSG Coordinator or the ‘project Local Coordinator’ depending on each partner – think about who would carry on in such a role post-URBACT.

⇒ Easy to dismantle whenever utility has run its course

JOB TOWN: A European Network of Local Partnerships for the Advancement of Youth Employment and Opportunity

⇒ Co-ordinating figures can be relied on to improve , where strategic partnerships are not established and doing so is not a practical option (e.g. due to time issues, etc.). LEED cites examples to say such coordinators might: - “Help match local businesses and workers with job opportunities - Work with communities to find innovative solutions to - Work with stakeholders to develop Regional Employment Plans.”

This might sound something like your administration’s role locally pre-URBACT. Realistically, it is possible you will go back to an improved version of such an approach if your partnership dissolves or goes dormant once our project-cycle is over

Any number of structural models, flow charts, organograms etc. are possible, corresponding to differing circumstances, objectives, etc.

Two simple general typologies we have most talked about in JobTown discussions thus far are: i) A system of concentric circles of involvement, with a small operational working group at the centre, a larger group of stakeholders involved and providing input, approval and so on, with the possibility of yet larger scale involvement, through public consultation processes and the like. The idea being to balance the need for a small enough working group – so as to be operational – with the need for wider consultation, involvement and legitimacy. ii) Dividing up participants in work groups by theme, with some kind of connecting or coordinating structure or practice. The idea being to allow people with differing interests to work on what is relevant to them, while maintaining overall cohesion and purpose.

One of the goals of JobTown is to compare the different approaches you adopt and how they work out, with a view to learning about what works best in what circumstances.

JOB TOWN: A European Network of Local Partnerships for the Advancement of Youth Employment and Opportunity

This is not a prescriptive process and each JobTown locality is to decide what participatory structure is appropriate for that setting; however, you are strongly encouraged to be flexible and pragmatic; you may adopt a structure along the lines of one of the above (or something else conceptually), but include some ad hoc adaptation to the realities of certain participants or circumstances.

For example, it may be worth it to you to adapt to the schedule of concerned business people who are unlikely to be able to follow the planned rhythm of ULSG meetings, but whose support is worth accommodating. Likewise, gaining the meaningful involvement of young people may require you to adapt your approach.

4) How to evaluate your partnership

Rationale: Accountability is key to the legitimacy of an initiative, and thus to its possibilities for success (i.e. through procuring buy in, support, acceptance etc.).

And evaluation is key to accountability.

LEED argues for developing a clear evaluation strategy early in the life of a partnership, so as to allow members to better keep work on track and effective, and to improve delivery.

Note: Keep in mind when developing indicators that data is often unavailable or of imperfect quality and character (e.g. only available for a greater region, not your specific locality, etc.) – basically you have to be pragmatic, and perhaps a little creative, in this regard. Moreover, qualitative data is too often underappreciated and underdeveloped – consider this.

LEED sets out 4 principal elements on which to base evaluation. Below are the 4 elements, with comments underneath relating them to our specific situation in JobTown and as an URBACT network:

1) Set strategic vision: A broad description of where it wishes to be at the end of given time - In the case of JobTown we have the obvious date of the end of the URBACT project lifecycle; however there are also other dates to consider: - Most importantly, consider where you want to be after JobTown: - In terms of European programmes and funding, the most obvious consideration is the 2014-2020 cycle of structural funding that’s coming (and the related Operational Programmes you would hope to inform and be JOB TOWN: A European Network of Local Partnerships for the Advancement of Youth Employment and Opportunity

favoured by); there will be greater budgetary allotments for employment, youth and competitiveness concerns, and presumably you want to use JobTown to put yourself in the best position possible to take advantage of these programmes and funds. Do consider: the EU summit of June 27th 2013, agreed €6 billion earmarked for the fight against youth unemployment is now to be spent by the end of 2015, rather than by 2020 as originally planned. - Of course you will have national, regional and local timeframes to consider, e.g. X number of projected new inhabitants by _____, completion of some game-changing infrastructure by _____, amalgamation of neighbouring territory by ____, electoral cycles and so forth.

