the right to say: the development of youth councils/forums within the uk

Area (1 998) 30.1, 66-78

The right to say: the development of youth counciMforums within the UK

Hugh Matthews and Melanie limb Division of Geography, Park Campus, Nene College of Higher Education, Northampton NN2 7AL.

Email: [email protected]

Revised manuscript received 2 July 1997.

Summary Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child makes explicit reference to children‘s right to say what they think about matters relating to the quality of their lives, and to have those opinions taken into account in accordance with their levels of competence and maturity. Despite the commitment of the UK Government to this and other similar initiatives designed to empower young people, a culture of non-participation is endemic within the UK in the context o f environmental planning. Young people are seemingly invisible on the landscape. This paper reviews the case for children‘s active involvement in their environmental future and considers attempts to engage young people through an incipient structure of youth councils and forums.

Introduction

The notion that children have the right to say what they think about matters relating to the quality of their lives is embedded in the United Nations Con- vention (1989) on the Rights of the Child (Catling 1993). Article 12 of this Convention makes explicit reference to children’s right to express opinions and to have those opinions taken into account in any matter or procedure affecting them (Newell 1993):

Article 12

(1) Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.

(2 ) For this purpose, the child shall in particular be provided the opportunity to be heard in any judicial and administrative proceedings affecting the child, either directly, or through a represen- tative or an appropriate body, in a manner consistent with the procedural rules of national law.

Arguably, Article 12 and the other 53 Articles of the UN Convention, all of which were ratified by the UK Government in December 1991, together with the Children’s Act of 1989, provide ‘a powerful assertion of children’s right to be actors in their own lives

and not merely passive recipients of adult decision- making’ (Lansdown 1995, 2). Yet, despite these commitments, the culture of non-participation by young people is endemic in the context of environmental planning within the UK. For the most part, young people are seemingly invisible on the landscape, provided only with ’token spaces’ often inappropriate to their needs and aspirations, and seldom given opportunities to express their prefer- ences (Matthews 1995). For these types of reasons, the Children’s Rights Office (1 995) declares that children in the UK (those aged under 18) constitute a disenfranchised group of 13 000 000 citizens with no public voice.

In essence, children comprise a large, powerless and uniquely uninfluential sector of the population. Yet, considerable debate surrounds children’s competence to make decisions about their own lives and the extent to which they can or should take part in decision-making in general (Rosenbaum and Newell 1991). The rest of this paper falls into three parts. In the first, consideration is given to notions of children’s empowerment and children’s rights within society. The second, more substantial part focuses on the development of an incipient structure of youth councils and forums within the UK and provides an evaluation of whether such organizations

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offer a meaningful platform for participation. The third part briefly examines the growth of the youth council movement in France, in order to provide a counterpoint against which UK structures may be compared.

The participation debate \

Two dominant conceptualizations have largely defined the nature of childhood within the social sciences, and both have had far-reaching effects on the way in which children have been categor- ized and treated within society. In psychology, considerable emphasis has been placed on the ways in which individuals develop a cognitive map that even- tually defines their membership of adult society (Light 1986; Piaget 1950; 1977); and in sociology, much early work attended to the way in which children, through processes of socialization, are gradually transformed into adult members of society (Corsaro 1985; Denzin 1977; Jenks 1982). These notions of development and socialization have been ’extraordinarily resistant to criticism’ (James and Prout 1990, 22). Recent studies, however, are increasingly critical of these perspectives. Caputo (1995), for example, argues that each of these models is unsatisfactory. Both direct attention away from children’s daily lives by emphasizing what children lack before becoming adults. In so doing, they promote a view that children are not only incomplete but also passive (non-actors) in creating their futures. In effect, children are little more than adults-in-waiting.

James and Prout (1990), too, challenge these conceptualizations. They put forward a model grounded upon three assertions, which is especially useful in the context of the debate about children’s capability to participate. Firstly, childhood is recog- nized as a social construction, which is ’neither natural nor universal.. . but appears as a specific and cultural component of many societies’ (p 8). Secondly, childhood as a social construct is not independent of other social dimensions such as class, ethnicity and gender. Thirdly, children are active agents in the construction of their lives, regularly shaping and reshaping their social and environmental transactions in ways that enable them to make sense of their world. Whilst this model attempts to recover children as social actors by giving emphasis to the way in which children are a source of social change, it recognizes that there must be ‘theoretical space for both the construction of

childhood as an institution and the activity of children within and upon the constraints and possibilities that the institutional level creates’ (p 28). In essence, adults, to a greater or lesser extent, create frameworks within which children operate. This last point is an important one. Children are not incapable of taking part but are not given the right to do so because of frameworks that deny them opportunities and access.

