DISQUS

Hey Mike

Congratulations :) It'll be really interesting to see how you and the SICamp team put this together.

Particularly looking at the intersection between technology and young people - and building something that we could convince services to support young people in using...

Spot on Mike. Accountability to young stakeholders is crucial.

So often services for young people fail to recognise young people as their stakeholders and (for lack of better non-market terminology that gets at the point) their customers. Instead, they end up focussing on their accountability to funders, parents, local authority etc.

Those accountabilities are relevant - but its effectively being accountable to young people that will really lead to service improvement.

We started to explore some of the issues of how young people hold services to account when we ran consultations on the local offer last year - and it's a line of exploration that definitely needs to be taken further....

Interesting points.

I'm just waiting for the list of delegates from the event where I captured that video to come through so I can find Helen's direct contact details - and I'll be sure to make sure things get linked up.

Would be great to point them towards your evaluation reports.

I like the idea of a National Youth Centre... it could link perhaps to ideas and funding around Youth Leadership... hmm, will have to explore that more...

This is really encouraging writing and content. Helps make sense of what the PYD shift should be about.

Definitely worth sending into the consultation... and sharing more...

This is a really useful summary...

And it can help in unpacking the 'participation in what...?' question.

'Participation in activity' -> 'Participation in running an activity' -> 'Participation in directing activities' -> 'Participation in running an organisation'.

It would be interesting to explore how this can map onto ideas of developmental pathways...

This looks great :)

Will test it out with a few people next week and throw in some comments :)

And really useful to help me thinking about developments of the one page guide series...

Tim

On sex education in UK schools:

I'm not sure the education system is being blamed for causing the problem.

But it is culpable for failing to educate young people to be equipped to make informed decisions about their sexual behaviour.

Your right not to participate puts no obligation on me not to put forward my opinion that you should participate.

And if I respect you, then I should be listening to your reasons for not wanting to participate, and should be taking that on board in persuading you to participate, or changing the method of participation offered.

I think a pointer to this wouldn't go amiss.

I certainly agree that the particular list of ages we have at present isn't neccessarily coherent. A review would perhaps be welcome (as long as we get obe + good participative methods of course...)

Turning to the politics question - hows about these distinctions:

* Individual participation right - the one I was getting at in my original post. Not the 'right' for a child to have adult 'rights', but the right for the child's voice to be taken as valid, weighed against other concerns, and to influence outcomes (not to definitively direct outcomes though) in individual situations without a wider political impact.

For example:
The right of a child in care to have influence over their subject choices at GCSE or choice of college.

The right of a child to be involved in discussions about whether the family should move house to a different area or not.

The right of a child to be heard in family law proceedings.

These are only 'political' in the sense that they should involve discussion, decision and action... but are a distinct aspect of the Article 12 right - and arguably a key building block for democratic politics at the next two levels (below).

* political participation (small p) - being involved with others in seeking or creating change in a community through a myriad of different forms of action.

Wherever there are competing options for change (or non-change as the case may be) and one takes action to support a particular option, there are the beginnings of small-p politics. The will to see a particular set of arrangements prevail...

* Political participation (big P) - parties, elections, formal structures. The systems for dealing with power.

Where the power lies and how we get involved in distributing it (voting, engaging in action directed at politicians / appeal to public etc.) at the big P level often affects what can happen at the small-p level. But not always (or at least, not to a meaninful extent).

One clarification: You can now stand for election (local and parliamentary) at 18, rather than 21.

And a few thoughts:
It does seem as though lowering the voting age to 16 would bring 17 and 18 year olds out of provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (the 'legal' framework of Children's Rights) as that provides in Article 12 that: "For the purpose of the prevent Convention, a child means every human being below the age of 18 years unless, under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier".

The particular range of ages we have in English law for different acts is confused, and not based on very coherent principles, but the idea of having a graduated range of ages for different acts seems sound. The alternative of one birthday 'unlocking adulthood' seems unattractive and to set up far too much of a line between being a young person and being an adult.

