Details of Youth Social Work in the Vocational Preparation Year

Monitoring and evaluation of youth social work at a vocational school

From 2001 to 2004, IRIS has been in charge of the evaluation of an innovative approach to support young people during their compulsory vocational year („BVJ – Berufsvorbereitungsjahr“ in German).

The evaluation was based on two main pillars:

• the formative evaluation of the process of implementation of this new type of social service
• a longitudinal study on the processes of social integration of the students of the vocational preparation year in their transitions.

The particular focus of this project was on how to seamlessly integrate the research part into the development of the practical work. Therefore, the youth social workers were involved in all steps of the research, from the design of the study to the daily practice of data collection and interpretation.

Contact at IRIS: Friedemann Bär and Ralf Nuglisch