Younger people participation is for all of us

When the issue of younger people participation is raised it's usually discussed solely in terms of benefits to younger people. And even then, it's often discussed in fairly vague, feel good ways loosely tied to human rights that arguably don't fully grasp what's at stake. The good news is that a deeper, more objective reality awaits us. Which means that a 'human rights' feel good appreciation is just the beginning of grasping the importance of younger people participation. In fact, when we dig deeper into the importance of participation we end up discovering that participation benefits all of us in quite extraordinary ways. Therefore let us all begin to dig deeper!

There are at least four reasons why participation is important. The following will address the first three leaving the fourth one for a latter time for the sake of brevity and hopefully anticipation! I say brevity, but what I really mean is that it's too much for here in one go because it involves a journey down the road of epistemology, ontology and symbolic violence. So at the risk of exhausting everyone let's leave that for another time.

To begin. The first has to do with legal rights. The right to participation for younger people is enshrined in international law, including the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCROC), the Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children, the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The right to participate in decision-making also appears in Australia’s National Standards for Out-of-Home Care, state/territory Charter of Rights agreements, and in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principle. Significantly, the right to participation is legally binding in Queensland for all human services through the Child Protection Act 1999 (QLD) and the Disability Services Act 2006 (QLD).

The second reason has to do with the benefits to younger people. These benefits are protective, healing, affirming and empowering. These benefits can be protective because listening to younger people prevents abuse and harm. This is nowhere more clearly voiced than by the 121 Australian children and young people who talked about their experiences of safety in institutions during the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. These children and young people repeatedly emphasised the importance of being listened to and taken seriously (Vosz, McPherson, Parmenter & Gatwiri 2020). In essence, a social environment where listening, being curious, and affirming the value of children and younger people accounts is an everyday practice builds and signals a safe space for other critical and potentially difficult and confronting conversations. These affirmations don't necessarily need to be exclusively verbal. For example, as one younger person who identified as gay noted: " when explaining why he was able to discuss his sexuality openly and safely with one carer rather than another: "Its because this carer had rainbows and gay pride posters in her house and she repeatedly affirmed my ability to make my own decisions". So when it came to him exploring safely his sexuality, the ground had already been laid.

Benefits to younger people can also include healing and affirming social worth where younger people have experienced histories of family abuse and/or social oppression. We need only think about how family abuse thrives on the silencing of children and younger people’s voices, the failure by older people to act ethically, and the denial of children and younger people’s perceptions, evaluations and experiences, to understand the potential for healing that comes when older people with power take their views seriously. This restorative effect can be multiplied in proportion to the existence of other layers of social oppression running alongside of, or apart from, family abuse, such as racism, ableism, gender, ageism and sexual identity oppression, all of which are conditional on making invisible and denigrating the true value and significance of the different cultural perspectives and experiences of children and younger people.

Similarly, it is because participation is fundamentally concerned with fostering agency, that it also provides, alongside of social worth and recognition, a powerful remediating antidote to the disempowering effects of both family abuse and social oppression. This can be particularly salient for younger people in residential facilities because of the extreme State 24/7 intervention into their lives. Participation is therefore a key strategy for anti-oppressive practice fostering agency, social worth and problem solving and, subsequently, an extensive range of other benefits ‘in the best interests of younger people’. This includes, as Vosz et al 2022, CREATE 2019 & others report, benefits towards:

• Social and emotional wellbeing

• Agency, communication skills, resilience, mastery and autonomy

• Connecting to culture, kin and country

• Sustainable relationships and social networks

• Educational benefits

• Employability skills,

• Skills to support transitioning from care

• Capacities for civic and political participation

The third reason why younger people participation is important are the practical benefits for the people that work with younger people and organisations. This is because authentic participation not only strengthens the quality of trusting, transparent and stable relationships between organisational stakeholders, but, when it involves authentic listening and critical design thinking, it boosts innovation and practical problem solving. Again, as Vosz et al 2020 and CREATE 2019 confirm, participation produces the following benefits for people who work with younger people and their organisations (Vosz et al 2020; & CREATE 2019):

• In residential care leads to improved staff retention and stability in relationships

• More effective, innovative programs, policies and procedures

• More effective program evaluation

• Renewed vision and commitment

• Improved capacity for culturally competent care

These effects are primarily strengthened relational effects arising from increased transparency, agency, trust and above all reflexive understanding. However, it is also important to appreciate the practical benefits to organisations that arise from increased accountability mechanisms tied to increased transparency. It is this that produces more effective program evaluation because accountability to younger people drives feedback data unmediated by local professional or organisational desires to manage personal or public optics. In other words, accountability that is built into organisational participation strategies provides honest, and relatively objective, to the extent that it is free of the desire to manage public optics, service delivery feedback about what is actually, rather than purportedly or reportedly, going on at the ground level of practice. Which then opens up the possibility of scientifically and collaboratively throwing a spotlight on both practical problems and practical solutions in local organisational contexts with all of their local complexity. In short, the kind of feedback afforded by younger people perspectives in situ provides and precipitates opportunities to redesign service delivery collaboratively from the ground up.

Younger people participation is therefore much more than a feel good exercise in human rights. Of course, it is an exercise in human rights, but it is also an exercise in iconoclastic scientific revolution. An exercise in discovering what objectively counts as effective organisation of service delivery, what objectively counts as good practice, and what it means to be a good practitioner on, and from, the ground up within each and every local organisational context.

Thanks for reading and listening :)