Participation at CWDC

We have begun the process of establishing a culture of participation, in our own activities and also within the wider children and young people's workforce and we are working alongside others to ensure that we are doing this properly. Project by project we are looking at the most meaningful and appropriate ways for children and young people to be involved.

Our mission includes making sure the child is at the centre of all services. We want this to be true in our own organisation.

Examples of involvement work

Children and young people with disabilities

We have been participating with disabled children and young people to ensure all of our work is informed by the needs of children and young people. We initially ran a focus group with young people in Newcastle. They told us their main issue was the lack of activities available to them. This has been informing the development of our strategy for supporting the workforce to meet the needs of children and young people with disabilities. 

Most recently we have recruited an organisation to conduct ongoing work to involve disabled children and young people in the development and implementation of our strategy. Young people played a vital role in the selection of this organisation. We worked with a class of pupils aged 16 to 19 from Leeds to devise a set of qualities they thought the successful candidates should have. A smaller group then planned how they would use this to judge the candidates, and the following week came to our offices to interview the candidates. The young people fed back their thoughts to an adult panel - their views were instrumental in the final decision about which organisation to appoint.

Explaining the work of a Connexions PA

A panel of young people became judges for a postcard competition to explain the work of a Connexions personal adviser.

Find out more about the Connexions PA postcard competition and have a look at the winning designs.

Explaining CAF

The common assessment framework (CAF) can sound scary and confusing to children and young people - so we worked with young people to help us develop materials to explain what CAF is all about. The resources produced can be used by professionals to explain the common assessment framework and the role of the lead professional to children, young people and families.

Find out more about explaining CAF to young people.

Participation fund panel

Young people where involved in making decisions about the projects funded by the CWDC participation fund for the third year running. Young people from Wolverhampton and Newcastle came together in May to decide on projects for 2009 - 2010. An adult panel decided on a shortlist of applications, a young people's panel then made the final decision on which projects should receive the funding.

Find out more about projects funded through the participation fund.

'Get involved' events

In October and November 2008 we held three creative consultation events - Get Involved - for children and young people to tell us what they think. We are using what they said to inform our business plan for 2009-2010.

Find out more about the creative consultation events 2008.

National occupational standards (NOS)

CWDC staff conducted consultation work with groups of children and young people across the country as part of the review of national occupational standards for the learning, development and support services (LDSS), Children's Care, Learning and Development (CCLD) and Health and Social Care. 
What children and young people said about NOS [PDF - 2 Mb].

Find out more about national occupational standards.

Common Core

The Common Core sets out the skills and knowledge needed by people (including volunteers) who come into contact with children and young people as part of their work. We are currently looking at ways to improve understanding of the common core across different areas of the children and young people's workforce. We ran a number of projects with children and young people from across England who, with their workers, looked at ways to visually and linguistically communicate the benefits and impact of the common core in improving outcomes for children and young people.

Find out more about 'different people, same skills'.

Join our database

If you'd like to sign up to receive information about future opportunities for children and young people to get involved in our work, please join our database.

There's some pages on this website for children and young people - have a look!