“I’m really excited to be able to contribute my knowledge, experience and connections from my career so far to ensure the the new National Youth Strategy is co-produced with young people and the youth sector. I’m so grateful to have the support of Vicky Browning and the rest of the team at UK Youth to enable me to take up this opportunity and embrace a new challenge that will help me to continue to grow and learn!” Judging by over 540 likes and 140+ comments in two days, her announcement has widespread support.
According to her LinkedIn entry she will be the Senior Leader in the Civil Society & Youth Team at Department for Culture, Media & Sport responsible for the youth and stakeholder engagement process for the new National Youth Strategy which will include:
– Working in partnership with the Youth and Expert Advisory Group to ensure meaningful co-production of the report and Strategy.
– Design the framework for youth-led roundtables involving local stakeholders, including youth providers, MPs, statutory agencies.
– Managing relationships with local and national stakeholders from a youth involvement perspective.
– Ensuring that the voice of young people is present in all major decisions and discussion forms
– Working with other government departments, including Cabinet Office, No 10 and HMT – by effectively articulating the needs and proposals from the engagement.
– Contributing to the ‘Today’s Youth, Tomorrow’s Nation’ report and the National Youth Strategy”
Her first step, as in the brief above, will be to “design an approach to stakeholder engagement” and its great to see that this alongside a commitment to “ensuring the voice of young people is present in all major decisions and discussion forums”. Young leaders have repeatedly fed-back to older champions and designers of youthvoice and participation methodology, that they need to be involved from the start. This will be particularly relevant in the context of the Governments commitment to co-production of its strategy with young people. The original DCMS announcement in November 24 made two specific commitments:
1/ To kick start the process by inviting young people to take part in a series of face-to-face engagements to ensure their perspectives and aspirations are at the heart of decision making. They will then be asked to share their views as part of a ‘Today’s Youth, Tomorrow’s Nation’ conversation on how best to help the next generation of young people
2/A youth advisory board will be established to work with the government throughout the development process, alongside in-depth engagement with youth organisations, industry leaders and academics specialising in youth issues.
Reaction
“Great news for young people ! Nobody better than you to chart the involvement of young people… ” Dame Julia Cleverdon OBE, Founder and Chair of #iwillMovement, Chair of National Lottery.
“Congrats Kayleigh! 🎉 safe hands to ensure young people drive change”. Leigh Middleton CEO of National Youth Agency
“Kayleigh is well known and networked to a broad range of youth sector stakeholders and young leaders in both civil society and youth work settings. The terms of reference of her role represent an ambitious but welcome challenge, which, judging by the reaction of those in the sector to her appointment, will have plenty of support. Kayleigh’s experience and expertise in managing youth engagement programmes in a wide range of settings is well qualified to ensure young voices are heard in the process” James Cathcart, Dir Young Voices Heard.
This process reminds me of Positive for Youth strategy consultation with the youth sector and young people, by the Coalition Government back in 2011/2012 – which featured a programme of youth consultation through an advisory group, paper consultations, an Youth Summit for young leaders and a wider conference. It produced a specific Report on how young people were involved which includes feedback to them using the You Said We Did model. The Government was also working in partnership with the British Youth Council at the time, on both the consultation and the subsequent resourcing of a national support service to local authorities and groups to ensure “youth voice” vehicle were offered additional support and linked to national policies – then coordinated by the Department for Education. (The Youth Voice programme integrated the UK Youth Parliament to the Local Youth Council network and providing ongoing support and training opportunities to local services, many through regional youth work units and national leadership training residentials and resources). However, here is no national youth council today and whilst the National Youth Agency’s review is ongoing with a report due by March it will interesting to see if this parallel process will rally a potential membership base and infrastructure to coordinate the implementation and support of the reports recommendations.
This all sounds “positive” again, and I hope that end result is not only support for youth voice in policy making to be embedded at the local level, but there are accompanying mechanisms to ensure their views are both recorded, acted upon, and the positive impact of their input is presented in public annual reports locally and collated by a national Government department, so that youthvoice and influence is valued by a wide range of decisionmakers in government and governance.” James Cathcart, Dir Young Voices Heard.
Further Reading
October 2023 Feature Local #YouthVoice must be heard – New Gov Guidance reviewed – YOUTH VOICE NOW/NEWS
February 2022 Youth Review: Summary findings and government response – GOV.UK
2011 – 2015 Positive for Youth – GOV.UK