What does younger people participation mean?

Before we start on the journey of younger people participation within human service organisations it makes sense to have some kind of idea about what 'participation' looks like and what it takes. Lets see if we can make a start on defining participation to help us on our way.

To begin with younger people participation is not about listening to the 'voice' of 'youth' in an ad hoc and unexamined way. It means sustained processes for involving younger people in the local and organisational decision making that affects their lives.  This includes, but is more than, involving younger people in everyday individual matters such as ‘case' planning or house schedules.  It also means providing meaningful opportunities for involvement in program and policy development.  

Involvement can have multiple meanings and not all of them are helpful.  For example, involvement in decision making is not just about letting younger people voice their ideas and issues.  It’s not just about holding an ‘event’. It’s definitely not about ticking a box asking if the younger person was ‘consulted’.  Nor is it usually about handing over all decision-making power to younger people.  Instead, involvement is best understood as taking part in ongoing informal and formal dialogues, within relationships of mutual recognition and trust, between younger people and decision-makers, or their representatives.

And here is the tricky part. In these dialogues the onus is on decision makers and their representatives to: 

• Provide culturally safe spaces and time for younger and older people to understand, reflect and voice their ideas in a variety of ongoing, flexible, user-friendly ways. 

• Provide opportunities to build safe, trusting relationships with older advocates. 

• Provide opportunities for younger people to gain skills and experience in advocacy. 

• Foster an organisational culture of diversity, inclusion and critical reflection. 

• Provide all relevant information including younger people rights and the constraints on decision making. 

• Inclusively or reflexively listen with an eye to how organisational structures, settings and the way we and society position younger people, older people and culture, can block listening and understanding. 

• Embrace a willingness to change our own ways of thinking, perceiving, acting and evaluating. 

• Adopt strength-based practice with its inherent sensitivity to situational and systemic power relations including the way younger people can unquestioningly position themselves and their relationships according to dominant deficit-based narratives. 

• Accept the obligation to have “transparent processes of accountability for decision-making so that young people can see the outcomes of their participation, through feedback, coordination, open communication and documentation of influence” (Keenan, 2014 as cited in Vosz et al, 2020). 

• Accept that participation may look different depending on the younger person, the situation and the context. 

• Accept the right of younger people to be involved or not be involved at the level that they feel comfortable. 

• Establish mechanisms for evaluating participation success. 

Understanding younger people participation along these lines is clearly much more than ‘giving younger people a voice’.  It is one of the most inspiring and aspirational exercises that a human being and an organisation can undertake.