tim's blog

NYA calls for a ban on Mosquito devices

tim — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 15:48:33 +0100

The National Youth Agency's spotlight briefing from the Youth Summit calls for Mosquito devices to be banned.

Young people at the Youth Summit strongly condemned the use of the devices which emit a high pitch noise only audible to young people - and which are intended to drive young people away from congregating where the devices are installed.

Participants at the Youth Summit spoke of the need for a campaign against the devices. Human Rights campaign group Liberty have expressed concern that the devices violate young people's Human Rights.

Key messages from the Youth Summit: Spotlight

tim — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 15:40:22 +0100

The attached 'Spotlight' briefing outlines the key messages that came out of the Youth Summit 2007.

You can find a detailed record of many of the workshops and presentations that took place at the Youth Summit by browsing the rest of this website.

Youth Summit Ten Commandments - from Bishop Roger

tim — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 20:17:15 +0100

At the closing of the Youth Summit - Chair of the NYA, Bishop Roger Sainsbury set out his 'Ten Commandments' for those at the Youth Summit. We've managed to track down a copy of them here...

YOUTH SUMMIT TEN COMMANDMENTS

Do not demonize or use young people as scapegoats for the social ills of society.
Do not be afraid of speaking out about the value of good youth work.
Establish entitlement for all young people to good quality youth services.
Involve young people in decision making at every level and give respect to their views.
Campaign both locally and nationally for sustained and sufficent investment
in services for young people.
Create youth centres / hubs in each community with access in respect of
transport, physical access , equality and diversity.
Work together with other public services to encourage young people to
choose health.
Campaign for a defined programme of continuing professional development
to increase the skills of all who work with young people and promote better multi-disciplinary working.
Recognize the right of all young people to locally accessible, free , confidential and impartial information, advice, counselling and support.
Encourage and enable young people to participate in buiding peaceful societies based on human rights, diversity and inclusion , in a spirit of respect , tolerance and mutual understanding.

BISHOP ROGER SAINSBURY
CHAIR - THE NATIONAL YOUTH AGENCY

Youth Summit Live: Summary

tim — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 12:26:10 +0100

The Youth Summit has been a great success for all those who attended, bringing together practitioners, policy makers and young people to discuss the key issues affecting the implementation of the Government’s ten-year strategy for children and young people. A wealth of ideas, debate and dialogue were generated, the most relevant of which have been captured as video interviews, podcasts, powerpoints and transcripts downloadable from this website. We will ensure it informs our work as we move forward and hope you find it valuable as well.

Throughout the Summit we were recording workshops and plenary sessions through Youth Summit Live. Below are links to some of the key posts in each theme.

Staying Safe

Summary workshop notes from day 1: assessment of the challenges and a full list of day 1 workshop notes give an overview of the staying safe topics covered. The workshop was led by young people from Corby using an attitude finder activity
Discussions of the harm caused Mosquito devices played a big part in the workshop, as the young people from Corby tell is in this video interview and as a workshop participant reflects in this one.
Workshop notes from day 2: priorities for action give a sense of the issues that participants wanted to take forward.
Darshna from Churchfield Primary School also used the blogging feature on Youth Summit Live to offer an imagined advice column to young people on issues of bullying.

Being Healthy

The summary workshop notes from day 1: assessment of the challenges in health give an overview of where we are falling short for young people, with all the different issues identified covered in this post.
Workshop notes from day 2: priorities for action gives a wide-ranging list of priorities from the health workshops, focussing in particular on funding and investment, better sex and relationship education, and improved training and sharing of good practise.
A what's changed example and two videos from the Maypole centre help explore some good practise sharing
Plus - we captured the launch of Youth Access's new resources on commissioning mental health services for young people

Enjoying and Achieving

The workshop notes from day 1: assessment of the challenges build up a clear picture of where change is needed.
Young people from NACRO Newcastle who led these workshops put enjoying and achievement into practise whilst at the summit - by making the most of their London visit and working hard to build a presentation overnight including their photos from around the city that fed into day 2.
The workshop notes from day 2: priorities for action identifies a range of campaigning, spending, policy and practise changes required.
A presentation from Actions Speak Louder highly commended project Rolling Base

Having Economic Wellbeing

The workshop notes from day 1: assessment of the challenges set out some serious topics for discussion on day 2.
But as the woorkshop notes from day 2: priorities for action show - the group generated practical forward planning ideas and shared examples of where action to ensure young people economic wellbeing can work.
We also capture Anthony Lawton's three tests for good housing through Bill's blogging and a discussion has developed on this blog post about gangs placed in the economic wellbeing category.

