Walsh’s Hotel, Maghera & Maghera Moviehouse

11am to 6pm

This will be a great opportunity for youth council members from across Northern Ireland to network and have some fun. In the first part of the day the members will have the opportunity to make final comments on the standards and feed into the how they could be measured in a way that is useful for them. The day will finish with the private screening of a film in Maghera Moviehouse. All transport, food and refreshment costs will be covered by The Big Deal.

Practitioners Seminar Wednesday 19^th March

Lisburn Civic Centre 10am to 1pm

Guest speaker: Harry Shier, Participation expert and Practitioner Fellow

Please contact Claire King, email: claire@niyf.org, tel: 028 9061 1460 or 07894 246 623, if you are interested in attending either of these events.

Download the draft standards and consultation questions here.

What are standards?

A standard is a benchmark of quality. When these standards are finalised, they can be used to measure the effectiveness of your youth council.

Where did the draft standards come from?

The draft standards were written by members of The Big Deal team, the content was derived from the ideas generated by members of different youth councils at two separate residentials and desk research into youth councils.

Why is The Big Deal developing Youth Council standards?

From the outset of The Big Deal it was envisaged that one of the products of the programme would be participation standards for children and young people. There are however, different ways and levels that children and young people can participate in decision-making. It was decided by The Big Deal team that rather than developing standards of participation that incorporate all the diverse ways children and young people can participate, The Big Deal would develop sets of standards that focus on specific aspects of participation. It is hoped that the standards will not only result in more quality participation, but also a more co-ordinated approach to the participation of children and young people in Northern Ireland.

The Youth Council standards are the first set of standards that The Big Deal has decided to develop. Further sets of standards to support work in, for example, the 0-10 age group and voluntary youth organisations will follow this piece of work.

What now?

We request that both the members of youth councils and practitioners complete the questions at the end of the draft standards document and return your responses to us by the 3^rd March. The Big Deal participation workers will also be organising focus group consultations with youth council members in your area.

Youth council members and practitioners will have further opportunity to comment on the standards at the following two events:

Youth Council Members Day Saturday 15^th March

Walsh's Hotel, Maghera & Maghera Moviehouse

11am to 6pm

This will be a great opportunity for youth council members from across Northern Ireland to network and have some fun. In the first part of the day the members will have the opportunity to make final comments on the standards and feed into the how they could be measured in a way that is useful for them. The day will finish with the private screening of a film in Maghera Moviehouse. All transport, food and refreshment costs will be covered by The Big Deal.

Practitioners Seminar Wednesday 19^th March

Lisburn Civic Centre 10am to 1pm

Guest speaker: Harry Shier, Participation expert and Practitioner Fellow

Please contact Claire King, email: claire@niyf.org, tel: 028 9061 1460 or 07894 246 623, if you are interested in attending either of these events.

Then what?

The Big Deal will carry out a ‘Reflect and Review' with five youth councils. The ‘reflect and review' will explore the role of the youth council locally, how it engages with young people and other stakeholders, and the role practitioners take with the youth councils. At the end of the process the findings will be written up setting out an effective practice model for how youth councils operate across Northern Ireland. The findings will tie into the development of measurable standards for structures as well as feeding into the development of a resource pack and training materials for youth councils and the functionality of a network of youth councils.

A range of resource materials will be drawn together including:

• ­ How to use the youth councils standards to help develop your practice
• ­ How to establish a youth council
• ­ How to keep a youth council going
• ­ The role of adult support workers
• ­ Training for young people who become members of youth councils

Recommendations will be made regarding the establishment of a network of practitioners (and/or youth council members) across NI.

If you are interested in any other aspects of this piece of work, or if you would like more information, please do not hesitate to contact us. We want to ensure that the products that we produce are useful for all youth councils across Northern Ireland and to achieve this we need your input.

Contact:

Helen McNamee
The Big Deal Policy & Research Support Worker
Northern Ireland Youth Forum
68 Berry Street, Belfast
BT1 4FJ
Tel: 028 9033 1990 or 07894 246 622
Email: helen@niyf.org

• Do you care about education, health or sports?
• Do you feel that you don’t always have a say in decision-making?
• Are you interested in helping other young people get their voice heard?

