Engaging young people

The views of young people are central to the targeted youth support (TYS) change process. To ensure their voice is authentic and representative, they should be engaged in a variety of ways. This is particularly important when working to reach hidden and hard to reach young people who often have had minimal, if any, engagement.

The way young people are engaged should be appropriate to each individual authority and community context, for example focus groups, informal chats, youth clubs, on school buses, in shopping centres. It may also include using technology (email, text, phone) to gain information.

Be flexible and look at existing forums or places where young people congregate. The three main things to understand from young people's perspective are: their current TYS needs, their priorities and their awareness and experiences of current service provision.

Engagement with young people needs to go further than traditional consultation. Their involvement should continue into the next stages of the change process where solutions are developed and delivered. They need to be continuously involved and fed back to, to manage their expectations and to ensure they know their views are treated with respect. The best response is often gained if other young people lead their engagement.

Typically there needs to be a consolidation workshop with the front line workers who have engaged with young people during the Deepen stage of the process, to collate what they've found out for input into the Decision Point 2 presentation.

Click for additional resources to support the Mobilise phase of the targeted youth support change process, or for an overview of the Mobilise phase.