Making a positive contribution

The making a positive contribution workshop notes from day 1: give a wider ranging assessment of the challenges, added to by points from the young volunteers helping lead the session
The notes from day 2 with priorities are here. The group had a particularly interesting set of discussions about compulsory volunteering.
Mike from Yomo, watching Youth Summit Live whilst working in Ireland, shared some background resources that might be useful for organisations exploring young peoples volunteering and participation.

Plus - outside the core themes of the Youth Summit we had lots of activity on Youth Summit Live. This poem started of a wave of creativity, surfed by Barney from conference organisers NSA with this poetic input. Holly Hill proved to be star blogger, regularly dropping into the media centre to share her reflections. Plus - Tom Wylie's suggestion that there be a national Youth Board sparked a lot of discussion, including an online poll and a couple of video interviews.

Where next for Youth Summit Live?

The Youth Summit Live website will continue to be available and open for contributions for another couple of weeks. After that, we'll pause the ability to add information - but will keep it available so that practioners, policy makers and young people alike can share the collected wisdom and insights of all Youth Summit Live contributors.

The National Youth Agency, supported by Practical Participation is starting a deeper exploration of how methods like this can help us to communicate with and deepen our dialogue with young people and other NYA stakeholder alike. We'd welcome your continued comments, reflections and input.

The Youth Summit Live model

Youth Summit Live was concieved, designed, developed and run in just under a fortnight by Tim Davies of Practical Participation, working with the organising team for Youth Summit live from the National Youth Agency and Neil Stuarts Associates. It was championed and supported by Bill Badham. The Roving Reporters team made the media happen by roving through the Youth Summit gathering photos, reports and more. If you have any feedback about Youth Summit Live; you're interested in exploring how a Youth Summit Live style model could work at an event you are running; or you are interested in wider explorations of how new media can work for your organisation or project, please do contact tim@practicalparticipation.co.uk.

Signing off for Tuesday... but we'll be back with a wrap up tomorrow (erm, Thursday...)

tim — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 15:18:56 +0100

So, the final session of the conference is happening, and we're setting down the media centre.

Over the last two days there have been 100s of visitors to Youth Summit Live - and over 80 different contributions to the site.

Notes from all the workshops are here, as well as comments, video interviews and more - on topics from Mosquito devices, via the idea of a national Youth Board with a Ministerial chair, right through to evaluations of the food and the fun.

But this isn't the end of the blogging. We'll be back ~~in the morning~~ Thursday to summarise some of the posts that have been made and to make sure you can find the information you need. And we'll be keeping the site open to comments and access for at least the next month.

We hope you've enjoyed the Youth Summit Live experience - and do let us know your thoughts and feedback.

And do get in touch if you'd like to explore a similar new-media aspect to events you are running the future :)

Roving Reporters - Newsletter

tim — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 11:50:52 +0100

The Roving Reporters were up till late last night creating an overnight newsletter to give a picture of the whole event.

Get your copy here (PDF).

Youth Access Launch new Counselling Resources

tim — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 10:54:41 +0100

Tom Wylie, Chief Executive of the National Youth Agency, on behalf of Youth Access (its partner organisation) today launches at the Youth Summit two free national resources
to support the commissioning of youth counselling services across the country.

Caroline Flint, Minister for Public Health stopped by the Youth Access stand at the Summit just after the launch and had this to say:

You can find the full press release from Youth Access attached below...

Day 1 Wrap Up

tim — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 00:40:14 +0100

What a day!

The Youth Summit has been generating a wealth of information and dialogue and we've been trying to capture as much of it as possible here on http://live.youthsummit.co.uk

You can see how quickly posts came into the site by taking a look at the Timeline. We've had blog posts from young people and adults at the event, reflecting on different parts of the event and inputting views. Plus check out the video interviews on YouTube reflecting some of the debates of the day.

