Participation Resources
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What young people said:
“When young people understand and know their rights and their value and power, supported by law. it gives them power to stand up for themselves and say “no, you’re not meeting my needs."
On what good participation is:
“Young people having a voice in matters that concern them and that they know they’re being heard.”
“Young people are slowly gaining a seat at the table, but we need a voice too. We are experts in our own lives, and we don't want to be told by adults that our lived experience is wrong.”
“Meaningful participation is participation which is not tokenistic and rather engaged with the ideas of everyone and ensures that all opinions are properly listened to and considered.”
Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) gives children and young people the human right to express their views and for these views to be heard and taken seriously. There is no obligation on young people to express a view on an issue, but the obligation, defined by General Comment 12, is on Government to put in place:
“Mechanisms providing children with access to appropriate information, adequate support, if necessary, feedback on the weight given to their views, and procedures for complaints, remedies or redress.”
“Ensure appropriate conditions for supporting and encouraging children to express their views, and make sure that these views are given due weight.”
Participation should always be voluntary, and young people able to withdraw at any point.
Who is involved in the participation work will depend on the content and scale of the policy process decision-makers are going through. But the principle that young people should be involved in all matters that affect them applies throughout. For that reason, decision-makers should take care to ensure that participation opportunities are offered to groups affected by the policy area they are working on and ensure time and resource is given to support young people to consult with their peers where appropriate.
Participation can take many forms – for ideas and inspiration, check out the participation case studies here.
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What young people said:
“The first thing about engaging with young people is that you actually need to plan it, rather than getting to the end of a project and being like, oh my god we’ve not engaged with any young people.”
“I think that full participation of young people in decision making also looks like every young person being able to access decision and policy making in a way that is accessible to their lifestyle and needs.”
“There are a lot of young people in today’s society that have a big voice full of opinions that they are either too scared to voice, feel unable to voice, or don’t know how to voice and I think it’s so important that they feel encouraged by decision makers to speak their truth.”
So, if you are struggling to engage with young people on a specific issue, here’s a few practical tips on what you could do to help ensure you’re fulfilling the obligation:
Start by asking why it’s been a challenge to engage young people, is there adequate support, appropriate and accessible information, and have they been involved early in the process?
Young people may have already made their views very clear about certain issues, so consulting them may involve seeking out where those views are available. You could try:
The Scottish Youth Parliament’s Policy Log and 5 Year Manifesto
Or Scottish Government’s Gathering the views of children and young people page.
Make engagement engaging! This won’t look the same for all young people, so consider ‘co-designing’ the participation work with the young people involved. To find out more about the co-design process you can read this blog from Young Scot and YouthLink Scotland on the Scottish Government website.
Go to where young people are, and don’t just expect them to come to you! You could try schools, colleges, or universities; Scottish youth charities such as Young Scot, YouthLink Scotland, or SYP; Youth groups such as Scouts or Girlguiding; or organisations that work with specific groups of young people such as Carers Trust Scotland, Who Cares? Scotland, Intercultural Youth Scotland, or Haggeye RNIB. A more detailed list of organisations that work with young people is available under FAQ 5.
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What young people said:
“We were in the project right from the beginning, so we were able to set the agenda.”
“Young people have unique lived experiences and views which it is impossible to simulate without their presence in decision making, and therefore young people must be involved in decisions that will impact them in a meaningful way, rather than being there to make up numbers or for a tokenistic gesture.”
“We need to bridge the gap between what young people want and what is actually provided, between what is promised and what is delivered. It is not enough to establish youth-friendly areas. A youth-friendly and responsive infrastructure is required.”
Young people have been clear that just having them in the room, ‘participating’ in decision-making is not the same as ‘meaningful participation.’ The meaningful participation of young people in decision-making involves creating the appropriate space for young people to share their views, facilitating an open process, listening to their views, and acting on what they say.
The MSYPs on The Right Way project highlighted some core elements of participation that they felt made it meaningful, they were:
Act on what young people have said.
Keep young people in the loop and ask for ways to improve the process in the future.
Continually engage with young people – don’t see a one-off process as a tick box. exercise.
Don’t make any fake promises that can’t be delivered – be honest.
The meaningful participation of young people in decisions that affect them makes public services more effective, discovers new perspectives, upholds young people’s rights, and so much more.
The AIM the Right Way resource on this hub has a checklist for officials to use to make sure their participation is accessible, inclusive, and meaningful.
There are several practical tools available to explain how to include young people in decision-making, including the ‘Lundy Model’ and the Scottish Government’s ‘Participation Framework.’