2) Agree on key themes: - As you know, JobTown consists of 5 sub-themes: I. Developing effective models of cooperation – for involving and mobilising youth, local businesses, training and education providers, and relevant public bodies, services and administrations. II. Making education and vocational education and training responsive to the needs of the local labour market. III. Labour market analysis: matching employment and demand by improving detection and forecasting of labour market evolution and needs, in terms of demand for skills and professional profiles. IV. Support for business creation and development, self-employment, acquisition of entrepreneurial skills, and improving the business environment. V. Social economy and resource : and how to do more for less.

* Note: No participant is expected to have an equal prioritisation of each of these 5 issues – most of you will have outstanding priorities within these areas, and hopefully the rest will be of supplementary interest and stimulation, or an opportunity for you to transfer your own Best Practice to others.

3) Decide on priorities: - See above, regarding varying priorities within the sub-themes. - Get concrete about what local services, functions, situations or processes you want to address – essentially, this will be determined by: I. What most needs to be addressed I. What you most need to address II. What you are most able to effectively address III. What support you can generate to address the various issues of concern and to seize opportunity. 4) Develop action plans: - Evaluation is a dimension of any action plan and the indicators will stem from the plan’s own goals and rationale. You should be thinking of developing the evaluation procedure and indicators as an ongoing part of developing the Action Plan, not as something you add on after. JOB TOWN: A European Network of Local Partnerships for the Advancement of Youth Employment and Opportunity

- The Local Action Plan (LAP) is normally the main output each local partnership/ULSG will produce and there is an extensive body of URBACT literature on the LAP that will be drawn upon throughout the project. - It should be concrete, e.g. detailed actions with a clear functional relationship with delivering the already described vision, targets, how evaluation will be done, and so forth. - Importantly, it should be seen as an ongoing process, meaning that a local administration should not be blocked from taking action or seizing an opportunity, based on the Local Action Plan, until it is formally finished at the end of our project cycle. The LAP should have some operative – though flexible and still developing – interim value. - The process itself needs to have value – i.e. through the process of generating involvement, networking and support, concretising objectives and barriers to be addressed and so forth. - URBACT networks explicitly seek to equip localities to take better advantage of structural funds; while this is a logical objective it should not be an ‘all or nothing’ proposition. Obviously, you can’t know what funding you you’ll get approved in the future – from any given programme, European or otherwise – and the process and outcomes of JobTown must in themselves be of value, aside from being a catalyst (as much so as we can make it) for subsequent successes.

5) Practical examples

i) Aviles Avanza Pact This section is for transferring any useful learnings or observations made in relation to the Avilés ‘Pact’ practice. It provides an outline of what your local discussion should address, followed by a brief description of the Pact as a practice, for you to draw on in describing the Pact to your associates.

Discussion:

What did you get from the Pact experience in Avilés? What does the example have to say to your own locality?

Make some notes previously on the main points of interest for your locality?

Consider:

1) What did you like? Not like? Your main observations and criticisms? What would be applicable in your context? What would be of interest in the example for those you are presenting to? DOs and DON’Ts? What would you do the same and what would you do differently? 2) Are there any specific issues you want to use this discussion to raise with your partners and associates? (e.g. is our partnership wide enough? Should we pay more attention to non-formal learning? Etc.) JOB TOWN: A European Network of Local Partnerships for the Advancement of Youth Employment and Opportunity

3) Officially the Pact is only constituted by 3 elements: i) local government, ii) the regional Employers Association, and iii) the two major unions active in the region. How to widen involvement and buy in is a fundamental consideration that will guide how the Pact is likely to develop; either it will expand in terms of how and whom it involves, or it will explore ways to interface the Pact with other practices of cooperation and participation going on locally – with a view to improving cohesion of policy and actions, and civic participation. 4) The challenges of opening up involvement and brokering among the resistance of some partners to ‘losing’ their protagonism, divergence of views and priorities, etc.?