You can also view write ups from each of the workshops today (well, yesterday by now - but from day 1...) by clicking the 'Themes' at the top of the front page... or if you fancy exploring the input in a more interactive way - this 'tag cloud' will show you the frequency of particular phrases and words in the reports from each session. The size of a word in the tag cloud represents how many times it occurred in the workshop reports...

And if you're finding it a challenge to keep up with all the information being shared here on Youth Summit Live, look out for a summary of key issues from the Roving Reporters newsletter available in the morning at the Conference Centre and here online.

Facing the Dragons

tim — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 18:44:05 +0100

Facing the dragons: what do you think?

Telford, Tower Hamlets and Suffolk were the three councils presenting their cases to the dragons, each bidding to be chosen as the 'council for the youth' at today's Youth Summit. Each council described the various opportunities they offer to young people, ranging from health care to sports. After a gruelling series of questions from the three dragons, the audience was asked to vote on which council they thought was the most accommodating for young people, using a new democratic process involving a "hands up and scream" system where the winner was based on who had the "loudest" support. After two voting round, it was decided by an undisputable majority that Tower hamlets were the winner, crowned as the best council for young people. However - we want to know what you think...

The key points from each council are available below, and you can vote for who you think should have won here...

Telford
Activities for children and young people to do
Street sport and leisure centres
Art and Culture - concerts, gigs, arts team, theatre, culture zone
Celebrate success of young citizens - certificates
Young peoples voices are heard - school council and councillor training
Children and young people are at the heart of decision making

Suffolk
Young peoples voices are heard
Youth council working on funds
Activities to do - Go Ape (adventure scheme), Museums, Ridding centres
Best crime rates (20 & under, well below average)
Volunteering opportunities

Tower Hamlets
Best Funded services
Developed with and for young people
Four mobile vehicles to go to area that don't have youth clubs
At least two hours per week of constructive activities (learn knowledge and skills), sporting activities and art activities
850 new projects being developed there
2012 Olympics going on in area
A youth club within every mile

Youth Board? Yes. Minister? No

tim — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 17:57:47 +0100

Discussions about the merits of a Youth Board have continued today since Tom Wylie's suggestion in favour of the creation of one in his keynote speech earlier...

In this video Dai Hudd from Prospect suggests that a board might be a good idea - but having it chaired by a Minister could cause problems...

Tom Wylie on Youth Services and Participation

tim — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 15:25:56 +0100

We caught up with Tom Wylie after his keynote earlier and here's what he said:

His key points:

We need an architecture or arrangements that will better engage young people in decision making at the local level.
We need youthwork as a way of intervening with the young.
Youthwork is a set of proccesses, a set of activites, as set of relationships which are about young peoples personal and social development
That arrangement, that youthwork, is available only in a patch fashion across the country - and we need something that makes it more systematic, sets higher standards, and provides sufficient and sustainble resources.
To involve young people in decision making the government should build on the Youth Opportunity Fund, should encourage every local authority to have some form of youth forum, and should use the Hear by Right standards as the basis on which to judge whether or not local authorities are being successful.

Young People in the Media

tim — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 12:40:24 +0100

A survey released today has shown just how much coverage of young people in the media is negative. I caught up with two of the NYA Team at the Youth Summit to get their views:

Earlier on today I also got chance to talk to Leigh from Media Box to ask her to explain what media box is all about and how it can help challenge negative media portrayal of young people.

Check out the full press release

YOUNG PEOPLE 'SEEN BUT NOT HEARD' IN NATIONAL MEDIA

9 out of 10 stories on young people don't report what they say

Less than 1 in 4 stories are positive about young people

A news survey for Young People Now magazine by TNS Media Intelligence
shows only 22.7% of national media coverage about young people is
positive/favourable. The survey findings are launched today at the start
of the national Youth Summit in London.

Broadcast media in particular concentrated on negative perceptions of
young people, with an astonishing 87.5% of broadcast clips unfavourable
towards young people.

While adults were quoted in 38% of stories about young people, a young
person's quotation appeared in only 11% of the coverage. If the views of
young people were heard at all, they were often heard only after adult
expects on the matter in hand had been quoted.

