Evaluating a gender-specific intensive intervention programme: young women's voices and experiences.

Disadvantaged young women in England have been documented as having unmet needs. This has resulted in the growth of gender-specific intensive intervention programmes in which a more holistic women-centred service approach is still being implemented. Gender matters because structural inequalities (bias and disadvantaging societal conditions) that girls are born into influences health, their outcomes and associated inequalities. Policy-makers frequently call for the outcomes of intervention programmes to be quantified and whilst this is important it can miss opportunities for critical insights into the subjective experiences of participants as well as the context and circumstances within which change occurs. This paper reports evaluation findings from a prototype project (The Way Forward) with a remit focused upon holistic improvement, using gender specific methods and approaches to promote health for disadvantaged young women within a community setting. This paper documents the voices of young women within the project, illustrated through their creation of storyboards within focus group discussions, and interview data from their support workers (Engagement Workers). Findings illustrate the importance of the relational dimension of one to one support in achieving future positive changes in the lives of young women, as well as the complexity associated with attempts to improve their health. This paper therefore presents the young women’s perspectives and experiences as well as an accompanying narrative discussing how the service enabled them to make health-related improvements with its main contribution being in the user voices.