Basic info on the Pact:

The city has a long background in consultation with key local actors in developing policy direction and in brokering complex local issues among divergent actors. This tendency coalesced in ‘Avilés Avanza’ (~’Avilés advances’ or ‘goes forward’) – often just referred to as ‘the Pact’ – a set of policies, agreed among the municipal government, the regional Employers Association, and the two major unions active in the area.

The agreement is structured in five lines of work:

1. Coaching in vocational and occupational training

2. Coaching to gain work experience

3. Coaching in transitioning to professional life via a protected/sheltered workshop

4. Coaching in transitioning to professional life into the normalized labour market

5. Coaching and counselling in self-employment and business projects

These policies are especially concerned with people at risk of social exclusion, and groups showing high unemployment rates (such as young people). All the measures are based on the design and implementation of individual itineraries for social and labour insertion.

At the time of our Workshop in Avilés (June 2013) a new version of the Pact was coming out, focusing on reinforcing social cohesion through employment – with particular attention given to youth and cooperation with the regional government.

Areas of action:

• Youth employment support programmes whereby young unemployed people acquire work experience.

• Labour guidance and job placement. JOB TOWN: A European Network of Local Partnerships for the Advancement of Youth Employment and Opportunity

• Training and provision of qualification in generic and specific skills – i.e. formal and non-formal learning approaches.

• A Training Roundtable to identify the training needs of local unemployed people and to coordinate local training.

• Promoting equal access to training and employment.

• Managing transition in the local productive model – i.e. shifting from old to new industrial and employment practices (more self-employment etc.).

• Developing different local partnerships.

• Support for entrepreneurship – e.g. through the “La Curtidora” Business Incubator we visited.

ii) Thurrock’s Memorandum of Understanding Their ‘MoU’ is agreed to by all participants of their Local Support Group, is also included.

The Thurrock Memorandum of Understanding establishes: the roles of participants, the activities to be undertaken, who will be on it and who does what, operating arrangements, code of conduct, and the commitment all participants make.

You are encouraged to look at it to see what elements of it you might wish to adopt and/or as a lever to develop your own thinking on how LSG participation should work in your locality. Likewise, consider how Thurrock uses the MoU as a tool for maintaining involvement through a written commitment to participating. iii) Aveiro’s roadmap Have a look at it (available on the Help Desk) to get ideas for how you might develop your own, and to show to others to explain the kind of thing you want to produce in terms of making your own Roadmap document. iv) Enfield and Functional Economic Areas Consider Enfield’s work on cooperating with neighbouring localities, structuring it around the concept of Functional Economic Areas – i.e. territory as defined by flows of economic activity and people, which goes across administrative boundaries. Could such a practice be of use to you and would it be viable in your context?

6) Involving the target group: young people The contribution the group of Avilés young people made is an example of how youths can be involved meaningfully in the work and debate of JobTown. It was conceived to be a creative and empowering experience for its participants, allowing them to articulate their problems and concerns in a way that did not put them into JOB TOWN: A European Network of Local Partnerships for the Advancement of Youth Employment and Opportunity the role of victim or object of pity; rather the activity allowed them to showcase their own capacities and worth.

Note: the exercise we did was developed by the young people themselves and the report on the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of local services was something they also conducted themselves. The approach of the municipality has been pro- empowerment, providing them with space and facilities and some support, but the youths are encouraged to take their own initiative, and decide their own priorities and concerns.

Consider describing the exercise – meant to illustrate the deficiencies of local service implementation, by putting us into the (frustrating) position of the service user – to your group, and discussing what was useful or successful about the activity, what the point of it was and what you took away from it, and how youths might be involved creatively and meaningfully, and in some way given a voice on issues and matters of concern to them in your own context.

Basic info:

The following is a quick summary of the story of this initiative.

In Avilés services had traditionally not been specifically adapted to young people – i.e. a young person went to the same sort of job centre anyone else would, encountered the same sort of service delivery, etc. The current administration has decided this needs to change and is now working on revising how its services work and correspond to the different needs and profiles of service users.

