Can you help us develop our youth voice typology?

2022-04-08

Today we’re publishing a working draft of our Typology of Youth Voice for consultation. Our aim is for this typology to provide a common, ‘standardised’ way of describing youth voice practice – that is, where young people are able to have their views and ideas heard and have influence over decisions that affect their lives. To ensure the typology is fit for practice and reflects the work you do, we are inviting your thoughts and feedback as practitioners, professionals and young people, throughout April. 

This typology has been developed as part of a wider project on Maximising Young People’s Voice and Power, and is collaboratively funded by Paul Hamlyn Foundation, The National Lottery Community Fund and BBC Children in Need. The project seeks to generate data and insight into the types and level of youth voice activity being offered across the UK. 

 

Who is this typology for? 

We intend this typology to resonate and be relevant across the range of youth voice provision and the different settings and contexts in which it develops. The typology aims to help: 

  • practitioners working with young people to more clearly and accurately describe their youth voice activities, as a first step towards sharing and evaluating this practice; 
  • young people to better understand what they individually experience and hold practitioners to account for the quality of provision they receive; and 
  • commissioners and funders to understand the design and intentions for youth voice activity, and better support quality, reach and representation.   

 

What is the purpose of the typology? 

Describing what you are (and are not) doing is the first step towards evaluating your practice, and evaluation is a critical element of learning and improving. We hope this typology will support individual organisations to consider and answer the questions ‘why do we do what we do’, and ‘what exactly are we doing?’. These questions form the first part of our Asking Good Questions framework; designed to support organisations to reflect and understand the quality of their work, with and for young people. We also hope that the typology will encourage funders and commissioners to resource and empower the organisations they support to reflect on these questions.  

As well as supporting organisations working with and for young people, this typology will be used to inform the process of mapping and describing youth voice activity across the UK. Later this year, we will launch a major exercise to collect and collate the views and experiences of practitioners and organisations on whom they engage, how they are enabling young people to be heard, and what mechanisms and methods they use to achieve this. 

 

How have we developed this first draft? 

We’ve developed this working draft following a detailed review of 46 participation and engagement strategies from organisations and local authorities working with young people in the UK. We’ve collated, themed and categorised the activities detailed in these documents in an iterative way to arrive at a typology that groups youth voice activities across three interconnected ‘buckets’: 

Diagram

 

What do we need your help with? 

We know that the collective knowledge of the sector is much more powerful than our voice alone. We need and would value your help in making this typology ‘work’ and ensuring it is a useful tool. 

We would love for you to share your thoughts and feedback on the typology. We’re particularly interested to know: 

  1. What terms do you use to describe your work (and that of your peers and networks) to support young people to be heard (e.g. youth voice, participation), and how would you define these terms? 
  2. Is the typology clear? Does it include everything it needs to? 
  3. Does it feel like a useful tool that could aide your practice? 
  4. What would make it more valuable to you or the sector? 
  5. Can you see your youth voice practice reflected in the categories? Is there something you do that doesn’t easily fit? 
  6. Do the categories feel clearly distinct, or is there some overlap/lack of clarity in the criteria? 
  7. Does the introduction clearly describe and explain the typology (and development process), or could it be improved in any way? 

 

How can you share your feedback? 

You can find the working draft of the typology here, and you can share your feedback with us, by 6 May 2022: 

We would also encourage you to share the typology with any young people you work with or facilitate a discussion around the typology with young people, to gather their thoughts and feedback on this draft too. 

 

If you would like more information about this project, please get in touch with Jo Hickman Dunne (jo.hickmandunne@youthimpact.uk).