Conversation NOT ConsultationDudley young person consultation tool.

Who we are?

• Trained consultants who work with the Local Authority, PCTs, Police, Community Safety Services and the Voluntary Sector who need to engage Young People more effectively.

• Our interest is to ensure a safe, active and positive place for Young People to live, learn and grow up in, as they are community shapers of the future.

Context how it started.

• £30,000 fund from Building Blocks that LPU's could bid for.1. Engagement with Young People. 2. Reducing the Harm to Children & Young People.3. Reducing Offending by Children & Young People.4. Working with other agencies to improve effectiveness, whilst

driving down costs.

Why?

• Current projects such as the youth pact provided positive engagement with young people.

• These conventional meetings didn’t get to the heart/voice of young people that are hard to hear.

• Language barrier between police and young people, for example the events over the last month.

Disorder – Police. Riots – Young people.

Vision.

• The aims of the consultation tool were to genuinely get a voice of the young people in Dudley and get them engaging with issues which affect them directly.

• This consultation tool being a niche aims to engage with those young people who wouldn’t usually engage and remove the tokenistic view towards youth engagement.

Three way project

• In order to get the result wanted we had to initially look at the project in 3 ways;

• Best way at engaging with young people.• The right way to do this using conventional methods.• Not to look at it as an adult focused issue (adult perspective).

How we got to this?

• Consulted with professionals from different organizations such as Podnosh. Involved professionals as advisers on the way the project was developed but ownership remained with the young advisers.

• Got young people involved in the decision making from different backgrounds.

• Ignored some professional opinions of it “simply can’t be done”.

• Research into how social media is used.

The Product.

Future for the project.

• Offer bespoke services for private/public services as and when needed.

• Packages• Gold – Premium - £1000. • Silver – Standard - £ 500. • Bronze – Basic - £ 250.

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