FINAL REPORT
1. BACKGROUND
This project ran from September to the end of December 2003 and was limited to 250 young people age 11 – 18 in full time education.
It was designed to overcome the two barriers to participation in leisure – the cost of the facility and the cost of the transport.
A hybrid Youth Mover “Plus” card was developed that brought together the existing Youth Mover Scheme and Wight Leisure OneCard and for a one-off administration fee of £10, users had free access to Leisure and free travel on buses and trains at certain times
The final exit survey was sent out to all participants and we have had a 45% return rate
2. The initial take-up of the card was excellent and we could have easily trebled the number of cards issued but were constrained by finances.
The interim survey showed that, although there was a rapid take-up of the project, the leisure use dropped off during the life of the project.
We attributed this to two possibilities:
I) It was the parent who decided to purchase the card as it was very good value – but the young person was not so enthusiastic
II) As the nights become darker, people tend to stay indoors more
3. We tested these hypotheses in the final exit survey and the results clearly show when the scheme would prove most popular.
Who made the decision to purchase the card in the first place ?
4. One of the other key issues that came
out of the interim survey was that users had problems if their friends wanted
to travel to the facilities but didn’t have a card
This was specifically tested on the exit survey and it demonstrated how important this was to young people
Would you have used it
more if your friends had a card as well?
5. We were aware that participants were using the card other than accessing Wight Leisure’s facilities from the analysis of the interim report, so we specifically asked questions about the use of the Youth Mover element.
This demonstrates how popular the scheme is and where young people would like to see it develop.
So that we could possibly adapt the scheme to meet real
identified needs, we really would like to know what it was used for.
6. Feedback also indicated that more use would have been made of the card for leisure and travel if it could have been used earlier in the day to tie in with leisure centre times and personal time
This too was tested in the exit survey
Would you use the Youth Mover card if it gave free travel from 4:00pm (currently free after 5:00pm schooldays, half fare during holidays)
It is clear that the scheme was popular and showed excellent value for money by the parents and that if the timings and months that it is to be used could be changed, then it would be just as popular with the young people too.
Also if the numbers available could be extended so that their friends could travel and use facilities then this would be an important factor.
As a result of these findings it is proposed to seek funding to run a further, more extensive trial with a view to this eventually becoming a mainstream service offered to all young people.