As part of our ‘monitoring and evaluation’ theme in May, we speak to Ben Eckett who is introducing a fascinating new system to measure the impact of his programmes at our specialist partners Gloves Not Gunz and Urban Yogis.
Gloves Not Gunz and Urban Yogis use boxing/martial arts and yoga respectively to engage young people in Croydon, South London and divert them away from crime, gangs and anti-social behaviour. Many of their participants experienced childhood trauma and have social, emotional and psychological issues.
Ben Eckett and co-founder Adam Ballard are constantly seeking ways to increase their impact on their participants and recently heard about AMBIT, an approach for working with socially excluded youth with mental health problems and co-occurring difficulties (e.g. conduct disorder, family breakdown, homelessness, substance use, exploitation, educational failure).
For Urban Yogis and Gloves Not Gunz, AMBIT provides a framework for measuring young people’s emotional development as they progress through their programmes. It sets out key indicators such as how well they regulate their emotions, risk-taking, dealing with conflict, managing relationships and engaging in education and employment.
Devised by therapists at the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, the evidence-based framework is based on the science of ‘mentalisation’.
Ben and Adam are about to embark on six days of training in order to embed AMBIT within their impact measuring process. Ben says the benefits will be numerous.
“The ‘mentalisation’ process will get our coaches thinking about how even a generic boxing session can have positive implications on the way a participant lives their life, such as regulating emotions and managing challenges outside of the gym,” explains Ben.
“We really liked the model because it works at every level of our organisation; from someone who is deeply entrenched in gang life and violence to a young person using boxing or yoga to stay fit and healthy.
“It gets people to think a bit more about how our work can have a greater impact on participants’ lives – and of course it measures success more accurately and at a deeper level.”
Ben foresees another significant advantage to AMBIT: “Funders love it!” he says. “When you’re applying for funding above a certain level, you need to show thorough, robust evidence.
“Although our current measuring tools are good we don’t really have a proper framework. Having this therapeutic, trauma-informed, evidence-based system underpinning our work will really help us get the best out of young people – and produce the evidence to prove it.”
The framework can be applied to organisations delivering all kinds of targeted sport and physical activity settings. At a football session, for example, it could measure how they react to being fouled or losing a match. The framework gets participants to think about how they manage feelings and can translate positive responses on the pitch into everyday life.
Urban Yogis and Gloves Not Gunz will be adopting AMBIT for their monitoring and evaluation from June and will receive ongoing support in implementing it for a year. Ben hopes to become a flagship organisation for the framework’s effectiveness.
Ben first heard about AMBIT through an Urban Yogis staff member who had used it whilst working for an organisation in West London called the Violence Intervention Project (VIP). “He felt it would be a really good move for us,” Ben reveals. “I definitely recommend people read about it.
“In general, I would recommend to all Levelling the Playing Field partners that they think about having a framework that gives them a stamp of approval for how they monitor and evaluate work and theories behind their practice. It’s about what fits their organisation. It really helps attract bigger funding and brings up the quality of work you’re delivering.”