The Lundy Model considers four, interrelated, concepts – which are outlined in the diagram below - that create effective implementation of article 12 of the UNCRC and the meaningful participation of young people:
SPACE: Children [and young people] must be given the opportunity to express a view
VOICE: Children [and young people] must be facilitated to express their views
AUDIENCE: The view must be listened to.
INFLUENCE: The view must be acted upon, as appropriate.
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What young people said:
“Everything is appropriate to talk about with young people, as long as there are sufficient content warnings and support is provided.”
Article 12 of the UNCRC protects children and young people’s right to be heard on decisions that affect them. This covers policy areas where young people are only one of a number of stakeholders. For example, if a policy is expected to impact the whole population, then as part of that, young people should be meaningfully engaged in the decision-making process.
That includes difficult or challenging topics that might pose additional challenges to meaningful participation.
The UNCRC also has a number of articles that cover rights to safety and protection. These rights must be considered alongside the right to share views and have those views taken seriously. This could apply when consulting with young people with lived experience or young people who are at risk from harm when sharing their views.
It is the role of the adults to ensure that all participation is done in a supportive way that considers the physical and mental health of the young people involved by using a trauma informed approach. The Scottish Government’s Trauma-informed practice: toolkit gives more detailed information about using trauma informed practices here.
At any point during participation work with young people, the opportunity should be available, and made explicit, for the young people to choose not to engage any more, especially if they are finding the topic distressing.
Case study
The Scottish Youth Parliament worked with Dignity in Dying and Liam McArthur MSP to run a consultation workshop on the proposed Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill to ensure young people’s views were taken into account.
The Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill deals with a difficult issue but one which very much affects young people. Whether it is experience with family members or friends, or the potential to face this themselves, it was important to include young people’s voices in the initial Bill consultation and we worked to ensure that they contribute effectively whilst keeping themselves and others safe. We were able to achieve this by ensuring appropriate support and safeguarding was outlined at the beginning of the session, where facilitators reminded MSYPs that they could take a time out at any point and provided them with phone numbers for key staff members as well as our mental health helpline if they required additional support. We also outlined some guidelines for keeping the space safe including a reminder to only disclose personal experience if they felt comfortable or if seemed appropriate, making sure not to identify anyone else if feeding in the experience of others, and ensuring what is shared remains within the session. This, along with keeping the questions focused on the proposed policies rather than personal experience, kept the session safe whilst allowing opinions to be shared.
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Scotland is very fortunate to have a thriving sector of youth charities and organisations, some of which engage with young people generally, while others work with specific groups of young people. Depending on the policy area you’re working in, it might be appropriate to seek the views of specific groups of young people, and steps should be taken to explicitly reach out to seldom-heard groups of young people when conducting participation work.
Young people’s organisations
Young Women and Girls’ organisations
Young people who are Black and minority ethnic
Intercultural Youth Scotland
CEMVO Scotland
Young people with disabilities organisations
Mental Health organisations
Young people’s organisations that work with other seldom-heard groups of young people
Young people’s religious and non-religious organisations
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What Young People Said:
“I think that good participation of young people starts with encouragement by trying to engage them in the decision making that directly affects them without them feeling alienated or discredited or like they don’t belong purely due to their age.”
Answering the question, “What does good youth participation look like practically?”
“Young people interacting and having a large input in decision making over areas that would affect us or are important in the eyes of the youth”
The UNCRC requires that young people have their views heard on matters that affect them and for those views to be given due weight. What ‘matters’ affect young people should be seen in a broad sense. General Comment 12 from the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child says:
“The practice, however… demonstrates that a wide interpretation of matters affecting the child and children helps to include children in the social processes of their community and society. Thus, States parties should carefully listen to children’s views wherever their perspective can enhance the quality of solutions.”
A practical way to assess whether the law, policy, or measure will impact children and young people is to carry out a child rights and wellbeing impact assessments (CRWIA) an early stage in your process. This may then need updated as the law, policy, or measure takes shape, but it will help you to think through the impact your work might have. For guidance, templates, and advice on how to write a CRWIA, you can visit the Scottish Government’s guidance page here.
It's also important to remember that just because your policy doesn’t directly impact young people now, the impact of it may be long-lasting. Meaningful youth participation may still be a requirement under the UNCRC For example, work on pensions may not, on the face of it, impact young people directly, but pension investment/divestment decisions and long-term planning for pensions will affect young people’s lives.
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Yes, there’s loads!
The Right Way web hub is a resource with guidance on all things meaningful participation with young people.
The Scottish Government’s Decision-making: children and young people's participation webpages.
The Scottish Government’s United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child implementation: introductory guidance.
The Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland’s ‘7 golden rules for participation’.
Together: The Scottish Alliance for Children’s Rights’: ‘The State of Children’s Rights in Scotland 2022’ report.
A talk and Q&A by Children’s Parliament, Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP), and Starcatchers at Together’s 2021 State of Children's Rights Webinar series. The talk was titled ‘General Principles of the UNCRC: A Focus on Participation.’
A talk from Laura Lundy to the Diplomacy Training Programme on the development of the ‘Lundy Model’ for participation.
This Participation Framework uses the Lundy Model for participation to develop a framework for participation.
Young Scot’s #YSHive supports organisations to partner with young people to define, design and deliver new policies and improvements to services.
Every Child’s Right to be Heard: A Resource Guide on the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child General Comment No 12 from UNICEF and Save the Children.
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What young people said:
“We were in the project right from the beginning, so we were able to set the agenda.”
“The first thing about engaging with young people is that you actually need to plan it, rather than getting to the end of a project and being like, oh my god we’ve not engaged with any young people”
As with many elements of participation, this will depend a lot on the work you are doing.
Despite this, there are some general points that should help you work out when to include young people in the process:
Understand young people’s rights – the first step in the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland’s 7 Golden Rules for Participation is for the adults making decisions to understand the UNCRC and to ensure that the young people involved do the same.
Article 12 of the UNCRC requires the ‘views of the child are given due weight’. To do that, young people’s participation should be sought early in the process to ensure that due weight is given to their views throughout. This ensures that the elements of the policy-making process you consult young people on are determined with them, and not for them.
Young people must be made aware that they do not have to take part in the participation process and the obligation is on the decision-makers and the decision-making body to ensure that young people who volunteer are meaningfully engaged.
Feedback from young people consistently tells SYP that they are frustrated when they share their views, but it does not lead to action. You should be honest with young people about the impact their views could have, and feedback to them afterwards about what you did with the information they shared, and why you made those decisions - even if you weren’t able to act upon them.
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What young people said:
“There are a lot of young people in today’s society that have a big voice full of opinions that they are either too scared to voice, feel unable to voice, or don’t know how to voice and I think it’s so important that they feel encouraged by decision makers to speak their truth.”
“One of the first things we spoke about was who we were missing, and the kinds of voices that wouldn’t be represented by us.”
There is no single right way to reach young people, some young people might prefer to engage through social media, while others might be involved with youth work and find out how to engage through organisations.
It may also vary depending on the policy area you are working in. For example, if you are looking to seek the views of young people from a specific demographic for a policy change that would directly impact that group, then engaging with an organisation that works with those young people would likely be the best approach. Whereas if you are looking to seek the views of Scotland’s young people more generally, engaging with a national youth organisation who work with all young people, multiple youth organisations, or using social media may be more effective. Key to all these approaches -though is the idea that decision-makers need to go to where young people are, not expect them to feed into a process that is designed for adults.
Some general tips for reaching young people are:
Carefully consider how you will reach out to young people from seldom-heard groups. These groups of young people bring specific lived experience that can have an impact not only on issues that are exclusive to those groups, but on issues that affect us all. In a speech to the Scottish Cabinet in March 2021, a former MSYP said, “seldom heard groups are not hard for decision makers to reach but they are easy for them to ignore.”
If you’re not an expert in reaching young people, go to those who are. The list of organisations in FAQ 5 may be a good place to start, but you can also speak to schools, colleges, universities, youth work organisations, and more.
Be prepared to put time and resource into reaching young people and plan exactly how you’re going to meet them.
Make it engaging! Consider how you can grab young people’s attention by using eye-catching designs, working with young people to create resources, or making your communications relevant to their lives.
Seek feedback, and act on it. Ask young people who have engaged how they found out about your work and what you could do to make it more engaging.
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What young people said:
“When it's just; ‘we spoke to a young person and that was it,’ that feels like a door was slammed in your face. When you’re kept in the loop and you’re not dropped, that’s really important.”
“He said he would follow up with summaries of what we discussed, and that was really good, he did actually follow up.”
Crucial to the meaningful participation of children and young people is providing feedback on what you, as the duty-bearer, are doing with the information they shared. Every time a decision-maker takes the views of young people, they should provide feedback that gives due weight to those views.
Laura Lundy’s four F’s framework is a great place to start for giving feedback. It says feedback should be:
Fast – policy decisions can be slow, but young people have dynamic and changing lives, so it’s important to share feedback quickly before they ‘age out’ or leave the organisation or group the adults consulted them through.
Full – it should include detail, engage with the substance of what the young people said, and explain why decisions have been taken.
