Tackling Child Exploitation Programme — Young People’s voices in strategic decision making. #Week 3: 20th November 2020

As the weeks go on, we are accumulating a store of ideas and insights. So far, it has been clear that those responding feel strongly that children and young people’s involvement in strategic discussion and decision making about child exploitation should be part of the fabric of work in the sector. It should not be an optional extra.

Of course, it can reasonably be argued we are talking to the converted — our Twitter audience consists of people and organisations who are signed up to the idea that children and young people should, and have a right to, participate in strategic decision making.

Maybe that Twitter bubble is replicated in other contexts, both organisationally and at policy level? Who are we missing? Are we talking to people who don’t agree, or have reservations and don’t feel able to voice them? And if we are not, then how do we reach them?

It is also clear that examples of such participation are often presented as exceptional, and therefore unusual, practice. So we wanted to explore that gap more.

Our third question was: What is stopping us from engaging children and young people in participation work to inform strategic responses for child exploitation and extra-familial harm?

We got fewer responses this week — perhaps because people feel they’ve already answered this in other comments. However, some interesting themes nevertheless emerged about the perceived barriers.

The key themes emerging from this discussion were:

• Commitment is essential, and is too often lacking — especially from senior leaders. Not everyone recognises the fundamental value of working with young people to enable them to participate.
• Funding for services — austerity and other policy decisions have reduced investment in services for young people. Many services have disappeared.
• As well as funding for services, the way in which resources are spent is also important. People said that funding is also needed to give workers the time and skills they need to work with young people in a relationship based way. Young people need to have access to different opportunities in sport, arts, music that will extend their skills and resilience, and enable services to support their participation.
• Language is important, and can obscure what is happening — for example, what do people really mean when they say that there has been a consultation with young people? Would young people agree — and if so, which young people? We need to be more honest about what is going on!
• Young people’s previous experiences of services, including instances where they do not feel they have been listened to or where no action has been taken in response to their views.
• Leadership is key — senior leaders need to be able to invest time and resources in their staff so that they can work to develop relationships with young people, that will in turn create opportunities for participation in services. They also need to be “brave enough to take on board what CYP have said, even though some of it may go against the grain of our usual approaches”.

All these points need further exploration. For example, if there is lack of commitment, why is this? Have people tried a participative approach, and found it too difficult — or felt hamstrung by lack of resource or support?

We are now starting to think about what the next stages of this project will involve for the TCE programme — if you have any thoughts, please don’t hesitate to contact us on Twitter @isabellebrodie4 or @EllieFairgrieve or by email ellie.fairgrieve@childrenssociety.org.uk and Isabelle.brodie@beds.ac.uk