The survey covered all daily and Sunday nationals, all major and most of
the smaller broadcast news outlets, monitoring coverage for one week in
May 2007.

*  Broadcast coverage tended to be of short duration and focused on the
more headline-grabbing incidents of violence and crime.

*  The most popular Broadsheet newspaper topic was education, accounting
for 38% of coverage about young people.

*  Tabloid newspapers included both violent crime and education, but they
were also more concerned than other media about the sexualisation of
childhood that accounted for 16% of the tabloids' coverage.

While in any one week particular stories might dominate a news-agenda,
there is little to suggest that the negative coverage of young people is
atypical. The range of topics covered by the national media was
predominantly negative, with an emphasis on problem behaviour and young
people the instigators or victims. The survey also follows previous
studies for Young People Now. Initial research in 2004 showed that 3 out
of 4 stories about young people were negative.

Ravi Chandiramani, editor of Young People Now, said: "Over the last
three years, there has been an increase in positive coverage of young
people. However, as our survey shows there is a great deal more to do,
in particular for broadcast news media. All too often young people are
seen but not heard. This not only reinforces negative images and
stereotypes of young people, but risks further alienating young people
in communities."

Philip Lynch, director of evaluation at TNS Media Intelligence
commented: "Young people were closely associated with negative issues
such as crime, violence and antisocial behaviour. Other issues such as
education, the sexualisation of childhood and gangs often carried an
element of distress that adults are failing young people."

Young People Now will hand out its 2007 Positive Images Awards at The
Youth Summit, in association with The National Youth Agency, as part of
its campaign to improve the media portrayal of young people.

- Ends -

For further details or media interviews with Young People Now, TNS Media
Intelligence and The National Youth Agency, contact:

*  Jonathan Hopkins (tel: 01235 559556)

Notes to editors:-

The Youth Summit: is a two-day event 25/26 June that brings together
Government Ministers, senior officials, leading policy makers, service
providers and a panel of 100 young people from across England, forging
dynamic links between young people, communities and government.
www.youthsummit.co.uk 

Positive Images: a full list of the 2007 award winners will be available
from Young People Now on Monday 25th June. The awards will be presented
at 5.30pm, at The Youth Summit, New Connaught Rooms, London WC2. Young
People Now launched Positive Images in October 2004 as a campaign:

*  to improve the portrayal of young people in the media
*  to encourage media to look for positive angles when reporting stories
about young people
*  to incentivise youth groups and young people to be proactive in
contacting the media for local councils to celebrate young people as
part of a long-term strategy.

Young People Now: is the only weekly title for those who work with young
people aged 11-25. It was launched in 1989 by The National Youth Agency
and has been published by Haymarket Media Group since January 2003.
Haymarket is the UK's largest privately owned magazine publisher, and
Haymarket titles are now published in over 30 countries in more than 100
editions.

The National Youth Agency: supports those involved in young people's
personal and social development and works to enable all young people to
fulfil their potential within a just society. www.nya.org.uk


TNS Media Intelligence: TNS Media Intelligence UK has been at the
forefront of the media monitoring industry since its inception fifty
years ago and is a recognised industry expert in audiovisual tracking.
In January 2007 it merged with Presswatch, founded in 1996 and well
known as a high-quality information service provider and independent
reputation analyst in the UK.

Positive Images Survey 2007: TNS Media Intelligence monitored the tone
of coverage of young people during the week of 19-25 May 2007. In total,
304 items of coverage were recorded, of which 104 were broadcast, 90
broadsheet and 110 tabloid.

Attitude Finder

tim — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 12:15:54 +0100

Young people from Corby will soon be running a session at the Youth Summit later on this afternoon.

They're going to be challenging their audience to think about issues such as Dispersal Orders, Anti-Social Behaviour, CCTV and more...

I spoke to them a few minutes ago to get a bit of a preview...

A youth board for England?

tim — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 11:19:12 +0100

Tom Wylie, Chief Exec of the NYA is calling for a Youth Board to be set up chaired by a government minister. Young people now featued the call in this article last week.

