Involvement In Decision Making

UK Youth Parliament reps were elected in May 2007. Since then they have been involved in a number of activities including, intergenerational work, regular meetings with Councillors and other decision makers and campaigning on local and regional issues.

Young people in Newcastle have been consulted face to face through voting and workshops at an event held by Youth Parliament reps in March 2008. 70 young people attended from 11 schools. The three top priorities identified by the 75 young people present will be worked on by the Youth Parliament reps in the coming months. They continue to meet as a group on a fortnightly basis to assess and review their priorities.

Young carers have been actively and successfully involved in focus groups in relation to service development such as Changing Trax and the focus groups informing the Respect programme. Consultation is taking place with Young Carers re the respite programme for Carers about to be implemented by Adult Services. Newcastle's Participation Worker has a remit to actively engage young people with caring responsibilities in any service development consultations.

Engagement of young people at ward level continues to develop. Surgeries have been set up as a means of encouraging young people to feed their views into ward committees.

70 grants have been allocated by the Youth Panel. The Youth Panel is a diverse City wide group which includes young people with disabilities, minority ethnic and those living in socially deprived areas.

Young people from 14 different Youth Service projects have directly benefited from the Youth Opportunity Fund, including:

• Refurbished and new equipment to 4 youth centres
• £75k generated directly by young people working with Newcastle Youth Servic
• Creation of a DJ room at Ravenswood Youth Centre
• 3 x residential opportunities
• International Youth Exchange

U Decide

"U Decide" the Participatory Budgeting process piloted in Newcastle with children and young people continues to go from strength to strength and has just received a national award for Innovative Engagement from the Academy for Sustainable Communities The Investing in Children Co-ordinator has been involved with colleagues in piloting this process with young people.

• Five ward committees are developing "U Decide" work with C&YP with their own funding sources in 2008-9. The approach was also used to decide on the top project for £1.1 million Play Lottery Funding
• 11 schools in the north and outer west of the city have been involved in "U Decide".1000 children and young people voted on their priorities.
• Children and young people with learning difficulties and disabilities have been involved in "U Decide" events over the last year,
• Young people using the East End Library attended a "U Decide" event where, following a successful presentation they were able to secure over £2,000 in order to begin to carry out improvements.

U Decide - Under 5s

Part of our commitment is to cover the full Children's Services age range of 0-19, and there is already an outstanding track record of innovative work with under 5s in the city.  So we agreed to work with a partner in early years and see how the youngest children in the city could be involved in making decisions about a budget and resources. The U decide steering group invited Walkergate Children's Centre to develop a model of participatory budgeting practice for the early years.

Young Children Big Decisions (Pdf,128.3kb )