Theoretical perspectives of the kind introduced by James and Prout are important to notions of children’s empowerment within society. They suggest that temporality i s an essential feature of childhood, therefore it is important to understand children from the perspective of their own life worlds. Caputo (1 995) labels this feature as the now of childhood. For her, this concept is fundamental to making sense of children’s ways o f seeing. Yet, because of the persistence of the biological and social models of childhood, much attention, to date, has been upon children‘s past and future at the expense of their present. In effect, these former views demean children by labelling them as imperfect adults and, in consequence, draw doubt upon their abilities to participate. Jenks (1 996, 122) notes

for western children.. . constrained by dominant paediatric and psychological theories of child development, contemporary childhood remains an essentially protectionist experience.

Obliged by adults to be happy, children are seen as ’having rights to protection and training, but not to autonomy’ (Ennew 1986, 21). By regarding children as active agents, capable of cultural production in their own right and with views of their own, a very different perspective is provided on children’s ability to take part in decision-making of various kinds. Rather than assuming children know less than adults, this new evidence suggests that they may know something else.

Apart from theoretical reservations about children’s ability to participate, scepticism largely revolves around the views that children lack experience, that children’s rights conflict and collide with adults’ rights, that children should only have rights when they are of an age to share in responsibilities, and that imposing responsibilities detracts from the right to childhood (Lansdown 1995). For these sorts of reasons, Simpson (1 995) draws attention to how the legislative system of the western wortd, since the nineteenth century, has supported the exclusion of children from environmental planning and given them very little voice in shaping their environmental

68 Matthews and Limb

Access to Environmental Ecological Empathy and Social under- Pol i tical environments interests understanding moral development standing and skills awareness

Community Environmental Management: eg management of water wells or gardens

residents and environmental professionals, leading to physical improvements or awareness-raising

community debates, interviews leading to improving part of their environment

Local Environmental Monitoring: eg weather surveys, wildlife surveys, nutrition and

Local Environmental Management: eg recycling, composting, fish farming, at school or club

Domestic Environmental Management: eg caring for own animals and plants, gardening at home

Figure 1 Children’s developing capacity to participate in the development and management of environments (based on Hart 1997)

futures. At best, environments are built for children and not with children (Barnard 1980; Fowler 1992).

Ongoing empirical research into children’s environmental expertise and adeptness, however, contradicts these notions, especially in the context of children’s developing transactions with their everyday environments. Both Matthews (1 992; 1995) and Hart (1 997) argue that children have the capacity, ingenuity and motivation to become keenly involved in determining the development of local places. They point out that because adults have different outlooks and are pursuing different goals, they are often unable to see, much less understand, a child’s point of view. Children themselves assign and weigh the criteria by which they judge places. For these reasons, Hart (1995) contends that we can no longer rely on a traditional social science approach that observes children’s lives and goes on to report to policy-makers in the hope that they will bring about an improvement in quality. Instead what is needed is a

more radical social science . . . (in which) . . . children learn to reflect upon their own conditions, so that they can gradually begin to take greater responsibility in creating communities different from the ones they inherited (Hart 1995, 41).

Figure 1 draws upon recent work to provide an illustration of children’s progressive capacity to participate in the development and management of environments from the age of six up to the age of 14 and older. Initially, children’s horizons are set within a domestic context of care. As they become older, so their interests and involvement can be broadened and diversified, from taking part in local environmental management schemes through to a growing range of community-based projects. At the same time, children will be drawn into increasingly com- plex social milieux. However, Hart (1992; 1997) warns against tokenism in child participation. Involvement should not be associated with con- descension. Children should be encouraged to participate as equal partners in setting agendas and

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making decisions about their environmental futures, according to their maximum capacity, rather than responding to the interpretation of so-called experts (Matthews 1995).

There are signs that attitudes are changing with regard to the involvement of young people in environmental decision-making. The massive momentum given to children’s rights in general by the UN Convention has been added to by the principles set by Local Agenda 21, which has a specific focus on youth issues. Local Agenda 21 is the mechanism by which the environmental agenda agreed at the meeting of world leaders in Rio de Janeiro is to be set in place at a local scale. Amongst its many declarations for a sustainable future is the view that a dialogue should be established between the youth community and government at all levels, which would enable young people‘s perspectives and visions to be incorporated as a matter of course into future environmental policy (Freeman 1996). A part of this movement towards giving young people a say in their environmental futures within the UK has been the development of an incipient structure of youth councils and forums. The terms council and forum are variously and interchangeably used to describe congregations of young people who come together, usually as a committee, to voice their views about their social and physical environments. These do not include school councils of any sort.