After his keynote Tom said "The issues and views of young people as young adults are lost in the focus on 'children's services' 0 - 19 years"

So - we want to know what you think...

Should there be a national Youth Board set up chaired by a senior government minister? Vote here and add your comments to the discussion...

Summit is Go...

tim — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 10:45:29 +0100

The Youth Summit has begun...

Delegates have just had an introduction to the day with the video from Parmjit Dhanda MP's UK Tour setting the tone for the day. This is about listening to young people and improving services.

Our roving reporters team have been out and about - and have already captured some people's expectations for the day.

Keep checking back, as we're hoping to have a new poll online soon to see what you think of some of the issues raised in Tom Wylie's keynote speech due to take place shortly...

Gearing Up...

tim — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 22:07:59 +0100

Long journeys, bad traffic, crowded trains. But we've made it. In a basement of the Russell Hotel, 25 young people and adults have gathered to put the finishing touches to the Youth Summit.

Over the next two days, this crack team, plus assorted others, will be leading workshops, providing expert input, listening to discussions, recording views, advocating, activating and generally making sure the Youth Summit is a high-impact event.

It's going to be an exciting two days...

A little background...

tim — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 15:57:59 +0100

On Monday and Tuesday next week I'll be at the Youth Summit co-ordinating 'Youth Summit Live'
- an online space for capturing input from the conference, and opening
up the conference to a wider audience and range of inputs.

The billing for the Youth Summit sets out a big challenge:

The Youth Summit will herald the new era of service provision
for young people with emerging priorities from the Government’s
ten-year strategy for children and young people and the Comprehensive
Spending Review. The event will explore the Government’s ‘youth offer’
and map out the policy landscape for outcome-driven services for young
people and their communities. It will hear directly from a wide range
of young people as experts by experience.

This two-day event will bring together Government Ministers,
senior officials, leading policy makers, service providers and a panel
of 100 young people from across England, forging dynamic links between
young people, communities and government. Delegates will take an active
part in moving from words to action to help ensure improved services
and outcomes for young people.

And the plan is that Youth Summit Live will create a platform to capture the mapping, whilst also recording and opening up to wider dialogue, plans for action.

The platform itself is a quickly put together Drupal
website set-up with four types of content which both those at the
summit and interested parties who aren't there on the day can
contribute to:

Blog posts - inviting narrative and free comment
Where are we now? - Assessment of provision for young people at present (linked to the workshop discussions on day 1)
Where do we want to be? - Space to identify priorities for action (linked to the workshops on day 2)
Supporting Evidence - Additional content which can inform the dialogues at the Summit

The Summit itself is structured around the Every Child Matters
(ECM) outcomes framework, with workshops taking place on each of the
five ECM outcomes on both the first and second day. Content submitted
to Youth Summit Live
can therefore be categorised by ECM outcomes and the plan is to pull
out all the content under each heading at the end of day 1, and make as
much of it as possible physically present in the workshop rooms for day
2.

I'm also on the look out for good visualisations that can be
projected up on walls to help the information collected make a big
impact straight away. Suggestions on that front welcome. I'm making use
of the timeline widget for drupal, and news bubbles, and I'm exploring some RSS screensavers - but I've so far failed to find an easy-to-implement system to convert rss feeds to newsmaps.

Challenges
One of the challenges we face is that the conference centre WiFi is too
expensive to be made available free to delegates, so we have relatively
conduits for content input and output. We've got paper versions of some
of the 'Where are we now?' and 'Where do we want to be?' input forms -
so we can capture content directly from workshops and then convert it
into a digital 'live' record - and we'll be running a small blogging
station when laptops are not being used by workshop fascilitators - but
we are limited in the chanels through which we can invite input and
share live feeds of content from the Youth Summit Live site. That said,
we will have a team of young roving reporters
with us at the event creating an overnight newsletter - so that should
provide some extra space sharing the outputs of Youth Summit Live - and
I'm off to explore mobile-phone enabling the website...

