Street League teams football with an employability progamme to help young people move successfully from school to employment, training or further education. Dougie Stevenson, the Director of the Scottish unit, has led the organisation through what he refers to as a year of wholesale change.
As he says: "We were a slightly fuzzy charity, constantly chasing grants and applying for funding, and delivering projects based on the money we raised. Inspiring Scotland has triggered a complete change for us." Having started off doing a mix of things around football to engage hard-to-reach youngsters, Street League in Scotland now concentrates its efforts on 16 to 19 year olds who are struggling to find direction but not yet in serious trouble. Alongside the football sits an employability programme and every young person benefits from this service, with all the staff working to deliver clear outcomes. In 2010, Street League in Scotland expects to get 260 youngsters into positive destinations.
"The staff team are much more focused on what we have to deliver," says Dougie. "Now our first questions about any piece of work are why are we doing this, what are the outcomes and who is paying? We have a very strong sense of duty to our funders to use their money as well as we can and get a really high social return on the investment. Having the employability focus means we are now taking responsibility for the through-care of the young people we work with in a way we never did before. All the evaluation work we’ve done also means we have hard evidence of what works, as opposed to anecdotes, and we are learning a huge amount about the flows of people through our services and how to make sure we get the most appropriate referrals in the first place. In turn that means we’re getting better results than ever, and doing a better job of supporting the young people who are the whole point of what we do."
But this massive change hasn’t been without its challenges. A complete restructure, 18 new staff, an office move, changes to the governance of the organisation and the relationship between the Scottish operation and that across the rest of the UK have pushed Street League and the people in it hard. "The only thing that has been constant over the last 12 months has been change," says Dougie. "There are things we’d have liked to do more quickly, but we’ve had to balance ambition with realism in terms of resources. Things have to be done properly or change on this scale could break the organisation. Through all of this the support of the Inspiring Scotland performance advisors has been invaluable. It has made us look at things with a fresh pair of eyes and has really turned our whole thinking and approach on its head.
"Our role in the UK organisation has changed, and we are now taking the lead in developing services of this kind. That can create tensions, but there is also a huge opportunity to expand this approach to other areas of the UK. We’re also moving towards having a Scottish Council, and having two Trustees on the UK Board. This is a massive step forward in governance, and we’re excited about what we can achieve as a result."
Looking to the future, there is more work to be done but huge optimism. "We know we have a successful, exportable model, which we didn’t before. The challenge is to sell it. But all the development we’ve done means we have the hard evidence about our results and offer much more than sport, which sets us apart from other people. We’ve recently been commissioned by the regeneration company Clyde Gateway to work with 50 local residents, and we used Inspiring Scotland’s investment to leverage that, so we know we can do it. Street League will survive – we’re sure about that for the first time – and we’re already planning longer term to see how we get to the point of being successful enough that we don’t need Inspiring Scotland’s investment and support."