Street League and SkillsBuilder Partnership
Building Brighter Futures: How Street League’s Partnership with Skills Builder Empowers Young People with Essential Skills for Work
As Youth Work Week (3-9 November) shines a light on creating safe places, trusted support, and opportunities to thrive for young people, we're proud to showcase our partnership with Skills Builder, who provide the framework for the Essential Skills element of our programmes.
The Universal Framework: Powering Essential Skills Development
A key component of our success, is the integration of the Universal Framework. All of our workshops and qualifications are carefully mapped to one or more of its components. This mapping ensures that our staff can align specific content and themes with the relevant skill steps of the Framework, providing a clear and consistent pathway for skill development.
The Framework is more than just a guide; it serves as a powerful self-reflective tool, enabling young people to actively measure their own progress. In the first week of the programme, participants, with the guidance of trained Street League staff, establish their baseline step within the essential skills framework. This assessment is then revisited in week 5 and again in week 10.
Tangible Progress, Brighter Outlooks
Our internal data clearly demonstrates the significant impact of this structured approach. The greatest progress in essential skills occurs between weeks 1 and 5, as the benefits of routine, peer interaction, and a sense of purpose significantly boost participants’ confidence and outlook.
"Working on essential skills was really important to me in my journey. Especially my confidence and communication skills as this was something I lacked from not attending school after Y8. After improving these skills at Street League, I felt much better about myself and felt that I could actually achieve something. I'm now working in the NHS and don't think I'd have been able to do this without improving my skills at Street League."
This systematic development, underpinned by the Essential Skills Framework, provides young people with the trusted support and safe places they need to build critical capabilities. The result is a generation of young people better equipped to seize opportunities and confidently step into brighter futures.
"One session that was really helpful was a session on communication skills where we had to work with people that we hadn't spoken to much and communicate in different ways. In one part of the session, we had to work in pairs and describe an image for our partners to draw. This helped me to feel more comfortable talking to people that I didn't know and also helped me to find different ways of making a point. This helped me a lot because I felt much more comfortable after this session and I started speaking to people more."
About the Skills Builder Partnership
The Skills Builder Partnership provides a universal Framework for essential skills, helping people to understand, articulate, and develop the eight essential skills for success in education, employment, and life. These skills include Speaking, Listening, Problem Solving, Creativity, Adapting, Planning, Leadership, and Teamwork. By offering a clear, step-by-step approach to building these essential skills, the Partnership supports individuals and organisations in empowering people to build brighter futures.