Carnegie Young People Initiative

By the end of 2003, most of the major organisations serving or affecting young people in the public or voluntary sectors at the national and local levels had made a policy commitment to their involvement in decision-making. This is a major step forward from the situation only three years ago, when participation was the concern of an isolated few.

Key Questions

There are three questions that arise from the rapidity of this change;

• Has the battle for the hearts and minds of the adults who make these policies been won?
• Are the systems and resources in place to make participation a real option for all young people?
• Have young people been given sufficient information, support and encouragement to participate?

In our view the answer to all these questions so far must be ‘no’. Therefore there remains the danger that young people’s participation will become yet another glossy policy which will be quickly forgotten. However the debate has certainly moved on. In our own work we are no longer asked by organisations ‘why should young people be involved?’ but ‘how can we involve young people?’

The challenges

A number of critical challenges remain to translating participation rhetoric into daily reality.

Breadth Only a small proportion of young people are involved and with a bias to the more confident and privileged. Citizenship education will be critical to expanding this to much greater numbers. But much more needs to be done to involve more marginalized young people, and schools may be less effective here. Young people themselves will need to lead campaigns for greater involvement.

Depth Will participation be another case of organisations ticking boxes but not fundamentally reforming? So far the limited evidence strongly suggests that young people have had little effect on decisions through participation exercises (Kirby with Bryson). To what extent have young people had a real say over resources, especially money? Is the necessary information provided to them to allow them the opportunity to make informed input?

What works? There is a growing commitment to participation but organisations are often unsure and need support, training, new systems and skills They may become frustrated if they are not using appropriate techniques and resourcing these properly. Evaluation and a commitment to learning will be essential.

So how can we take participation forward?

CYPI has had a four-pronged work programme.

We have mapped activity to promote young people’s involvement in the four countries of the UK, culminating in the report preceding this one. The Carnegie UK Trust also covers the Republic of Ireland and in November 2001 we launched in Dublin with our research partner the National Youth Council of Ireland the first ever account of work on participation in Eire. We have tried to learn lessons from abroad and this began with a volume of seven profiles of very different countries with progressive policies; Barbados, Denmark, Germany, Lithuania, Portugal, South Africa and Uganda. This volume was launched in October 2001by the Commonwealth Secretary General. An account of work in the USA, based on a research trip supported by the American State Department was published in May 2002. An update to the first UK report of the Taking the Initiative was published in 2003.

Hard Evaluation

Our work has revealed that there is very little by the way of hard evaluation of young people’s participation, either in terms of impacts or what works best. In July 2002 we published a report by Perpetua Kirby with Sara Bryson (Measuring the Magic) on what is known so far and what more research is needed.

Adoption of Standards

Carnegie YPI has advocated the adoption of standards by the major public and private sector bodies dealing with young people at the national and local levels in how they can guarantee good participation opportunities. The intention of this is to remove the ‘lottery’ element between institutions and sectors where young people can expect to be invited to become involved by some but not others. The best example of this has been Hear by Right, described more fully in chapter three on local government. Our report Standard! Organisational Standards and Young People’s Participation in Public decision Making was published in September 2003.

Building Capacity

Lastly we have tried to build capacity in the field. This has been done in a number of ways. The Carnegie UK Trust has created a stream of funding to support voluntary sector projects. CYPI has staged several conferences and a number of seminars on issues such as decision-making in schools and evaluation. We have commissioned further research such as that by the think tank Demos into the potential for the use of ICT for participation (Howland with Bethell). CYPI has been particularly concerned as to how participation workers can be best supported. As well as sponsoring a network and directory in Scotland, we produced a report on the needs of workers in England, Circus Skills and have begun a process to set up a Service for participation workers there.