SHIFT is a one-to-one music mentoring programme designed to help young people and have a positive impact on their lives. It aims to make music accessible and nurture musical talent in young people.

It is run by AudioActive, a youth music organisation. The programme is  being funded by the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF).

We are doing a study of young people taking part in AudioActive’s SHIFT mentoring programme. This is to find out how it might help young people and improve their lives. The study is funded by YEF. For more information see: https://youthendowmentfund.org.uk/.

Cordis Bright is the independent research organisation carrying out the study. Their contact details are at the end of this document. You can find more information on Cordis Bright by visiting the website www.cordisbright.co.uk.

Your child/the child in your care has been asked to take part in this programme and study because they are eligible to take part in SHIFT mentoring.

If you agree that your child/the child in your care can take part, they will fill out a questionnaire about their wellbeing and things they might have done in the past.

A member of the SHIFT team will support your child/the child in your care to answer the questions where appropriate.

The questionnaire will take around 20-30 minutes to complete.

Once they have answered these questions, they will either be offered:

1)    Group 1: SHIFT mentoring. Young people will be offered weekly one-to-one music mentoring sessions with a SHIFT mentor. Timing and locations of these will be agreed between your child/the child in your care and their mentor.

Or:

2)    Group 2: Signposting and support. Young people will be offered around 3 one-to-one check in meetings over a 6 month period with a member of the AudioActive team who will refer them to other support services. 

Whether they receive group 1 or group 2 will be decided randomly using computer software. This is so that we can see if there are any differences for young people based on the support they receive. The diagram below summarises the study (if you are veiwing this on a mobile device, the image might display better in landscape).

 

 

Your child/the child you care for will also be asked to fill out a second questionnaire around six months after they completed the first one to see if anything has changed. This will help us to understand the difference the support is making to young peoples’ lives. A member of the AudioActive team will give them this questionnaire and help them to fill it in if needed.

AudioActive will collect some information about your child/the child in your care. This will include information about their background and what support they have received.

AudioActive will share some of this information with the researchers at Cordis Bright for the study. This is so they know who SHIFT is helping and how.

The researchers will collect the information from the questionnaire your child/the child in your care fills in.

They may also collect information from other organisations that might hold data about your child, for example, schools, local authorities and the police.

You can read more about what information will be collected in the privacy notice.

The researchers will use the information that your child/the child in your care gives us to find out how well SHIFT has worked and to write a report about our findings.

After the study, the information will be sent to the YEF archive, a safe place to store data from all YEF’s studies that may be used in the future (see: https://youthendowmentfund.org.uk/evaluation-data-archive/).

The picture in section 13 explains this. More information can also be found in the privacy notice that accompanies this information sheet.

Consenting to your child/the child in your care taking part in the study also means consenting to their information being sent to the YEF archive.

We will keep the information that your child/the child in your care shares with us confidential, including the answers they give to the study questionnaire. Only AudioActive and members of the research team will be able to see the information.

If AudioActive or the researchers believe that your child/the child in your care or someone else is at risk of harm, however, we may be required by law to share information about your child/the child in your care without their consent. We will always try to talk to them about this first.

Sometimes, AudioActive might refer your child/the child in your care to other support or activities that they might find helpful or enjoy. We would only do this if it was something your child/the child in your care wanted to do and would ask their permission before sharing any of their information.

This study has been reviewed and has achieved ethical approval by the Royal Holloway, University of London Research Ethics Committee. This means that the study is ethical and has been designed to keep your child/the child in your care safe. The approval ID is: 4234

Occasionally, someone may feel upset about questions or issues that arise during the study.

If you or your child/the child in your care feels upset by any of the questions they are asked as part of this study, you should tell their SHIFT worker, Caitlin from the research team (see section 12 for contact details) or Cordis Bright’s safeguarding lead Kam Kaur, who is contactable at KamKaur@cordisbright.co.uk or on 020 7330 9170.

If you or your child/the child in your care do not feel able to ask us for help, we encourage you to make contact with an external support service such as the Samaritans (Tel. 116 123, www.samaritans.org) or Childline (Tel. 0800 1111, www.childline.org.uk).

If you do not want your child/the child in your care to take part in the study, they do not have to. It is a decision you may wish to take together. We would like as many eligible young people as possible to take part to improve our understanding about what makes a difference for young people.

 If your child/the child in your care chooses not to take part in the study, all the usual services will continue to be available. However, SHIFT will not be available to them.

You and your child/the child in your care can change your minds about whether they take part in the study (and have their information sent to the YEF archive) at any time before the study comes to an end in May 2027.

To withdraw from the study, please contact Caitlin, the study manager, using the details provided in the box below. You do not have to give a reason and your child/the child in your care will still be allowed to work with a SHIFT mentor if they have already started working together.

If you change your mind, please tell us as soon as possible. Two weeks after completion of the second questionnaire (at around six months), it may no longer be possible for the researchers to delete the information already collected from your child/the child in your care. This is because they will have used their information and those of other young people to carry out part of the study and to write a research report. If it is too late to delete the information already collected from your child/the child in your care from the study, they can still withdraw from the rest of the study (that is, not answering any more questions) and from the YEF archive.

Once information goes to the YEF archive after June 2027, it can no longer be deleted because that would affect the quality of the archived data for use in future research. See section 13 and the privacy notice accompanying this information sheet for more information about the YEF archive.

If you have any questions about anything to do with the study, you can contact a member of the AudioActive or Cordis Bright team. If you have any feedback or questions about how we use personal information in this study, or if you want to make a complaint, you can contact Caitlin or Colin.

We always encourage you to speak to us first, but if you remain unsatisfied you also have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues: https://ico.org.uk/make-acomplaint/.  

 

AudioActive contact details:

SHIFT Senior Manager: Aisling Zambon Email: aisling@audioactive.org.uk
East Sussex Programme Manager: Tom Hines Email: tom@audioactive.org.uk
West Sussex Programme Manager: Jo Bates Email: jo@audioactive.org.uk
West Sussex Programme Coordinator: Nicholson Davids Email: nicholson@audioactive.org.uk

Cordis Bright contact details:

Study Manager: Caitlin Hogan-Lloyd Email: caitlinhoganlloyd@cordisbright.co.uk  Tel: 020 7330 9170
Data Protection Officer: Colin Horswell Email: Colinhorswell@cordisbright.co.uk Tel: 020 7330 9170

1.     Information is collected from your child/the child in your care and other young people as part of the study to see if the support is helping them.

2.     Personal information (like their name or date of birth) is removed from your child/the child in your care’s records and they are assigned a unique identification number. After this, no one will be able to know who they are when looking at the information.

3.     The information will then be held in a safe place called the YEF archive by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). No one can access it without approval.

4.     The Department for Education and the Ministry of Justice will link together information on education and crime records that they hold. It will be possible to send information like this to the ONS to safely match to your child/the child in your care’s information in the YEF archive.

5.     Only approved researchers will be allowed to safely access your child/the child in your care’s information to see if SHIFT helped people in the long term.

 

More information on this process can be found in the study privacy notice that accompanies this info sheet.