Western Investing for Health, in partnership with the Big Deal invites you to get together with other young people to discuss your priorities for decision-making, and to present them to Government.

This project is being launched at an OPEN SPACE EVENT
26th January 2008.
10am – 4pm @ OMAGH COLLEGE.

It might be that you’re really passionate about the Environment. Or that you’ve got some ideas on how your school could be better? Maybe you’re hacked off with the lack of decent sports facilities in your local area?

ALL TRAVEL COSTS WILL BE REIMBURSED ON THE DAY.

If you’d like to sign up contact Michelle Reid on 028 7127 1932 or michelle@niyf.org.

The NIYF is recruiting a new Executive Committee, a fantastic opportunity for young people!

• Are you aged 11 - 25?
• Are you interested in having a say in how the Youth Forum works?
• Do you have any experience of being involved in making decisions in your school, youth club or community?

Every two years the Youth Forum recruits a new Executive Commitee. The NIYF is currently recruiting a new Executive Committee - a group of young people aged 11 - 25 that manage the organisation. It's a fantastic opportunity for you to get involved in shaping our work, and you will receive some excellent training, grow in confidence, and have loads of fun too!

If you are interested in applying to join the Executive, or know someone that you think would be great at this opportunity then you can download the application form here:

Executive Committee application form

The closing date for applications is Friday 1st February at 4pm. You can email, post or hand deliver your application to our Belfast office. If you would like to talk with someone about your application please contact us on 028 9033 1990 or stuart@niyf.org.

We are currently writing to all individual and organisational members by post requesting that they update their information. If you have not received this letter, or are not currently a member of the Youth Forum but would like to be, please visit www.niyf.org/updatemydetails and complete the individual or organisational membership form.

If you would like more information about the Youth Forum or our work please contact info@niyf.org.

On Saturday 8th December the Youth Forum is taking to the streets of Belfast to launch it's new membership campaign Ten Pounds Worth of Change. The campaign lays down a challenge to young people to come up with creative ways to make a positive change in their community for under £10.

We want young people to make a short video on their mobile phone or camera, and then text, email or upload their video to our campaign website - www.tenpoundsworthofchange.com.

Once young people have registered online they can view other videos and comment, rate and discuss how to turn ideas into action. The site has a Tools for Change section that gives practical advice on how to get started. The highest rated video each week will win a £10 mobile phone topup, and the Editor's pick - the video that our editor feels is most imaginative - wins a campaign branded T shirt.

The site goes live on Saturday, and from 12 - 4pm the Youth Forum will invite young people to join us for a launch event in Grosvenor House, beside the Europa Bus Centre in Belfast to launch the event and record their own videos. For more information about the launch event email claire@niyf.org.

In the coming weeks all individual members and member organisations of the youth forum will receive an information pack about the campaign and resources to help them get involved. This represents a really exciting opportunity for young people to make change in their community and meet other young people onilne.

If you would like to receive more information about the campaign, or to become a member of the Youth Forum, please visit www.niyf.org/updatemydetails.

The Big Deal presents... Have Your Say Day

• Are you aged 11-16 or 17-25?
• Is there an issue you feel passionate about?
• Would you like to talk about the stuff that you're interested in with young people your age?

Why not come and Have Your Say?

• Saturday 24th November 2007
• Grosvenor House, Glengall Street, Belfast
• (at the side entrance to the Europa Buscentre)
• 10am-4pm

To register or find out more information please contact haveyoursay@thebigdealni.com
Phone 028 9033 1990 or visit the website www.thebigdealni.com

It's free to attend
Lunch, snacks and drinks all day!
Interactive workshops
A fun day organised by children and young people
A great opportunity to Have Your Say to decision makers and politicians

Governance - how can we ensure children and young people are included?

Over the next few years there will be major changes, at both local and regional level, in the way in which the people of Northern Ireland are governed and provided with public services. During periods of turbulence there is always concern that the voices of the least powerful groups - such as children and young people - will be drowned out. But change also provides opportunity. Being positive, how can we use the changes brought by RPA to enhance the active participation of children and young people in public policy and decision-making?

More and more people now accept the principle that children and young people should be involved in decisions that affect them. This is built into much new legislation, government policy, and standards for service provision [examples could be added here if there is room and it would help the reader]. And there are many examples of exciting new initiatives to include the voices of young people in public decision-making, including the promise of a Northern Ireland Network for Youth. But experience suggests that many of these mechanisms can be fragile, difficult to sustain, limited in the children and young people involved and still marginal to the core activity of many organisations.

Does current experience give us any pointers to the best way to grasp this opportunity to develop more effective and meaningful participation? Four things seem important: creating and sustaining a culture of participation; thinking about the nature and style of participation; achieving more inclusive practice; understanding what works for young people and for public bodies.

Creating and sustaining a culture of participation

Building a culture of participation is about changing attitudes and about developing systems and structures, which are properly resourced, to support sound participation practice.

A culture of participation is one where listening to children and young people becomes part and parcel of the way an organisation takes decisions, rather than an optional extra or an activity that takes place at the margins. If a participatory approach is to become embedded within all the organisations involved in RPA this will mean organisations have to change. There are many ways of prompting such change: Identifying existing or establishing new children's champions; building support across senior management; developing and communicating a vision of an organisation which takes children and young people seriously; building capacity and skill among young people and staff; committing resources on a on-going basis; celebrating and rewarding achievement; recognising and confronting resistance to change; reflecting, learning and hence improving participation practice.

Nature and style of participation

Participation can mean many things and involve different levels of power sharing between adults and children. It can have a fairly passive meaning, such as ‘being part of' or ‘being consulted' or it can have a more active meaning, where participation activity is designed to empower children and young people, for example to work in partnership with adults to influence decisions more directly.

Children and young people may exercise their participation rights within different roles: for example as users of services; in making decisions that relate just to them; in decision-making about children and young people as a group; in the governance or running of organisations; influencing policy and service development; and in political participation.

Similarly participation activities can take a variety of forms - consultations, focus groups, websites and e-consultations, large scale events like conferences or fun days; advisory or reference groups; places on Committees or schools Councils; parallel structures like Shadow Councils. Each of these will have good points and bad points depending on the purpose and what it is hoped to achieve. For example large consultation exercises or surveys will reach a great many people but rarely have any follow-up; committees or youth councils offer more direct, on-going involvement but to a much smaller group of people.

So we should not assume that one particular level or type of participation is always better than any other - what is important is to have a clear sense of what you are trying to achieve and then to plan your activity in a way that is best in meeting that purpose. Practitioners need to ask: Why are we doing this? What are we seeking to achieve? What are our intended outcomes; in the short term and long term? What is in it for the children who get involved? Only when the answers to these sorts of questions have been agreed can you start to plan the participation activity.

In Northern Ireland as elsewhere, the rapid growth in children's participation has led to a blossoming of participation initiatives. The philosophy ‘Let a thousand flowers bloom' seems OK - it gives more children and young people opportunities to get involved. But if these voices are to be stronger they need to be brought together - perhaps linking individual initiatives into networks or ensuring where the views of large sections of the youth population are represented by a few young people that mechanisms are established [ eg web-pages, subgroups, peer research] to multiple the range of voices that are heard.

Achieving more inclusive practice

Whatever participation mechanisms are introduced with the implementation of RPA, it is important that a wide of children and young people are involved.

When we talk of the involvement of children and young people, who do we mean? For those within youth work this is likely to mean people from 4 - 25 years of age - subdivided into children, young people and young adults. For those working under the UNCRC this means all those aged 0 -18 years, with some extension for children with disabilities and care leavers. The legal and constitutional position of young people under 18 in Northern Ireland is different from that of young adults. This is a strong argument for using this age as the upper limit when considering young people's involvement in governance. And those under 4 years of age must also be recognised as having the right to be involved and to express their views in their own way.

