The development of Easykit started in 2003 when Connexions South Yorkshire brought staff together from across its contracted partners (Careers Services, Youth Services and Voluntary/Community organisations) to try and find a way of measuring ’soft’ work and the progress/‘distance travelled’ of disadvantaged young people being supported by Connexions Personal Advisers (PAs).
One of the main issues which faced the Connexions Service when it was set up in 2001 was how to measure soft work used by PAs supporting young people with barriers to engagement in learning. There was a need to demonstrate how effectively Connexions PAs were working with these young people and how a young person’s progress could be recorded in both quantative and qualitative terms.
The result was the development of an innovative ‘toolkit’ for PAs which was named Easykit and was based on the Connexions ‘APIR’ system of assessment. This toolkit was designed not to measure a young person’s specific skills or abilities but to support their personal development by improving their capacity to bring about change.
Every Child Matters: Change for Children was published by the DfES in 2004. One element of the Every Child Matters reforms is the introduction of a Common Assessment Framework (CAF) as the standard basic assessment of need for all children and young people. It brings in a common language and understanding of assessment across all children and young people’s services.
In response to the CAF, a new version of Easykit, called ‘Easykit 4CAF’ was developed and was launched in South Yorkshire in December 2006.
‘Easykit 4 CAF’ works in the same way as the APIR version but has been adapted to incorporate the 19 assessment domains of the CAF rather than the APIR factors. It has also been made generic so that it can be used by the range of practitioners who work to support young people aged 11– 19 years.