Tim's Blog

There have been murmurs about a 'Youth Participation Resources Kite mark for a while now.

Whilst concerns about the quality of resources on Children and Young People's participation might be founded (I've seen quite a few participation resources recently which have made me somewhat concerned due to their lack of clarity or any clear understanding of participation...) - the idea of one group certifying those resources which are 'quality' or not simply doesn't work*.

Instead - we need a space where potential users of a resource can discuss it. In part that might be the People&Participation Library with comments switched on - but what I really have in mind is a version of Social Source Commons for participation.

12,226. Thats the number of youth-led projects that were supported in the first year and a half of the Youth Opportunity Fund and Youth Capital Fund. And the decisions on how to spend the £115m that made those projects happen were almost universally led by panels of young people.

In fact, government have been so impressed with the success of the Youth Opportunity and Capital Funds that the recent 10 Year Youth Strategy announced the cash is being extended till 2011. They've even 'YouTubed' the special Youth Cabinet meeting that made the decision here (although its perhaps a shame comments have been disabled on the video...)

I recently co-designed and fascilitated a series of dialogue events for The National Youth Agency (NYA) between young people, officials from the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and Parmjit Dhanda MP (then Minister for Children and Families). We focussed the dialogues, which were part of a broader UK tour by Parmjit Dhanda, on the Local Offer.

The Local Offer is a guarantee introduced through Section 6 of the Education and Inspections Act that gives young people the right to: