Healthy Youth Centre Pilot Project

Evaluation Report 2010-2012

In 2009 the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) and NHS K&C jointly identified the potential for youth centres to provide a setting to improve health among young residents of the Borough.

The Healthy Youth Centre pilot was introduced in 2010 to promote health and well-being to young people in order to educate, empower and support them into making future healthy decisions for themselves.

This pilot evaluation took place over an 18 month period and utilised a mix of quantitative and qualitative methodologies in order to fully address the process and impact of the pilot.

Interviews and focus groups were conducted involving a range of key stakeholders including NHS and Local Authority partners, youth centre staff and young people themselves. In addition, the Criteria and Audit Tool (Toolkit) was extensively used by the evaluators to track progress of the initiative.

A survey was conducted among young people attending the pilot sites at the beginning and towards the end of the pilot with the intention of assessing impact of the intervention on young people’s awareness of health issues, their information-seeking behaviours and various lifestyle factors.