YPQI UK

The Youth Programme Quality intervention focuses on the relationship between adults and young people, and the intentional practices that can support young people to develop their socio-emotional skills. We often refer to this process for young people as ‘SEL’ - socio-emotional learning. It centres around an observation tool called the Programme Quality Assessment, or the ‘PQA’. Youth practitioners can use this tool to observe the quality of their practice as a team, and then use data from these observations to identify and action specific improvement goals that correlate to items in the PQA. 

As well as being a tool for measurement, the PQA also provides a framework for high quality practice. It sets out four key ‘domains’ which represent high quality environments that can enable young people to develop socio-emotional skills (Safe Spaces, Supportive Environments, Interactive Environments, and Engaging Environments.) This video introduces the YPQI and the PQA. 

At the Centre, we are currently building on learning from a Pilot of the YPQI in the UK – supporting participating organisations to implement the process, as well as developing our wider efforts to embed a focus on equitable quality and socio-emotional skills development across the sector. The sections below provide information on each of these areas of work.