Evaluation of South West Resettlement Consortium for Young People

The development of the South West Resettlement Consortium began in September 2009 – with appointment of a part-time project manager post. At this point, the initial focus for the consortium was to bring together stakeholders involved in the resettlement of young people from across six local authorities. However, there was limited previous collaborative tradition among the six local authorities, and so developing effective ways of working and seeking to institute change across this regional geography was a substantial challenge. Moreover, due to strategic wariness of committing to a new scheme with unknown potential to produce sustainable positive outcomes, getting meaningful engagement from sufficiently senior representatives of such a wide group of services was a demanding task. In particular, it took quite some time to persuade the YOTs of the value of the consortium approach. As a result, a substantial amount of time was spent on establishing an agreed terms of reference and service level agreements so that regular board meetings could commence working together in an effective way. The original project manager left post in Spring 2010, and a new manager took over in July 2010, largely reforming the partnership. The terms of reference for the Board were signed in October 2010, although the partnership between agencies was considered effectively operational by end of Summer 2010