However we define children and young people, the term covers a very diverse group. Young people are different in their personal circumstances, (age, sex, community background, ethnicity, culture, disability, social and economic circumstances) and also in their changing interests and capacities as they grow older. What is appropriate for one group or a particular young person may not suit another. We need to have different styles of communication and engagement that match both the objective of the participation and the circumstances and interests of the children and young people involved.

What works for young people and for public bodies

The involvement of children and young people in decisions that affect them is a right. We need on further justification for demanding this. But participation also has the potential to increase effectiveness. Experience suggests that the involvement of young people leads to more effective decision- making and hence more effective services. It also offers the building blocks for active citizenship - engagement, the development of inter-personal and decision-making skills, growing self -confidence.

But these benefits only come from participation that is meaningful - where children and young people have reason to believe that their involvement will make a difference. But that difference has to be demonstrated. Children and young people need to receive feedback on the outcomes from their involvement. They need to know what has happened as a result of the time and effort they have given to expressing their views. Organisations need to carefully monitor the way in which the voice of children and young people is included and to evaluate the impact that this has - on decisions, on services, on organisations and not least on children and young people. A good time for this is when new organisations are being created. The changes brought about by RPA offers just such an opportunity. Let's gasp it.

The Network for Youth, or NINfY for short, is being created to 'strenghten the direct voice of young people to government', and will build on the existing participation structures within the youth service in Northern Ireland. NINfY's job will be to ensure that young people are fully involved and influencing the decisions that government make that affect them.

In Autumn 2007 the working group will issue a consultation paper giving a range of possible options for NINFY, and you will be contacted for feedback on these options. It is essential that children and young people play a big part in shaping NINFY, and so a ‘youth friendly' version of the paper will be circulated widely to a range of relevant groups. In addition a series of consultations will be held with children and young people, using methods appropriate to their ages and capabilities.

NINFY has the potential to make a real difference in the lives of children and young people. It will be a high-profile expression of children and young people's right to be involved in public decision making and to be engaged as active citizens in Northern Ireland. It is also important that the design of NINFY is part of an overarching and coherent system for children and young people's participation.

As it is essential to get the best possible model for NINFY, we would encourage you to respond to the consultation paper when it is published later this year.

..................PRE CONSULTATION................

In the meantime however the working group would welcome any initial thoughts on NINFY, and in particular:

• What is your vision of an ideal NINFY ?

• What sort of values and principles should NINFY adopt?

• What functions should NINFY cover?

• How would NINFY link with existing participative structures for children and young people?

• Are there any existing models in the UK or internationally that would be relevant to this initiative?

• What are the barriers that would stop NINFY from being effective?

• Will be an integral and essential component of an overall coherent participation system within Northern Ireland
• Will be complementary to other relevant participation initiatives
• Will be recognized by all sectors providing services to children and young people, and by the NI Assembly, NI Executive and all Government departments
• Will have effective links at both regional and local level
• Will be accessible to all children and young people in the age range 4-25

So what was Canada like for me?

Canada for me was all about getting back to who I am and what I really want to do when I finish Uni in May.

I was able to take some time out to reflect on the things I saw as important and what I was going to do about it, which fitted well with the training we were doing even before it started. Mark, the trainer, was telling us that if we were ever to achieve anything then it needed to have an element of urgency in it if anything was ever going to happen. So while baring this in mind I was able to prioritise what was important to me and how I was going to go about doing it.

While in Canada, and since being back home, I have set myself some challenges which I am being held accountable for. Some of these I haven't been able to move very far with but the one that contained the greatest sense of urgency for me was getting my driving test. Even before going to Canada I knew that this was important for work opportunities but Canada give me the kick I needed to get started. And I have to say that the people kicking me in the right direction is encouraging and the gentle nudge I need to keep going.

Since going to Canada and seeing the options that are possible I now have a greater sense of what I want to do after I finish Uni. It may not have been among the original set of options but it does have the right kind of feel about it. Now I just need to put in the urgency and do something about it!

So, in the end, Canada for me was about putting things in perspective and figuring out what was coming next. It was a really positive experience and I would recommend it to anyone.