Involving children and young people in the work of the Children's Trust

Our purpose is to actively engage children and young people in the design, development and decision-making processes of services they access as part of the corporate partnership between the City Council and other key stakeholders with young people. Our objective is to build on the work set out in the Children and Young People’s Democratic Engagement Strategy 2005 – 2010 ( 124kb) and in doing so reinforce Sunderland City Council's commitment to the involvement of children and young people. The strategy is underpinned by the United Nations Conventions of the Rights of the Child.

Locally the strategy aims to provide the structure for children and young people to have:

• A voice
• Platforms for their voices to be heard
• Representation to ensure action takes place

Sunderland City Council has an existing and highly credible array of participatory practice. For more information download a position paper ( 62kb) .

While many participatory practices focus on the engagement of young people, further work is underway to involve younger children. The Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) asked children under 12 what they thought of the 5 Every Child Matters outcomes. They thought they were all important, but also thought family, friends, enough food and drink, fun, love, respect and being happy were equally important for all children. Download the report ( 843kb).

Some children and young people tell us that participation is important to them. They have told us that they want a chance to have their say, they want to be listened to, and they want to see evidence that what they say makes a difference.

Much has already been achieved in the City on participation:

A real commitment exists throughout the city in developing the voice of children and young people and engaging them in the design and delivery of services. This has resulted in the development of strategy, building of structures, and investment of time and resources to raise the profile of children and young people’s voices at delivery and strategic level. Publication of the Children and Young People’s Plan 2006-2009 saw the participation of children and young people firmly embedded in the culture of children’s services.

Many services routinely and systematically engage children and young people in key decisions affecting their lives.

There remain challenges. A recent consultation exercise with practitioners identified key challenges for the engagement of children and young people as:

• Achieving greater involvement in services that are traditionally adult led
• Engaging children and young people from hard to reach or marginalised groups
• Getting the most out of resources available to support participation across all age ranges
• Embedding participation standards in all work with children and young people

By 2009 we will:

• Fully implement the Children and Young People’s Democratic Engagement Strategy
• Feedback to children and young people the impact of their involvement in the review of CYPP
• Use existing events in the children’s services calendar to consult with children, young people and their parents/carers
• Embed ‘Hear By Rights’ standards or their equivalents across all services for children and young people 
• Establish a mechanism by which all services doing participation work with children and young people feed key messages into central, strategic planning forums
• Actively engage children and young people who may experience inequality or social exclusion and their families in consultation and participation activity, and ensure participation activity is made accessible for them
• Act upon what children and young people are telling us and work with them to achieve this

Children and young people’s involvement in the review of CYPP 2007

Our aim is to embed children and young people’s participation into all aspects of the Children’s Trust. To avoid
duplication, repetition and consultation overload, the main source of evidence of children and young people’s views has been through consultation carried out throughout the city over the past 12 months. Messages from this consultation and participation work have been analysed to understand what the important issues are for children and young people. The consultation work we have drawn upon includes:

• Reply slips from booklets sent out to all children and young people through schools informing them about the Children’s Trust and CYPP
• Sunderland Youth Parliament’s We’re All Ears campaign
• The Exeter Health Related Behaviour Survey completed by pupils from years 6, 8 and 10, and students at City of Sunderland collegeThe Tell Us survey carried out as part of the JAR inspection
• Participation work undertaken by Children’s Fund projects
• Learning is Fun conference
• Young People’s State of the City debate
• Youthinc2 conference
• Keyfund Ideas workshop
• Ideal Community workshop
• SVSYF e-voting sessions on sexual health and drugs/alcohol

This work has fed the views of about 5000 children and young people into the needs assessment process.

In addition to this, an online consultation was launched on the Children’s Trust website to get a broad understanding of how children and young people feel about themselves in respect of the five ECM outcomes.