But ultimately, the right to participate has a slightly different basis from being a young peoples equivalent of voting. It is the right to be listened to and to have ones views taken into account. As an adult, if someone doesn't take my views into account (perhaps when I'm trying to decide with my house-mates whether we should redecorate or not), I have, in many cases, the right to disagree and act upon my disagreement. Children are, in most cases, denied the ability to act upon their disagreements - being subject, it is argued, to the authority of their parents.

Voting is one form of acting upon my disagreement, and so, if we consider voting to be enough, lowering the age to 16 may undermine the right of a child to particular participation rights in the public sphere. But unless the ages that retain children's subjection to adults in the private sphere (e.g. gaining permission of parents to get married whilst under 18) change, the right to be listened to and to have ones views taken into account continue to be valid here.

Ok. Philosophical ramblings aside - what am I trying to say?

>The right to participation is not just about political participation.

>The right to be heard (which is at the core of the Article 12 'participation' right) is a significant aspect of Children's Rights - and a right which depends on context - but not just upon voting ages

>A political participation right (the right to be involved ...) is different from a Child's participation right...

>Political participation has many different roots, not just rights, and so we need to carefully unpick why communities, projects and organisations are really engaging with young people to see how that engagement might be affected by age-based laws...

Interesting one.

When we recently ran a series of dialogue events on The Local Offer to young people (http://www.timdavies.org.uk/2007/07/03/consulti...) we got thinking a lot about accountability.

There is a lot of talk about young people being able to have their say in the design and development of services - but all to often, the mechanism for those who finally take decisions, commission services or run the services to be held to account are not there.

Two challenges:

1) We need to make sure young people know about the level of service and support they are entitled to (have a right to...)

2) We need to make sure organisations have the processes in place for young people to make complaints, provide day-to-day feedback, and raise concerns in a safe way that will lead to real action...

Ok - maybe three challenges:

3) We need to make sure that when the complaint system doesn't work - young people are empowered to make some noise about it until things get sorted out...*

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*Four things: plus we need to do this in a way that helps celebrates good youth services and supports their good work as much as weeding out the bad ones...

*nods*

I think the tension to be navigated is to expand the Article 12 right, whilst not loosing its power as a check and balance on the very specific oppressions young people face. (E.g. young people in care where the state is their corporate parent but does not listen to them / young asylum seekers dispersed around the country without any say in the process - although the UK govt. retain opt-outs on implementing the Convention for asylum seekers!)

What is interesting, is that the having a say 'in any issues that affect them' clause of Article 12 all too often gets interpreted as 'affect them and only them' (i.e. 'young people's issues') when in fact it simply says any issues that affect young people - which is virtually all political issues that affect everyone else, and then some.

I'd certainly agree that breaking down barriers between young people and the wider community has to be at the core of youth work. But I'm not sure we want to define the category of young people away to do that. We need everyone to have civic rights to participate in their communities. We need everyone to have human rights to autonomy in their own lives. But we still need specific children's rights to draw attention to the capacity of children and young people to be full and equal participants in society and community.

A few thoughts:

Ages:
Article 1 of the convention limits it to apply to under 18s, (unless by the law of a country the age of majority is /earlier/). Of course, countries can integrate it into their own laws with a higher age bracket - the the Committee on the Rights of the Child who assess countries compliance with the convention will only be interested in how to advances the rights of under 18s.

Article 12:
Article 12 is a specifically developmental right. It's about the right of young people to have their views and wishes taken into account in any decisions that affects them, according to their maturity and capacity to understand the decisions/

It calls on the government to be the party responsible for ensuring that right - but the right is meant to apply not just to situations under the law - but to family and community environments - where 'paternalism' can often be a profoundly negative force for young people.

As a right it balances children's right to be heard, and to direct their own lives against a common presumption that 'adults know best' and the legal position of parents in power over children and young people.

A wider right:
None of this changes the need you identify for a wider self-direction right - to balance the power of the state - but this is, I think, ultimately a different right...