The government wants to see increased take-up of further education, training or employment for all children and young people upon leaving school and that those leaving school to work have the skills to succeed.

Libraries make significant contributions to these aims by promoting social inclusion and maximising life chances through:

Supporting children and young people in their learning
Helping children and young people develop life skills for economic wellbeing
Improving educational attainment for children before and beyond GCSE
Helping young people become more informed about available choices
Inspiring empowerment and choice

At the same time, libraries can support parents, carers and families to develop essential skills which promote employability and achievement.

TRF can help you to maximise your library’s contribution to the economic well-being of children and young people in the local community.

Download TRF’s service impact outcomes (Word,184kb) for a framework to reflect upon the difference your service is making for your users. Consider which outcomes are most closely related to economic well-being.

Being clear about what outcomes you want to deliver will help you to decide what you will do in your library to make this happen.

Plan, evaluate and build your partnerships…

'Achieving economic well-being' is a shared responsibility between many local agencies. Think of the common ground between these different agencies using TRF's advocacy tool and consider which agencies may offer opportunities for partnership work promoting economic well-being.

The TRF planning and evaluation framework has been developed in consultation with library practitioners and is being used by library authorities, and by national reading initiatives, to plan and assess the impact of key elements of their services for young people. Use these tools to:

Define appropriate outcomes to meet the ‘economic wellbeing’ agenda
Think through what evidence of impact you can gather
Develop programmes and activities to deliver the outcomes
Decide on methods for collecting evidence of success
Devise strategies for using the evidence
Develop partnership or funding opportunities with other agencies for whom this strand of Every Child Matters is particularly important
11-19 year olds…

Fulfilling their Potential is an improvement programme aimed at developing libraries’ capacity to deliver services to young people.

The 2004 report Fulfilling their Potential, (pdf, 643 kb), highlighted the potential of library services to make a significant contribution to the lives of 11-19 year olds.

Download the Fulfilling their Potential improvement framework (Word, 121kb) and review the following outcomes with reference to current work programmes in your library service.

Young people have the opportunity to get involved in the library service
Young people feel able to access information on their local community and wider democratic issues
Young people have access to study facilities and help in the library to meet their learning needs

Consider how your work may be contributing to ‘achieving economic wellbeing’ for young people as they move into adulthood.