In Leeds, it is recognised as one of the five outcomes within the Children and Young People’s Plan that all children and young people are active citizens who feel that they have a voice and influence.
The voice and influence strategy includes ensuring that children can participate, feel empowered, and actively engage to produce better outcomes and resilience. This is given at an individual, family, service, and strategic level, this assists to identify how best to support and engage children and young people and involve them at all levels.
The voice and influence of children and young people should not be a standalone entity but embedded within the culture, discussions, decisions, and actions. Hearing and responding to the voice of children and young people is paramount to the work of the safeguarding partnership in Leeds. Below are just some of the ways that the safeguarding partnership have endeavoured to include the voice and influence of children and young people during 2023-24.
The LSCP is keen to ensure that there is a culture of hearing and responding to the voice of young people across its work and therefore, this year set out 5 key commitments to ensure that the voice of young people influences the work of the partnership. These include undertaking a “Deep Dive” from the Organisational Self-Assessment in relation to the Voice of children, developing a common understanding of what is meant by meaningful voice and influence, embedding the voice of the child throughout the governance processes, the co-production of campaigns and analysis of the My Health My School data.
There is recognition that further work needs to take place to hear the voice of those children and young people who have experience of the safeguarding system through Early Help, Child in Need and Child Protection and this will be explored further in the coming year.
The Children and Young People’s Partnership (CYPP) requested that the Voice, Influence and Change (VIC) team facilitate an annual takeover for the opportunity to meet directly with young people from youth voice groups across the city and listen and respond to the issues they feel are the most important. The VIC team invited youth voice groups from their VIC network to participate in planning and running the takeover. Between May 2023 and January 2024, the VIC team facilitated meetings with lead staff representing 12 groups. In November 2023 they met with young people representing 5 of the groups so they could input into the event, with 32 young people from across 11 youth groups attending and facilitating the event.
The event was co-produced and held in January 2024 with the main aims being:
- To learn about and meet the different youth voice groups from across the city
- To share and learn about key issues for young people
- To discuss possible solutions surrounding key issues raised by young people
The attendees engaged in two discussion-based workshops surrounding four priority themes. The themes were identified by young people and are linked to the Child Friendly Leeds 12 wishes.
All decisions makers, senior leaders and Elected Members were asked to make a pledge detailing the support that they could provide to address the issues that were discussed in the workshops.
Young people were asked to provide feedback based on their experience of the event. They commented that ‘it was perfect’, they felt ‘real change was made’ and that it was ‘a valuable opportunity for young people to share their voice in Leeds’. Requests were made to ‘do this more’, to have ‘more time to talk about issues and experiences’ and have ‘more time to speak with decision makers’.
Feedback from the event was given to the CYPP meeting and it was agreed that decisions makers who attended the event, provide an update summary in 6 months, detailing actions and progress. Work with the youth groups would continue and a further event will be planned.
Young people were consulted on various campaigns, including to provide insight to the development of the “start the conversation” campaign, the Leeds Youth Council were asked for their opinions on online safety. The group provided valuable feedback on their own experiences and in particular the terminology and phrases that they used when online. All of this information was used to ensure that the campaign was on message and relevant to young people’s experiences.
The My Health, My School Annual School (MHMS) Survey, is a well-recognised method of hearing the views of children and young people from across the city. In the academic year 2022-23, a record-breaking number of responses were received, with a total of 25,648 pupil responses from 202 Leeds schools representing the largest ever number of responses since the survey began over 16 years ago!
This is a free on-line survey for pupils in Years 5, 6, 7, 9 and 11 as well as pupils attending any Specialist Inclusive Learning Centres (SILCs) and post-16 settings in Leeds. The survey gathers important pupil perception data and measures health behaviours and contributes to school improvement.
The survey includes various areas which related to safeguarding, such as feeling safe at home, gangs, knife crime, exploitation, on-line safety and where to go for support.
The safeguarding partnerships have analysed this year’s data in-line with previous years in the areas related to safeguarding and those that reflect the LSCP prioritises. The information is then shared with the relevant subgroups as well as the CYPP to inform decision making and the work of the safeguarding partnership.
Partners see the voice of young people as key to the procurement and review of services in Leeds, as an example they were involved in the procurement process for the new Social, Emotional and Mental Health Service. Young people from Mind Mate Ambassador team and YouthWatch formed a panel and interviewed provider organisations for the suitability to carry out the city wide contract. They took into account feedback from 6 youth groups (below) to inform their questioning
- Leeds GATE (Gypsy and Traveller exchange)
- Care Leavers council
- Out 2 18 group (LGBT+)
- PAFRAS (asylum seeker youth group
- YouthWatch
Several partners also have Youth Forums or equivalents, which they actively consulted on to ensure the voice of the child is recognised and included in service development work. There is a dedicated sibling group within the Safe Project, which provides a rich opportunity to gather feedback directly from children who may not be directly experiencing harm but indirectly will have an impact within their families. Their views help establish themes that can then be fed into plans around service development to ensure that issues that are evolving are continually understood and acted upon. The “clear approach” at HMOI Wetherby, allows discussions for looked after children to share their voice, and the youth council have recently recorded a podcast to share their personal thought and feelings.
These are just some of the Voice and Influence activities with children and young people that have taken place across the partnership within 2023-24. Although there is recognition that there is also a vast amount of work that takes place within the third sector and educational establishments that is not routinely received by the LSCP.