Background

Note: the majority of this study focuses on evaluating the impact of advice-seeking interventions for young people. Only one subsection focuses on financial capability and debt advice, and is the focus of this review.

Two million 16-24-year-olds are living below the poverty line, 77% have been in debt by age 21 and young people possess the lowest rates of financial capability. A lack of money is the most common cause of social and civil problems amongst young people. One in five young people experience a loss of income as a result of their problems.

Research question and aims

This report asks what impact advice-seeking behaviour has on young people’s financial capability and level of debt. The report sought to understand what the most effective advice-based interventions are for tackling debt and finance issues amongst young people.

Methods

This review focuses on the outcomes of advice provided to young people between the ages of 13 and 25, by advice agencies targeting young people, in relation to financial capability and debt. As well as referring to evidence identified in a literature review relating to the impact of advice services, the report draws heavily on the following key data sources:

1. (CSJS), a major national private household survey focusing on people’s experiences of everyday problems which were “difficult to solve”, and its successor, the Civil and Social Justice Panel Survey (CSJPS).
2. testing from the New Youth Advice Outcomes Toolkit and limited testing of an earlier two-stage, pre-/post- outcomes toolkit for youth advice work.
3. on behalf of Youth Access with 27 young clients aged 16-24 who had received in-depth rights-based advice and assistance on social welfare issues.

Findings

Overall, the evidence reviewed suggests that advice can be effective and cost efficient for improving young people’s income, building capacity to manage money and debt and generally improving standards of living:

• Data from the 2010 CSJPS revealed that young respondents aged 16 to 24 reported that advice from another person or organisation (excluding family and friends, but only rarely provided by youth advice services) led to an improvement in their income on 11% of occasions, confirming other evidence pointing to the contribution of advice in improving young people’s standard of living.
• Of the 516 young people participating in trials of the Youth Advice Outcomes Toolkit, 33% self-reported that their income had improved and 35% felt better able to manage money. In the same study, advice workers reported that 26% of their young clients had achieved an identifiable improvement in their income, most often as a result of obtaining welfare benefits to which they were entitled or reducing debts.
• A smaller trial of an earlier version of the Youth Advice Outcomes Toolkit found that 64% of young clients self-reported feeling better able to manage their money as a result of the support their adviser had given them.
• In interviews with young people who had received legal advice, the vast majority (80%) reported improvements in their standard of living as a result of getting advice. Similar numbers reported improvements in their financial situation and in their ability to manage money. Significantly, this was often because their advisers had not just dealt with the presenting money advice issue, but had also provided broader educational support aimed at improving their financial capability.
• An evaluation of a local Citizens Advice pilot project providing advice to young people found that the project gained money for clients at the rate of £29.17 for each £1 spent on the project in addition to non-monetary outcomes such as housing obtained.
• A report published by the Department of Health on the economic case of mental health interventions concludes that there is potential for debt advice interventions to alleviate debt, and hence reduce mental health problems resulting from debt. Without an advice intervention, almost two-thirds of people with unmanageable debt problems will still face such problems 12 months later. For the general population, contact with face-to-face debt advice services is associated with a 56% likelihood of debt becoming manageable.
• In a randomised controlled trial of debt advice, the financial circumstances of participants (of all ages) improved to a greater extent when debt advice was provided compared to a control group. A year later, those who had received debt advice owed less, were better at budgeting and had improved health.

Recommendations

Simply having someone to talk to can often be beneficial to young people. However, an adviser who possesses the skills to engage with troubled young people, the expertise and capacity to provide technically proficient active assistance and the tenacity to pursue a case to a successful resolution is more likely to produce good results that can change clients’ lives. The report identifies a number of advice service characteristics and other factors that appear to be linked to the achievement of good outcomes:

• The degree of trust that the young person has in the service
• The quality of the one-to-one relationship between client and adviser
• The extent to which the service is age-appropriate, young person-focused and holistic
• The degree of independence of the service
• The availability of face to face advice
• The depth and quality of the advice intervention
• The timing of the intervention
• Whether or not the problem was successfully resolved
• The level of disadvantage suffered by the client

Discussion

• Only a small portion of this report focuses on financial capability – the broader focus is on social welfare issues. However, it does synthesise results from some robust studies and evaluations to support its assertions. Generalisability: from the information provided about the evaluations, we can be fairly confident that these findings would be transferrable to a similar age group within the UK.
• There is little evidence currently available to prove that advice has a substantial long-term impact on individuals. More research is needed into the longer-term impact of advice and the economic benefits of youth advice services.
• There is lack of definitive, robust data on the impact of advice services in general, and of youth advice services in particular. This report draws on (to a large extent) a patchwork of evidence sources that tend to point in similar directions. Because this report was written by an advice/counselling organisation (Youth Access) with included evidence selected in a non-systematic fashion and drawing heavily on evaluations of their own work, there is possibility that the findings reported here are not representative – readers should be mindful of the risk of bias in line with the authors’ interests.

Full report

The outcomes & impact of youth advice - full report