Young Advisors worked with Cambridge and Leicester Universities to conduct research on how best to engage young citizens from disadvantaged communities.

The research, also supported by CSV and SES identified 5 themes for helping practitioners:

You can download the free guide at the bottom of the page

Involving young people in service design and provision has changed from being something that government organisations strived to do, in order to meet set targets, to now being the law. That’s why it’s more important now than ever before to make sure that young people are engaged with every aspect of their lives, in shaping their communities through joint decision making or volunteering; making a vital contribution to their neighbourhoods. Already, it’s those aged between 16 and 24 who have the highest take up rate of volunteering opportunities (with 50% of 16-19 year olds reported to volunteer at least once a month). That’s something that doesn’t often get the recognition it deserves among the rush to involve and engage young people; it’s something we should celebrate and build on, but that can only be done if young people are engaged effectively. This is what Engaging Practice strives to facilitate.

At Young Advisors, the charity which I chair, over half of our Board of Trustees are under 21 years old. We were the first charity in the UK to obtain permission from the Charity Commission to have board members under 18, and have celebrated the achievement of having the youngest charity chair in the UK since. We believe it’s imperative that young people are involved at every level of an organization, from the top through to the bottom, “consultation” end.

The Big Society seemingly has a lot of time for the engagement of young people, but unfortunately not a lot of money for it. Over the coming years there will be challenges to overcome and achievements to celebrate and it’s really important that we share those with each other so that we can all benefit. There are a lot of barriers to engaging young people; they often go beyond simply money or time and they’re hard to break down without sharing knowledge with each other. Through 5 key components of civic action this guide helps to identify and find solutions to some of them. The rest, I believe, is down to us.

In the last four years I’ve experienced services whose engagement practices have been excellent, but I’ve also experienced services whose engagement practices have been poor. My work as a Young Advisor in many cases has been to work with organisations to develop their abilities to engage with young people and wider communities. In recent times the Young Advisors charity and the Department for Communities and Local Government ran a series of “How to engage young people” seminars and conferences for councillors. These were a huge success and the feedback was unanimously positive; councillors and workers were glad to have the opportunity to share their experiences and practices with each other, and that’s what we all need to be doing.

So I’m proud to be introducing the Engaging Practice Guide; it’s taken a dedicated team almost two years to put together and is a testament to the great work already being done to engage young people (and for young people to engage adults!).

Sean O’Halloran
Chair, Young Advisors