The next part of the paper contains two sections which, in turn, consider the differing form and nature of these youth councils/forums and provide an evaluation of their effectiveness.

The nature of youth councils/forums in the UK

Youth councils/forums have developed across the UK in different ways. A number of national organizations have played important yet differing roles in their development. A consequence of their varying approaches is an unevenness of provision within the four home countries. In this section, we give emphasis to the situations in Scotland and Northern Ireland, where the practice is better developed.

The roles of the National Youth Agency (1996) and the British Youth Council, both in England, and the Wales Youth Agency (1996), are to provide advice and information on request about youth councils/forums. In this sense, these are supportive agencies, which, although proponents of young people’s participation, have a remit that does not

include a formal development strategy, and thus the development of youth councils/forums in England and Wales has largely been haphazard (Tables 1 and 2). Their form and character depend partly on such factors as the demography, political make-up and traditions of a locality, and partly on existing institutional and organizational structures.

This is not the case within Scotland. Here, a partnership between the Scottish Community Education Council, Youth Link Scotland and the Principal Community Education Officers Group, which followed four years of research and consultation, gave rise to the ‘Connect Youth’ programme, launched in 1995. Targeted at 14-25-year-olds, the programme seeks to promote effective involvement of young people in the decision-making processes that affect their lives, and to engage with young people in order to determine their views on services and the development of opportunities for enhanced Community involvement. However, these are guiding principles and it is up to individual voluntary and statutory agencies how these ideas are translated into practice. Inevitably, there has been a diversity of outcome. O f major significance, nonetheless, is the development of a network of youth forums throughout Scotland (located in Ayrshire, Clackmannanshire, Dumfries and Galloway, Dunbarton, Dundee, Falkirk, Fife, Lanarkshire, Mid-Argyll, Shetland and Stirling). To help support the transition of this programme into the new single-tier authorities, a number of national initiatives have been developed. These include the creation of a Youth Training Scheme to recruit 100 young people to support the work of Connect Youth at a local level, and the establishment of a Youth Issues Unit to provide a focal point to collect, collate and disseminate information on issues facing young people in Scotland (Scottish Community Education Council 1996).

By far the longest history of youth councils in the UK is within Northern Ireland. In 1979, the Depart- ment of Education established the Northern Ireland Youth Forum (NIYF), with a brief to encourage the development of a network of Local Youth Councils (LYC). Members of the LYCs were recruited from local youth groups, including statutory and voluntary agencies, both uniformed and non-uniformed. Each youth group was eligible to send two representatives aged between 16 and 25 to a LYC. In turn, each LYC elected two young people to the NIYF. In the first ten years of the project, between 16 and 20 LYCs were operational out of an initial target of 29, and these were supported financially by five Education and


Table 1 Directory of youth councils/forums in England

Bedfordshire Riseley Youth Parish Council Buckinghamshire Milton Keynes Youth Forum

Cambridgeshire Cambridge Youth Council Cheshire Winsford Youth Forum

Cleveland East Cleveland Youth Council

Cornwall Restormel Youth Council

Cornwall Youth Convention

Cumbria Copeland District Youth Forum

Derbyshire The Power Pack

Devon Devon Youth Council

Dorset Speak Out

Essex Chelmsford Locality Youth Forum Southend Youth Forum Hampshire Hampshire Youth Council

Lancashire Youth Issues Worker (Bury)

Blackpool and Fylde Young People‘s Council Stockport Youth Affairs Forum Wigan Youth Forums

Joint initiative between youth service and Rural Community Council. Supported by the parish council. Aims include fundraising and environmental projects.

Launched in 1995, with over 200 members aged between 13 and 25. Forum supports local action groups.

Youth council developed in North Cambridge, launched in October 1996.

Provides activities for young people living on Winsford’s overspill housing estates. Young people work with other groups to stage events that demonstrate opportunities for local young people. Funding employs worker to make contact with young people and identify programmes to meet their needs.

Youth council with one member co-opted onto the Youth Strategy Subcommittee. Youth council members receive training from the Citizens’ Advice Bureau to enable them to advise other young people.

Youth council set up in 1992 to represent the views of young people in Restormel to policy-making bodies, publicize the needs and concerns of young people and increase activities and facilities for young people. Event organized jointly with NSPCC, to enable young people aged 1 ( r l 6 to meet and put forward views on key issues such as employment, the environment, recreational facilities and public transport and to set up a youth network to enable young people to have an ongoing voice on issues affecting them.

One of six district youth forums feeding into a county youth forum, offering a focus for young people’s active involvement in the control of the youth service at delivery and policy levels.

Youth forum comprising young people representing each statutory youth club, uniformed organization and voluntary group in South Derbyshire; up to four from each unit, with one vote. Forum is means of both consultation and decision-making (over small amounts of grant aid and project money).

