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This is what we delivered to the Youth Workers and part
time workers at their inset training days on Tuesday,
Wednesday and Saturday.
Some of you may know us! But do you know what we do? Put
your hands up if you can answer this.
The Young People’s Office is all about actively
involving young people in decision making. Article 12 of
the UN convention says “Young People have a right to be
involved in decisions that affect them”. How do you
actively involve young people in your job?
 The
Young People’s Office includes a lot of young people
that become involved in making decisions in their daily
lives. An example of how this is done is the Greater
Peterborough Partnership project, which is dedicated to
improving
Peterborough
over the next 20 years. The GPP wanted young people’s
views, and the Young People’s office made it easier to
do this. The Young People’s Office is unique in the
sense that it gives young people the chance to really
get their voices heard, and it improves the development
of projects like the GPP.
Last year two young people were invited by the Office of
the Deputy Prime Minister to report on a government
conference on neighbourhood renewal. This was a great
opportunity to see how people would react to young
people being involved in such a big conference. We made
a newsletter that explained our views on what we saw
throughout the two day event. The ODPM were very
interested to hear our views and wanted to include young
people in the development of our communities. This is a
good example of Active Involvement because it shows
people genuinely wanting our advice and opinions.
 Sometimes
we have experienced some form of a tokenistic approach
towards consulting with young people. You can tick all
the boxes, but are the views of young people really
being considered? It’s always important for the young
people at the Young People’s office to receive feedback
on how Young People’s views are being used. Sometimes it
can seem a bit like the young people are there to make
the organisation look good, bit we are very careful to
avoid this happening.
Active Involvement is a process where young
people are well informed, supported and included. It is
a two way thing where the partnership between adults and
young people is important, and communication is the
foundation of it.
At this point in the presentation we split the
group into two separate groups and gave them all post it
notes. We asked them to write two words that reminded
them of “Active Involvement” individually, then, in
their teams, write a sentence with all the words.
Young People can be a very valuable source of
information if you know how to involve them. Sometimes
their views are undermined or ignored because of low
expectations from adults. The Young People’s Office has
been trying to break this boundary between the two age
groups, so that everyone gains something from
consultation. A while ago a few young people were
invited to Downing Street to present a report called Y
Vote, Y Not? The report was all about including young
people more in democracy and showing them more clearly
what it is about. This was a huge breakthrough for the
Young People because it was a demand for more
involvement, which was receiving a positive response
from the Government.
At the moment the Young People are developing a
website called PYPIN that actively involves other young
people across Peterborough in having a say in things
that affect them. It gives them all the relevant
information on services and organisations that are
available to them, and also includes content that will
encourage them to take part, like entertainment reviews
and interviews, or advice from other young people on the
difficulties you can face as a young person or teenager.
Hopefully PYPIN will contribute towards raising the
level of involvement across Peterborough.
At this point we asked them to get back into
their groups and spend some time discussing and writing
how they will a) plan to involve young people, b)
encourage young people to take part and c) use the
feedback they got from the young people.
Here are some views on the Saturday presentation to the
part time youth workers.
On Saturday 24th April, Alice and myself held
a presentation on Active Involvement to a group of
part-time youth workers. The place was the HPDC building
and the time was too early in the morning for anyone to
be fully awake and alert. However the free coffee helped
kick the morning off and what a beautiful sunny day it
was!
We had not got the notes we had used for the previous
presentations we had done at the Marriot Hotel and so
Alice and I spent the half hour before the presentation
desperately trying to re-create them. Alice clearly
saved the day with her quick thinking and amazing
intelligence, and we soon had something to work from.
Despite having done the presentation twice before I was
nervous when I entered the room and saw lots of
unfamiliar faces staring, waiting.
The presentation went smoothly and when we split the
group up into two they all took advantage of the weather
and found a place outside to jot down their ideas on
what we had asked of them.
We gave them about 20 minutes and then rounded them up
again to discuss what they had written. I thought the
ideas and points they had made were excellent,
especially for so early in the morning! Some interesting
discussion came out of it and it was really good to see
some young faces there and to hear their voice so
prominently in the discussions.
I think everyone enjoyed the presentation and got at
least some ideas or information from it that soaked in.
I know that I got some thoughts out of it, through
people’s responses, and I am beginning to feel less
nervous about speaking in front of an audience.
 At
the presentation I felt that the audience itself was
very different to the audience we’d had at the Mariot
hotel, the ages of the part time workers varied from
quite young to quite old. I felt initially that we were
met with a bit of scepticism, we started off the
presentation in the usual way, asking them if they knew
much about us (which only the younger ones did, through
our links with interface) and also how they actively
involve young people in their work. I did feel the
answers to this question were slightly dubious, one
person said “We let the young people hold meetings and
plan what refreshments and music were to be had at their
disco”, which I think is important, but wasn’t really
discussed on a larger scale. There was a lot of talk
about involving young people through meetings, but not
much thought went into how young people could be
targeted on a larger scale. I felt that some of the
attitudes towards us were slightly more confused in the
beginning, I’m not sure if some people understood why we
were there. But by the end of the presentation some of
them were saying “Well done, that was excellent”. I
think the combination of talking to them and trying to
involve them directly in playing games and working in
groups is a winning one because it keeps their minds
active and helps them to think and question what we say.
I enjoyed it the most when people were asking us
questions because it showed a real interest, and gave us
the opportunity to talk to them directly and not off of
a script. The responses we got from the second game were
good, but I felt they did miss a few things, for
involvement I decided to point out the uses of surveys
and questionnaires, for encouragement I suggested
accreditation (certificates, trade, etc), and for
feedback I reminded them of the use of websites or
newsletters. They did come up with quite a few fresh
ideas though, drawing on personal experiences, like
interface. In interface they involve the young people by
drawing on their interest, the young people want to be
involved because they know that they gain something from
it personally. If young people could be shown the
personal benefits of say, joining a drama group, then
they could raise the interest levels in a way that would
be useful to everyone.
Here are the responses that we got from the groups. The
first response is the sentances that were formed from
the group work. The second is split into three parts,
planning, involvement and feedback, which are all listed
below. |
Group
3
Good
discussions