To inform this process, the municipality decided to take advantage of a facility it already had for youth-led activities (i.e. where the administration provides a space and the young people design and conduct their own non-formal learning activities, with a supervisor stationed at the facility to oversee and provide support as needed); based on this already constituted group, already familiar with structuring their own activities and projects, a work group was created to analyse how and what services were delivered and make recommendations for change and improvement.

The idea was to hear from the target group itself; about the services concerning them and their likes, dislikes, desires and needs regarding said services.

The work group – ‘Empléate Joven’ (~’Employ Yourself Young Person’) – was created on the 27th of February 2013; it consisted of 19 youths and 2 older support staff (who liaise with the administration, and provide general support). They meet every 15 days and, try to apply the non-formal learning techniques (role-play workshops, hands on experience of the services being analysed, etc.) and group dynamic approaches the youth facility already supported. The work is divided into 4 blocks: Reflection, Evaluation, Proposals, and Devolution (i.e. where the work is brought back down to specific individuals to implement specific changes). JOB TOWN: A European Network of Local Partnerships for the Advancement of Youth Employment and Opportunity

The young people visited the various services, made use of them and did structured interviews of users and providers. They analysed what came out of this and identified main themes and issues, e.g.: training, language skills, the relations between private companies and public administration, quality of guidance services, etc.

This led to a range of proposals for improving services, e.g.: make guidance more active and include role-play based training for job interviews, raise the age limits for youth employment programmes, facilitate language cost free exchange sessions/conversation swapping, changes to the services websites and internet- based functions, and so forth.

All this was presented in a report and was also illustrated through non-formal learning experiences of the type we saw at the Workshop.

The conclusions are now being fed into the process of revision the local training and employment services are undergoing. Notably, the mayor herself is highly supportive of the whole process and backs its implementation.

At the time of writing the reform is still underway, as such a final evaluation is not possible, but we do know that the report findings are being taken into account by the people carrying out the current reform process, with the direct support of the mayor. As such, it seems at least safe to say that the findings will not simply be shelved.

JOB TOWN: A European Network of Local Partnerships for the Advancement of Youth Employment and Opportunity

7) Mapping of main learnings from the workshop The following are photos of the work mapping exercise we did to review learnings from the workshop; use it jog your memory of the discussion. If you feel it would be of use or interest to anyone else, feel free to share. Higher resolution versions are available on the Help Desk.

JOB TOWN: A European Network of Local Partnerships for the Advancement of Youth Employment and Opportunity

8) Synergies with peers Make some notes on your own to recollect your memories of the event beforehand. Consider:

o Interesting practice or idea. o Possibility to learn or benefit from cooperation/exchange with. o Similar situation to ours in some way (which?). o Different approach to problem or situation similar to ours. o Useful feedback or suggestion. o Any other outstanding or memorable characteristic or matter worth mentioning.

For your convenience here is a complete list of the partners (don’t bother bringing up the ones you don’t have anything much to say about). The idea is that you might, in Word, make notes about each partner – however, feel free to proceed as suits you.

Aveiro, Portugal

Avilés, Spain

Cesena, Italy

Enfield, UK

Gondomar, Portugal

Kaiserslautern University, Germany.

Kielce, Poland

Latsia, Cyprus

Nagykálló, Hungary

Rennes, France

Thurrock, UK

9) What next?

1. Prepare your own Knowledge Transfer Workshop session with your local partners and associates, using this toolkit and whatever other material or arrangements you choose to make (as always, you are encouraged to be creative and amenable. JOB TOWN: A European Network of Local Partnerships for the Advancement of Youth Employment and Opportunity

Deadline: It is up to you to decide what is the best moment to conduct this workshop. However the sooner the better, given summer holidays are upon us. At any rate, you should get it done by early September at the latest.

2. Prepare your ULSG roadmap. Note: it can be an initial work in progress – you can adapt as circumstances require – but do prepare an initial one, as its important for us all to be thinking in terms of where we are going.

Deadline: 30 September 2013

3. When you have finished your KTW alert the Lead Expert (Ian) immediately, as he wants to hear from you on Skype about what you did and how it went.