Participation Network - Supporting the Public Sector to engage children & young people

What we wanted

The Big Lottery Fund conducts a consultation with its stakeholders on its future programme development on a regular basis. The outcome of the consultation informs Big Lottery Fund’s funding and programme priorities The current consultation 2008/09 is entitled Big Thinking and was based on 10 questions (designed for the UK overall) and 5 questions specific to Northern Ireland. 

Previously the Big Lottery Fund had consulted children and young people in relation to the Young People’s Fund, Change UR Future. Young people were recruited through the press, trained by staff in the Big Lottery Fund on their grant assessment process and then participated in decision making meetings on applications to the Change UR Future programme. 

On this occasion, the Big Lottery Fund, after attendance at a Participation Network (PN) seminar and on the recommendation of the Equality Commission, decided to work with the Network in the design of their consultation process. 

How we did it

The Big Lottery Fund was aware that more formal consultation methods were not appropriate for use with children and young people as the age range is inclusive of 0-25 years of age. The aim of the consultation was to access a broad range of young people and their opinions with the relevant children and young people’s organisations. 

In consultation with PN 15 questions devised by the Big Lottery were reduced to 4 and these were posted on the PN website for 3-4 weeks. This elicited a small number of responses with a particular under representation in relation to the Under 5’s. The Participation Network then contacted a number of organisations and Early Years and PlayBoard came forward to respond. 

In addition to this Big Lottery Fund conducted an event to which all children and young people’s organisations, which had received funding, were invited. Groups were encouraged to bring 3-4 young people.  Disabled young people, young carers, young people from economically deprived communities and young people from minority ethnic groups attended.Youth Action’s Rainbow Factory facilitated the event and performed a 6 minute drama piece at this event as an introduction to the Big Thinking document.

To further extend the consultation process 9 focus groups were organised. The groups were chosen to include a range of geographical areas and interest groups including:

• Children of prisoners
• Young people in the Juvenile Justice system
• Out and About (Youth Action) project which is a group for young women who identify as other than heterosexual
• A number of groups of young people facilitated by Youth Action staff

The feedback from these sessions proved very detailed and useful to the document being prepared by the Big Lottery Fund for presentation to Big Lottery Fund’s Northern Ireland Committee, UK wide Board and to inform policy development for new programmes.

What they said

The quality of feedback from the range of methodology outlined above proved to be both rich and detailed. The consultation process is not yet complete - a document on future programme development will be produced in June 2009 and will be out for a final consultation in the early Autumn of 2009. However, the following outcomes have already been identified by the Big Lottery Fund.

• Gained rich quality of data and detail to inform future programme development;
• Are more aware of issues and priorities for children and young people e.g. safety, bereavement and bullying;
• Raised awareness of the Big Lottery Fund as an organisation;
• Supported young people to complete the Big Thinking on-line questionnaire;
• Previous concerns about consultation with young people have been alleviated;
• Will now consider using a similar methodology for consulting directly with older people and disabled people.
• In future consultations the Big Lottery Fund will bring in the Participation Network at an earlier stage of the process to assist with planning from the start. They are now aware of the resources and time required for a consultation of this nature and feel more skilled and better prepared for future occasions. Big Lottery Fund staff were already aware of the importance of consultation but felt daunted by the scale of the task and their potential lack of youth work skills. They are now more aware of the resources available to them.