From our Youth Trainers: Maiya and Mattie.
The Serious Violence Duty is a legal requirement for public sector agencies including police, fire service, the NHS and local councils to work collaboratively to reduce serious youth violence within local areas. It also places a strong emphasis on public services engaging with young people at risk, ensuring their voices are heard in shaping interventions.
To support this approach, TDC has been commissioned by VRP to develop a youth participation training program for public sector services. This training aims to equip professionals with the skills and understanding to effectively engage with young people, ensuring their voices are genuinely included in the decision making processes.
As a part of this initiative TDC have recruited three youth trainers who will play a key role in shaping and delivering the training. Offering youth perspective and insights to help public sector services incorporate meaningful youth participation into their practices.
This training and approach will hopefully change how these public sector services deal with young people’s involvement in crime and trying to cooperate with the young people to avoid their involvement in crime in the future.
Co-Creating Conditions
The start of the project emphasised the importance of establishing a collaborative environment that values each youth trainer’s unique perspective and needs. Exploring participation around the Serious Violence Duty brings with it complexity, sensitivity and the potential for emotional impact. To ensure that everyone could fully participate, contribute and take care of themselves, we co-created a set of conditions for working together. These guiding principles will help us navigate this work with care, mutual respect and a trauma-informed approach.
One of the key commitments is to welcome each person as they are. We acknowledged that each of us brings our full selves, where we cannot separate from our emotions and energy levels. Therefore, when we don’t feel 100% we don’t need to perform and conform in these meetings. This means prioritising self-care, including small actions like taking breaks to bigger principles like communication style, setting boundaries and seeking support when needed.
We also placed emphasis on open yet confidential communication. We understood that discussions about crime and violence could bring up difficult emotions, so we have made it a norm to check in and out at the beginning and end of each session.
A check-in begins each session with 5-10 mins of art, where we are free to draw whatever we want with many different pens, pencils, and crayons. Afterwards we go share how we feel, what is on our mind, and what kind of energy we are bringing to the space. With each session I see more and more how our drawings represent our moods, thoughts and emotions. Incorporating a form of art therapy and check-ins into these sessions also highlights how participation can be therapeutic and healing.
By co-creating these conditions, we have formed a space where participation is supported and inclusivity is not just an abstract goal but an ongoing practice.
As a group we all agreed that collaborating to create these conditions meant that we all felt safe and if needed we are able to express ourselves freely without judgement and if needed leaving the room. These agreed terms that we conceived have bonded us a group. The use of art as a check-in is a unique way to share how we feel as every session you can draw something completely different and it helps reflect on your past week and can extract feelings/thoughts that you might not have seen or thought of.
What is Participation?
When we think about participation, it’s not just about being present, it’s about how we engage with others, the space we create, and the collective goals we aim to achieve.
To begin the project, we wanted to explore our thoughts about participation to understand what we all consider meaningful involvement and the types of support and barriers that exist in these spaces. Our discussion highlighted how participation is not just about being in a room, but about young people having a real voice in shaping decisions that directly impacts them.
This discussion mainly centered around the importance of communication and how we can ensure all voices are heard, valued and respected. We recognised that participation is about creating a space where young people feel able to share their experiences and views. Thus empathy, awareness and active listening are essential. Truly including all voices means making an effort to understand everyone has different experiences, therefore some people may need more time or different ways to communicate and engage. It also means valuing different perspectives, rather than expecting everyone to respond in the same way. Every young person’s background, identity and lived experience is different and meaningful participation requires us to respect and make space for all experiences to be heard and advocated for.
Participation can only be successful when there’s the space for the young people involved to feel safe to voice their views. The right to express views is key to meaningful participation as laid out by the Lundy Model of Youth Participation. The Lundy Model is a simple articulation of quality participatory practice and is based in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and uses the four headings of Space, Voice, Audience & Influence to highlight the essential components of participation.
My Experience and a Youth Trainer
From our Youth Trainer Amber
So far, I’ve really enjoyed the experience of working as a Youth Trainer with TDC. I look forward to Friday’s where I get to say hello to everyone and go into the office each week for group discussions about the project.
The space feels warm and inviting and there’s always a buzz of excitement in the room, as we catch each other up about our week by drawing a picture representing our thoughts, emotions and energy levels, showing ‘where we’re at’ today. I feel comfortable sharing with others, and there is a sense of shared vulnerability that feels special. This in part is thanks to the ‘Co-creating Conditions for Working Together’ poster that is on the wall. Seven principles that we all agreed on. This includes phrases like: ‘You are welcome just as you are’, and ‘We will aim to make explicit the values we want to guide our work.
This combination of holistic and practical steps ensures that we work together holding space for compassion and understanding, whilst also staying focused and intentional about our work.
Why did I apply for the role?
I was eager to apply for the role because of my knowledge of youth participation, specifically with vulnerable young people struggling with homelessness, mental health, addiction and other difficulties. I have been part of various youth groups and panels, across the charity sector and the arts, all with the aim of empowering young people’s voices. From this, I have a good understanding of which key ingredients are crucial for successful and impactful youth participation.
I also bring my own lived experience to the conversation, as a working-class, disabled, queer, neurodiverse person of colour, I am a part of the underrepresented communities, whose voices often go unheard. I have engaged with various services, throughout different stages in life, and had both positive and negative experiences because of some of the systems currently in place.
My hope for the project is that I can use my experiences, knowledge and passion to collectively shape training for statutory organizations, that has the potential to make change for our communities, making Brighton a place where young people’s thoughts are valued and embedded into the systems supporting them.
