Delivery Team Reflection – Part 1 – Children and Young People’s Voice thematic project

 

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The last few months have been very busy for the TCE Support Programme’s Children and Young People’s Voice strand, as we’ve tried to explore further the issues that emerged from our Twitter conversations during the autumn.

We’ve held consultations with young people, interviewed sector experts, embarked on an action learning set and reviewed literature in order to better understand how children and young people’s voices can be heard and acted upon in relation to child exploitation. Through all of this we have benefited from the input of an intern, Kirsche Walker, who has expertise as a participant in projects focused on co-production in the field of child exploitation and sexual violence. You can read more about Kirsche’s experience in her blog post on the Children and Young People’s Voice strand.

There have been lots of recurrent themes in the avalanche of information we have accumulated, which sometimes emerges in binary or polarised terms. For example:

• There is lots of information, but not of the kind people feel they need.
  
  
• There are great examples of practice, but also frustration and disillusionment over projects that either haven’t worked or that people can’t see working in their local context.
  
  
• There are so many organisations out there where young people are working to help shape thinking on a whole range of issues of social justice, but people working in statutory services still report finding it hard to know where to go for advice or help.

I am left wondering how we can find a way through the complexity, and also a way of thinking about children and young people’s voices that enables the development of practice rather than generating anxiety and guilt. I was struck by a comment I recently read in a report where someone said her passion for ‘voice’ and her determination to ‘make this happen’ in her organisation had prevented her from considering and understanding the different perspectives around the table. 

I wonder if discussions relating to the voices of children and young people end up pushing people apart rather than bringing them together? If we are finding this a difficult issue within services or across a partnership, is there a need to pause and consider how conversations can best take place? Do we need to spend more time understanding the different perspectives that exist, perhaps resulting from past experience or work that hasn’t translated into action? Or where action has taken place but those involved – young people and practitioners – have not been told what their input resulted in / about the importance of their influence? Is there a need to reflect on and identify the different ways in which children and young people’s voices are influencing decision-making that aren’t currently sufficiently visible?

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This blog is part of a series –

Good practice principles: hearing the voice of children and young people

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5