1.5 Consultation and Participation Policy - Under Review |
This chapter was added to the manual in November 2013.
Contents
- General Principles of Consultation
- Management Consultation
- Barriers to Participation
- Planning Successful Participation
- Participation Frameworks
1. General Principles of Consultation
Everyone involved in the receipt and delivery of services should be consulted about decisions, which may affect them.
This includes children, their advocates, their parents, other significant family members and those charged with providing the service; including managers, staff, carers and professionals or colleagues from other agencies.
This means that people's views should be sought and taken into account in relation to all decisions, which are likely to affect their daily life and their future.
The older and more mature the child is, the more weight can and should be given to their wishes and feelings.
The benefits to involving young people are:
- Confidence and self esteem;
- Assertiveness;
- Communication development;
- Skill building;
- Social skills;
- Sense of ownership;
- Active citizenship.
Benefits for DMR Services are:
- Young people will respect their surroundings because they have helped shape it;
- Young people friendly service;
- Better use of resources;
- Meet identified needs.
Unless there are exceptional circumstances, reasonable steps must be taken in all cases to consult the parents. Exceptions will include where a child is placed for adoption and where older children with an appropriate level of maturity specifically request that their parents are not consulted and a decision is made to respect their wishes.
Consultation should take place on a regular and frequent basis with those who need to be consulted and assumptions should not be made about the inability or lack of interest of those who should be consulted.
Where people have communication difficulties of any sort, suitable means must be provided to enable them to be consulted, including arranging access to advocates or representatives who may speak on their behalf.
Consultation should be undertaken in a creative manner.
If consultation is not possible or is restricted for whatever reason, steps should be taken to ensure those affected are informed of decisions as soon as practicable after they are made, and an explanation for the decision given, together with the opportunity to make a comment and express their views.
If it is then felt that a different decision may have been appropriate, steps should be taken to reconsider the decision.
If decisions are made against people's wishes, they should be informed of the decision and the reasons for the decision should be explained. In these circumstances, the person should be informed of any rights they have to formally challenge the decision, and of the availability of the Complaints or Grievance Procedure.
Children should also be informed of their right to appoint an advocate, and if an advocate is appointed, he or she must be consulted in accordance with the principles set out in this section.
2. Management Consultation
Unless otherwise stated in specific procedures in this manual, it is assumed that people working in this organisation will take reasonable steps to keep their Managers informed of their actions; and will consult and seek their approval where they do not have decision making responsibility delegated to them.
In order to facilitate this, Managers must ensure that effective lines of communication are established and maintained.
If procedures in this manual require that Managers are informed within specified timescales or their approval is sought before actions are taken, this must be complied with.
3. Barriers to Participation
Professionals may be reluctant to engage children and young people in developing their services due to a number of reasons:
- Professional’s assumption that children may not be competent or are too young;
- Professionals limited experience in this area;
- Limited toolkit of how to involve children and young people in participation;
- Participation fatigue by children and young people who have given their views and they have been discounted without any explanation;
- Service struggles to re-engage children and young people;
- Negative perception of young people in today’s society;
- Relinquishing power and control to children and young people;
- Inadequate resources.
4. Planning Successful Participation
When you are considering how to involve children and young people, you should consider whether you have the knowledge, skills, attitude and commitment and whether your framework/strategy is in place and underpinned by time and appropriate resources.
Listed below are examples of participation frameworks that you may find useful to start to look at a whole systems approach to this work. These may need tailored but the basic elements of access, staff induction and training, your environment and evaluation of service delivery usually apply to all.
If you want to ensure that your service is meeting the needs of young people are you asking them the key questions that could make a difference to you and to them. What has their journey been like as they have moved through your service, what would have made a real difference to them, what are you doing well, and where do you need to improve. Be prepared for some honest feedback, it can also be a useful for tool for staff to acknowledge good practice.
When you are considering involving young people we need to think about the many ways in which young people communicate. It may be useful to establish an advisory board or group of young people or alongside this you could consider:
- Texting;
- Web questionnaires;
- Focus Groups – run by young people?
- Leaflets;
- Targeted events.
If you decide to develop questionnaires or leaflets or even an event, you should endeavour to get young people’s involvement in the design and delivery of these methods. You could organize an event to launch your participation strategy organised and lead by young people. You may want to consult with young people who have gone through the service as they may feel it’s easier to comment, some areas undertake exit interviews. These could be conducted by young people.
Alongside general service evaluation and development young people can play a role in other ways such as being part of interview panels are as part of staff training and induction processes.
Approaches which claim to be participatory can sometimes have the opposite affect and the same method for one group may not work for others.
You will need to establish clear boundaries and expectations of all those involved in the process including children and young people. This includes informing them of what the objectives of their participation are and how and when they will be informed about the outcome and if changes are not made due to their participation why. These are essential elements to ensure on-going meaningful participation or young people will lose faith and value in what they are doing.
It is vital that children and young people know they can influence services, a robust framework for the service is not enough, this helps them to be aware of their rights as active citizens.
If we truly believe we are delivering services that should benefit young people then we should ensure they are part of shaping them or we risk delivering services that we assume are wanted. This in the longer term creates active participants in the community.
5. Participation Frameworks
There are a number of frameworks you can look at for guidance including:
Hear By Right
The National Youth Agency developed ‘Hear by Right’. This framework offers a tried and tested process that can assist organisations to assess and improve on their practice and policy around involving children, young people and parents/carers.
The Hear by Right Framework is a based on seven standards with which organisation can self assess themselves.
The standards look at area’s such as:
- Shared values;
- Structures;
- Strategy;
- Systems;
- Staff, elected members or trustees;
- Skills and knowledge;
- Style of leadership.
Click here to view the Hear by Right Self Assessment Tool.
Useful websites
An online gateway for a partnership of six national children and young people's agencies that enables organisations to effectively involve children and young people in the development, delivery and evaluation of services that affect their lives.End