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Participation Works Home » PWNE Home » Spotlight PWNE Member » November 2007, Gary Buxton
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Did you know that members of the Participation Works Network for England work in a variety of different settings including participation, health, education, children’s rights, early years and childcare?
Children and young people’s participation is an integral part of all our network member’s work. Job titles of current members include participation workers, youth involvement officers, CAMHS Patient and Public Involvement Facilitators, youth workers, voice and influence officers, participation officers, children’s involvement officers and children’s rights officers.
To find out more about your fellow PWNE members and how to contact them search our database. (You need to join the network to be able to do this)
As part of the PWNE e-mail bulletin sent to all PWNE members we are introducing a new ‘spotlight member’ feature where we interview a network member once a fortnight. This is your chance to find out about and share your experiences of working in participation. Read current interview below. If you would like to take part contact Claire Grant at claire@participationworks.org.uk
Click here to join the PWNE
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| Gary Buxton, Young Advisors Charity
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Describe your role
I am the Chief Executive of the Young Advisors Charity, the organisation responsible for the growing number of young people aged 15-21 across the country who are being trained and paid to act as consultants to improve their neighbourhoods. If only I could describe a typical day! In a nutshell, my job involves working with all our partners to create a strong and growing network of Young Advisors across England. In real terms this means writing bids one day, training the next, taking Young Advisors to meet ministers the third, making sure our organisation has got all the legal and financial boxes ticked, attending conferences where Young Advisors are presenting, no day is the same, but I love it that way. For more information on Young Advisors go to www.youngadvisors.org.uk.
What makes a good participation worker?
Enthusiasm, endless positivity and respect. I also think that some of the best participation workers I have ever met are Young Advisors. They are great because they help integrate a culture of participation in an organisation meaning it is no longer the sole responsibility of one member of staff to engage with children and young people.
What are the barriers to involving children and young people?
I find the most common barrier presented to us is money and time. It is all too common for an organisation to say, we need the opinions of young people, by end of play tomorrow, and we have no money to make it happen. Young Advisors are very critical of this behaviour, as it really doesn’t enable young people to make any meaningful contribution. Through our work we hope to create better cultures for ensuring young people aren’t just involved in consultations, but are actually involved in decision making right from the beginning of the process in timescales that are realistic and with adequate resourcing.
What are the benefits?
There are so many benefits to involving children and young people. We believe the unique selling point of Young Advisors is their innovative problem solving skills, their insightful community mapping, and their unlimited optimism and enthusiasm, which can drive forward a change programme for the benefit, not just of young people, but invariably the community as a whole. Young people are often not limited by cynicism, and will therefore come up with the most amazing solutions!
What tips do you have for effective participation of children and young people?
Feed back, feed back and feed back! Too often young people are involved in consultations or decision-making structures and they are not told of the outcome. Unless we tell young people how their contribution has informed change (or not as the case might be) their enthusiasm to contribute in the future will reduce. Bad engagement is a ‘drain train’ taking young people who were filled with passion to promote change to young people who are naturally sceptical of getting involved.
What is effective participation?
Get young people involved as early as possible, not just in the engagement or consultation activity itself, but in designing the activity.
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Participation Works for the Statutory Sector
Participation Works is the key hub for voluntary and community organisations wanting to build their capacity to involve young people in decision making and influencing change in their organisations.
But Participation Works is not only providing support for the voluntary and community sector. Across our online gateway you will find a wealth of resources, news stories and
training and development opportunities for statutory sector organisations.
This short tour will give you an overview of some of the things you will find.
Click next to proceed through the tour. You can exit the tour at any time.
About Participation - the rooms
The 'About Participation' section of the gateway is made up of thematic 'rooms' - each packed with useful information and links to resources on that theme.
To make it easy for you to locate resources which were developed in the statutory sector, or which apply across the statutory sector (for example, government policies) we have used this icon:
.
Resources which may have been developed in the voluntary sector, or which may be particularly relevant to both the statutory and voluntary sector are marked with this icon:
Putting Participation Into Context: Rights
Young people have right to be involved in decisions that affect them. In the rights section you can find out about these rights, and what they mean for government and statutory sector organisations.
Putting Participation Into Context: Policy
International agreement, UK law and government policy places requirements on statutory sector bodies to involve young people in decision making. In the policy section you can explore the legislative and policy foundations for youth participation.
Getting Started: Training Resources
Whether you are just getting started with young people’s participation, or you have established participation work that you want to build upon – good quality training and training resources can play an important role.
The training room includes details of training packages that are available and links to training providers and consultants who can support practical skills building and organisational change for the participation of children and young people.
Getting Started: Training
Participation Works also provides a wide range of training courses directly and through our partner organisations.
Training is free to voluntary sector organisations, and is available to statutory sector organisations for £85 per session.
Hear by Right workshops support organisations to explore the current level of young people’s participation in their work, and to create a sustainable plan for improving youth participation. Hear by Right also explores the importance of participation leading to real change for young people, and includes a focus on practical methods for recording and measuring change.
Ready Steady Change uses an interactive set of training tools to build participants skills and knowledge in increasing children and young people’s participation in decision-making. It approaches participation from a children’s rights framework.
Building a Culture of Participation explores how an organisation’s culture can be established and embedded to support children and young people’s active and meaningful participation within the organisational infrastructure.
Safeguarding in Youth Participation is a one day course that aims to provide delegates with a better insight into safeguarding issues when working with children and young people and on ways to improve and provide a safe environment for children and young people.
You can find a list of upcoming course dates and can book online through the training page.
Getting Into The Details: Resources
Participation Works have produced a wide range of practical How To Guides on participation, as well as a series of publications on young people’s rights and the state of youth participation in the UK.
All these guides are available as free downloads.
Getting Into The Details: Rooms
Participation Works thematic ‘rooms’ of content cover many of the practical issues that children’s trusts, local authorities, government departments and agencies and other statutory sector bodies will come across in building the participation of children and young people in their work.
The standards room focuses on how standards can be used to drive organisational change for young people’s participation.
The measuring change room provides practical tools for seeing what has changed as a result of young people’s involvement.
Participation online explores a range of practical methods for engaging with children and young people through the internet and multi-media methods.
Getting Into The Details: Resources Hub
The Participation Works resource hub is packed full of information and resources from Participation Works partners about how to involve children and young people.
You can search for case studies of participation projects, stories of change, examples of policy and practice, training resources and more.
Keeping Up To Date: News
The Participation Works news service includes regular updates on participation policy and practice.
You can subscribe to received news updates by e-mail and you can browse the extensive news archive to find out about the background of local and national government participation initiatives and action.
Get Networked: PWNE
The Participation Works Network for England is the place where you can find and network with other professionals working on the participation of children and young people.
Register free to access the PWNE member directory, and to get the fortnightly PWNE newsletter.
Once your registration has been approved you can let others know about what you are doing through your profile, and you can search for others with interests similar to your in the Full Member Directory.
The PWNE also has regional networks which run events and convene meetings for local knowledge sharing and learning.
Get More Support: Enquiry Line
Participation Works run a telephone enquiry line set up specially to help sign post you to the information you need.
You can give the enquiry line a call to talk through your needs and to help identify the resources, training and support most relevant to you.