Opportunities
Whatever the challenges, Monday
and Tuesday are certainly set to be really exciting (if exhausting...).
We've got over 100 young people taking part in the Youth Summit, and
we've got a number of digital and social media activists joining us,
including DK from Mediasnackers, Steve Moore from Policy Unplugged,
and a group of young people from a radio project linked to the Ministry
of Justice. There is a lot to go into the mix - and, as the youth
summit billing says, we quite probably are on the edge of "a new era of service provision for young people"

10 years too long?

tim — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 15:50:02 +0100

The Youth Summit will herald the new era of service
provision for young people with emerging priorities from the Government’s
ten-year strategy for children and young people and the
Comprehensive Spending Review.

DK from MediaSnackers will be at the Youth Summit giving a keynote on digital
media at the Youth Summit - but he has also thrown in some wider throughs about
the event in this post on his
blog about the justification of a 10 year strategy for youth. DK writes:

I also believe that a 10 year strategy for young people is not credible.
The world is moving at such an extreme pace it's simply isn't viable (unless it
is one that is fluid in it's design and focus).

Which raises an interesting set of questions. I find the idea of
having a 10 year strategy quite appealing in some aspects, not least because of
the pace of change. Long term visions with a strategic edge have a lot to add to
making change happen. They can act as a focus around which changes can be
analysed, understood and responded to. They can make sure activity doesn't move
off track. For this they need some considerable structure and stability. But, as
DK rightly notes, rigidly applied as a set of 'plans for action' without taking
into account dynamic changes over their lifetime - 10 year strategies could do
more harm than good.

So - it seems to be that we need to be able to think carefully about
what should and shouldn't be fluid in a strategy - and, particularly in the case
of a youth strategy, we need to explore how space to listen to young people and
to continually refresh our understandings of contemporary events and dynamics is
built into the core of a strategy.

As a starter for 10*:
(*Alas I'm not sure the examples I give will be
reflected in any way in the Youth Strategy... although I would be extermely
happy if they were...)

The top-level goals need to be fixed: Ending child
poverty. Promoting children's rights. Addressing inequality of opportunity and
access to services. These are the sort of goals that can only cease to be goals
when achieved - and even then they continue to need monitoring...
The headline strategic actions need a 10 year lifespan:
The value in a 10-year strategy is it provides space for action that
neccessarily takes a long time. Building a sustainble transport system is going
to need significant investment and time to develop. If we look at a policy like
this over a 2-year horizon many of the changes we need will get ruled
out.
The steps to achieve the strategic 10-year vision need to become
less prescriptive over time: both because the outcomes of the previous
step, and the context into which that step will be taken, are uncertain. If we
see a description of exactly how youth provision will look in 10 years, rather
than a description of how close it will be to respecting rights (alas unlikely)
or how close it will have come to meeting outcomes (more likely) - then we're in
trouble.
The strategy needs to explicity recognise the importance of
listening to children, young people, and those who work with them: and
it needs to think carefully about the questions. If the strategy sets out a
vision - then there is little point in engaging young people in two years time
to simply ask about their visions for the future. The dialogue needs to get into
the detail. It might be that a yearly review of the way provisions are
implemented and communicated needs to take place to help policy makers and
practioners regularly revise the detailed design of activities in light of the
rapid changes that DK is concerned about.
Listening needs to lead to evolution not revolution: As
it's put into action, a strategy should be open to the possibility that as
society and key contexts change, some of its plans cease to lead to the outcomes
desired (or the fail to achieve from the start) - but, if the dialogue about the
details is working correctly, then it should, in most cases, be possible to
evolve provision, rather than have revolutions in service provision that have
the potential to create more problems than they solve.

Welcome to the site

tim — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 13:31:11 +0100

Watch the video for quick introduction to the site...

Welcome to the Youth Summit Live website

From here you can:

Follow what happens at the Youth Summit
Record your reflections and inputs into the summit if you are present
Add your voice to the summit if you've not been able to make it
Share and view a range of supporting information that can inform dialogue at the Youth Summit and beyond.

For more information, find the Youth Summit Live team at the event, or call/text Tim on 07834 856 303.

Youth Summit Live

tim — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 17:08:31 +0100

I'm just putting the final touches to the Youth Summit Live website.

Through this site you'll be able to see live reporting from the Youth Summit, and you'll be able to input your ideas, reflections and thoughts into the discussions - whether you can make it to the summit or not.

Look out for more information on Friday about how it will work for you...