Child exploitation and youth participation: expert interviews

This series of resources is based on interviews with professionals who hold specific skills, knowledge and experiences in the fields of participation and co-production with young people. One of the key priorities of the TCE programme this last year has been the inclusion of children and young people’s voices in strategic decision-making. The aim is to develop and improve strategic working in the inclusion of children and young people’s views. This strand of work has included a consultation with young people, a sector discussion hosted on Twitter, an Action Learning Set exploring associated challenges and a series of blogs authored by Isabelle Brodie and Ellie Fairgrieve who are leading this priority on behalf of the TCE programme. These stakeholder interviews aimed to complement the information gathered in other parts of the project. Interviewees shared their experiences of running participation projects with young people to feed into strategic decision making, as well as their perspectives on the key challenges and enablers. The three resources cover three key themes that emerged from the interviews: 

1. Organisations: Laying the groundwork for effective engagement with children and young people 
2. How to empower young people to meaningfully engage in participation work 
3. Child exploitation and youth participation – key considerations 

It is important to note that interviewees did not have a single model in mind when they spoke about the participation of young people in the strategic development of services or strategic activity. Interviewees referred to a range of different mechanisms and approaches, including: online consultations; twitter discussions; action groups; advisory boards; one to one sessions; focus groups with existing participation groups; and hub and spoke models (where a consistent cohort of young people are responsible for engaging with a much larger sample of young people over time). Interviewees also framed participation work and its overall aim in a range of different ways. Some of these perspectives are summarised below. Which do you most align with? Do you think these objectives complement or contradict one another? 

• A key objective for participation work should be the young person’s onward journey and their potential to influence and inspire other young people. Participation work should try to equip and empower young people to go on and become advocates and role models. 
• Participation work should be about involving children as equal citizens and encouraging their direct involvement in all areas of society. Participation work should support young people to go on to play an active role in shaping society and making the world a better place. 
• Participation work is about using the voice of children and young people to change practice and develop child-centred strategies. Hearing about the lived experiences of children and young people and their encounters with statutory and voluntary services can be a powerful and effective way to instigate change in organisational cultures and processes. 
• Rather than only focusing on discrete participation projects, we should be embedding participatory principles within our direct practice with young people and as part of strategic activity. Young people need to be involved and informing the decisions that are made about them. Their views on their experience of services should be collected in a systematic and ongoing way and feed directly into the improvement of those services. 

The interviewees also spoke in detail about the key principles that should underpin participation work, and these are explored within each resource.   

Interviewees: 

Caroline Adams: Staff Officer, Children & Young People’s Portfolio – Sussex Police HQ 

Darwin Bernardo: Community Engagement Lead at Mayor’s of London’s Violence Reduction Unit 

Chloe Darlington: Policy and Communications Manager at Children England 

Chloe Dennis-Green: Innovation Practitioner at The Children’s Society 

Nicky Hill: Freelance Consultant at Reform Consulting around Youth Violence, Criminal Exploitation and Safeguarding www.reformconsulting.co.uk 

Jo Petty: Youth Engagement Lead at The Children’s Society, currently on secondment to another organisation