Quality Mark

Supporting our members, just like your club, to achieve quality standards is a core aim at London Youth. The London Youth Quality Mark is the only quality assurance scheme for youth clubs accredited by City and Guilds and, uniquely, involves young people in assessment.

The aim is ensure your organisation provides the highest standards of service and activities that are needed and wanted by young people in your community.

The Quality Mark comes with face-to-face support from Head of Quality Standards, Gary Hartin who can guide you and your organisation through each stage at your own pace with as much guidance as you need.

The workload can be shared amongst your staff members and volunteers to maximise learning across the organisation and lessen the time commitment needed by each individual.

Remember, the London Youth Quality Mark can be tailor-made for you!

What's in it for you, your club and your young people?

Gary is committed to helping members reach quality standards, in order to…

• achieve lasting improvements to their practice and management
• improve individuals confidence in delivering and managing youth work
• provides a clear structure by which to plan and deliver support to our members
• proves the quality of service being delivered to young people
• have young people, their families and funders recognise the award as a sign of excellence

We have designed the London Youth Quality Mark ourselves to ensure it is:

• straightforward
• progressive – through Bronze, through Silver to Gold
• ideal for all kinds of community-based youth work
• aligned to Helping Children Achieve More (formerly the Every Child Matters outcomes)

The benefits of our London Youth Quality Mark are many and varied...

We know from those members who took part in the pilot that…

• 70% of those achieving the Quality Mark felt it will help them to attract more young people to their club
• 83% thought the Quality Mark would increase the quality of services that they provide to their young people
• 87% thought the Quality Mark would improve their ability to raise more funds

Dominic from the Laburnum Boat Club, a Gold Level Quality Mark holder tells us...

‘The quality mark is a great asset for us, when making applications to funding and awarding bodies, as it does exactly what it says – a mark of quality.'

...and it is the only quality assurance scheme for youth clubs accredited by City and Guilds

In 2009 we were delighted to announce that City and Guilds were accrediting the London Youth Quality Mark with Chris Jones, Director-General City and Guilds saying...

'At City and Guilds developing the skills of people and organisations for their personal and economic growth comes first and last in everything that we do. This is why we are very excited with this new partnership created with London Youth, who we have supported to develop their Quality Mark Standards Programme. As their partner we are very happy for our name to be associated with the London Youth Quality Mark which we see as a way of helping us to realise our vision.’

So we hope that you will want to find out more about this work and begin your own quality journey. Those who have taken part have all been clear that achieving quality standards has helped them improve services and opportunities for young people even further - as well as helping develop stronger relationships with funders and statutory partners. 

Business in the Community have written an article on the partnership of City and Guilds and London Youth which can be found here.                                                          

Mapping to ISO900

We have recently taken part in a wider voluntary sector project as part of our membership of the Accreditation Provider's Forum in conjunction with Newcastle University Business School to map our quality framework against the ISO9000 system. To find out more please download a copy of the guide to find out how we are helping commissioners, by giving them a means by which to compare specific quality marks with the more generic ISO9000 system. 

Get in touch!

If you have any questions about the London Youth Quality Mark or would like to register your interest by completing & sending the Self Assessment form (available from the Download list) to Gary at: gary.hartin@londonyouth.org.uk he will be delighted to get you started!