Case Study: Young People Having Their Say

We're always hearing about how disengaged and disinterested young people can be regarding community involvement but what happens when they clamour to have their voices heard? Are those in authority really ready to listen and respond when it is young people rather than themselves setting the agenda?

Background

Consultations via the Kingston's Young People's Forum showed that a number of young people wanted to meet council officers face-to-face and discuss issues of importance to them. This led to the idea of a day-long conference, designed and run by young people from across the Borough where they could meet with various professionals and find out what their plans and priorities for young people were. The over-arching objectives of the day were to:

• increase communication between young people and the council and its partners, and to encourage an atmosphere of positive information exchanges; and,
• provide actionable outputs both for the council to work from and in terms of information and results to feed back to the young people who participated in the exercise.

Concurrent with these aims were a number of other key objectives, focusing on the active role which participants were encouraged to play. These were to:

• ensure that the participants were able to retain ownership of the research, being involved in all aspects of the process, from setting the agenda for the discussion and developing a topic guide, to facilitating some of the discussions;
• empower the young people by giving them opportunities to develop and utilise their team-working, analytical and communication skills; and,
• give both young people and the professionals the opportunity to meet and network with each other in a neutral, comfortable environment.

Our Approach

The day-long conference was arranged involving 75 people. Strenuous efforts were made to make the exercise as inclusive as possible, with participants recruited from a wide range of children's and youth network groups. The young people themselves designed and sent invitations out to council officers and colleagues from partner agencies in Kingston. Among the professionals attending were a number of senior service managers, councillors and representatives from educational, disability, policing and social services.

In order to ensure commitment to acting upon the suggestions made, a questionnaire was sent out to these professionals with the invite, asking if they were prepared to follow up on the ideas and recommendations which emerged. Ipsos MORI staff worked closely with the young people and the Council to:

• design and run an ice-breaker session at the start of the day;
• lead welcome and plenary sessions;
• 'train' young people in facilitation skills and either co-facilitated or sat in as note-taker / observer whilst the young people ran the session;
• prepare a report of the key outcomes from the discussions that was signed off by the young people.

Outcomes

A number of key themes and suggestions for improvements arose at the event, including:

• Leisure facilities: introduce a leisure card, available to all under-18s, to provide discounts for cinemas, sports facilities, gyms, shops and libraries in the borough, in order to encourage greater activity.
• Communications from service providers: more targeted advertising of services, through schools, internet and text messaging, along with an A-Z of Council Services distributed to every household.
• At the end of the event, the Chief Executive of the Council pledged to ensure that these were taken forward and to report back on progress.

Comments

Both the professionals and young people felt it had been a valuable exercise, both in terms of the research process and structure of the event. Comments included:

"A very good and worthwhile event which we should repeat." Professional

"I was really impressed with how the young people involved helped to facilitate the workshops and how they confidently dealt with occasionally difficult situations…the day was a real success…it was amazing how quickly the time went." Professional

"There were lots of opportunities for young people to get their views across and talk to professionals without the usual barriers." Professional