(Youth/child) Friendly – It needs to be in language appropriate to the age of the children and young people involved in the participation.
Followed up – The engagement should be the beginning of an ongoing conversation that lasts for the duration of the policy and decision-making process
Questions you should ask yourself when providing feedback includes:
What did you agree with that the young people said?
If you disagree with anything the young people said, what was it, and why?
What, if anything, surprised you and why?
Has it influenced your decisions, if so, how?
What have you decided to do with this information?
What is happening next, and when will it happen?
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Everyone under 18 has their rights protected under the UNCRC. This hub has been developed by the Scottish Youth Parliament, who work with young people aged 12-25. Not all babies, children, and young people are the same, and age is only one factor that determines what meaningful participation looks like. While some of the advice here may be relevant to policy areas working with babies and children under the age of 12, this hub has not been developed with their engagement and so should not be used by officials in developing participation with babies and children.
But that does not mean their article 12 right should not be upheld.
By developing meaningful participation with young people, decision-makers have not fulfilled their duties to engage with babies and children in decision-making. Those duties still apply under the UNCRC and policy areas that affect babies and children are obligated to put in the time and resource to meaningfully engage with those age groups on issues that affect them as well as with young people.
Scotland has a number of national and local organisations that work with babies, infants, and children aged 0-12 which can provide advice and support on how to develop meaningful participation practices with those age groups.
These include:
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Recognition of the work of young people in the policy making process can be done in a number of ways and more in-depth research will need to be carried out if decision-makers are to take a collective approach to answering this question.
During The Right Way project, SYP discussed this question with young people and one key theme that came up was that approaches to reward and remuneration should be decided with the young people taking part in each process at an early stage.
The young people consulted explained the main reason for taking part in participation in policy projects and activities is because they want to make a difference to the lives of young people and to have their Article 12 Right respected, protected, and fulfilled. This should still be considered the primary aim of meaningful youth participation.
However, to give some idea of what options are available to decision-makers:
Incentives – Opportunities to make friends, skills development, have fun, etc…
Rewards - vouchers (a need to consider where these are for), small gifts, tickets to events, Young Scot points, meals out, etc…
Recognition – showing that young people’s involvement is valued through certificates, awards, feedback on the impact they’ve made, etc…
Remuneration – Paying young people to take part.
Accreditation – Giving young people the opportunity to certify the skills they have developed, e.g. Duke Of Edinburgh award, YouthLink Scotland’s Participative Democracy Certificate, Saltire Awards, etc…
There are also some additional considerations that should be made before deciding, with the young people involved, what the appropriate way forward for your participation work is:
Is the reward inclusive of all participants? For example:
Impact on employment status and subsequent impact on young people receiving income support.
Young people who do not have bank accounts and how they would be remunerated.
Ensuring that any form of reward or remuneration does not change the expectation placed on young people taking part – participation must always remain voluntary and considerate of young people’s other rights including to an education and to the best possible health including mental health.
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What young people said:
“The way we talk to and do engagement with different groups matters. Creating spaces for young people to meaningfully engage with decisions means changing the way Government does engagement – too often engagement with young people includes jargon, happens at inaccessible meeting times, doesn’t include explanations of complicated topics, isn’t in youth-friendly spaces, doesn’t involve seldom-heard groups, and doesn’t respect our UNCRC article 12 right.”
“Making spaces better for young people makes it better for all! Whenever I suggest removing jargon or shortening papers most of the time adults agree that it would help them too.”
Throughout The Right Way project we have been told that jargon and inaccessible language are key reasons why young people don’t feel as if the spaces in which policy is made are designed with their needs in mind. When jargon is part of what decision-makers see as normal language in their workplace, it can be easy not to notice when it is being used.
By speaking in language that is clear to everyone involved in the policy making process, including young people, we remove any risk of people not fully understanding the issue they are being consulted on – ensuring informed participation – and we start to address the power imbalance often created when young people are asked to take part in participation activities with senior decision-makers.
Young people in The Right Way project were also clear that this shouldn’t involve adults being patronising to young people. Some practical tips to avoid being patronising are:
Include a glossary of key terms and share it in advance of any participation sessions or at the beginning of a survey.
Send any papers for meetings or sessions well in advance to give people time to read them thoroughly and ask any questions they might have.
Work with young people from the beginning of the policy making process. This will ensure young people are able to shape the language that is used in any participation work.
Use The Right Way’s Jargon Buster!
At The Right Way project, we’ve collected some jargon we hear regularly and put those terms into Youth-Friendly language with our Jargon Buster. You can use this to check if the language you are using might be seen as jargon by some people and replace it with the definitions we have created.