Involves around 20 young people operating as a shadow county council, with full-time coordinator, self-managed budget of f6000 pa, plus use of county council car. Unit youth forums and district youth committees feed into the council.

Initiative based on area youth consultative committees, intended to lead towards a youth council for the whole county.

Aimed at young people aged 14-25 who want to have more of a say on the issues that affect them, and become involved in the running and planning of the youth service.

Youth parish councils set up in many areas of the county have led to the launch of Hampshire Youth Council. Supported by Hampshire Association of Parish Councils and Hampshire Youth Service.

Responsible for ensuring the development of the Young People’s Strategies, including setting up and supporting area youth councils.

Forum intended to give young people and adults an opportunity to discuss local youth service provision and policy. Eight area youth forums providing a mechanism for consulting directly with young people and involving them in planning and evaluating provision. Programme includes training course for young forum members.

Continued

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Table 1 Continued

London Somers Town Youth Forum Croydon Youth Council Sutton Youth Issues Forum

Camden Goods Yard Estate Youth Forum

Manchester Tameside Young People’s Forum Merseyside Liverpool Youth Forum

St Helen’s Youth Forum

Northamptonshire Northampton SRB project (see text) Woodford Hake Youth Parish Council Oxfordshire Help Us Change Carterton

South Humberside Kingston-upon-Hull Youth Forum S ta ffordshire Bentilee Neighbourhood Project Sussex Knoll Youth Forum

West Midlands Wolverhampton Youth Council

Sandwell Youth Forum Worcestershire Redditch Forum Project

Worcester District Youth Council Yorkshire Leeds Environment Initiative (see text) Pickering Youth Forum

Manningham Young People’s Forum

Forum is part of a community development and anti-racist programme

Developed from within the youth service in order to empower young people in the civic life of the Borough. Forum is open to all young people, not restricted to a representational model, and its aim is for young people to have clear ownership, with adult involvement limited to supportive, advisory and servicing roles. Development of youth forum on new housing estate with high ratio of young people to adults. Intended to encourage young people to participate in the way the estate is managed. Funded by Housing Corporation, and has close links with youth service.

Borough-wide forum giving young people a voice on issues that affect them. Received f 5000 start-up grant from Europe.

Youth forum open to anyone over 13, supported by youth service, which provides a support worker, office accommodation, secretarial and financial support. Young people organize their own meetings, decide what events they will attend and negotiate directly with any relevant organization about issues that affect young people, including city council committees. Youth forum established in 1995, representing young people’s views on a wide range of issues.

Youth council based at youth centre, bringing together group of young people aged 13 +, with the aim of improving local provision for young people.

Established on a housing estate to enable young people to express their place needs.

Project intended to give 14-18-year-olds a chance to state what they want to happen in their neighbourhoods.

Initiative bringing together young people, residents and professionals in order to identify and implement initiatives for 1 1 -25-year-olds.

Area youth forums through which young people elect three representatives to the Council’s Youth Affairs Subcommittee. In 1996, 5756 young people voted, choosing from 25 nominees. SRB funding since 1995 to support development of youth forum.

Project supporting the development of appropriate arenas for ycjung people to identify, articulate and plan to meet their needs, in partnership with service providers. Youth council, run by young people, supported by youth workers.

Youth forum open to all local 13-1 9-year-olds, enabling them to communicate their views to local council committees and the press, and take part in local community development. Set up in July 1995 following the disturbances in Manningham. Aims to ensure that young Asian people‘s voices get heard in Bradford. Open to anyone aged 12-25, subdivided into under-25s and under-18s to ensure that views of different age groups are reflected. Young people receive certificates in recognition of their achievements.

Source: National Youth Agency


Table 2 Directory of youth councils/forums in Wales

Cardiff Right On Project

Carmarthenshire Carmarthen Youth Forum

Glanaman Youth Forum Ceredigion Aberaeron Youth Forum Conwy Colwyn Bay Youth Forum Denbighshire Ruthin Young People’s Project Flintshire Hawarden Youth Community Council Neath and Port Jalbot Neath Young People’s Council Newport Gwent Youth Action

Pem brokeshire Fishguard Youth Forum Powys Llanfair Caereinion Youth Forum Llanidloes Young People’s Committee Rhondda, Cynon, Jaff South Wales Police Divisional Youth Forums

Swansea City Centre Youth Forum Vale of Clamorgan Vale of Glamorgan Youth Council

Partly funded by Save the Children, a project designed to involve young people in community development

Youth forum funded by National Lottery grant, designed to give young people a say in local developments. Youth forum funded by National Lottery grant.

Acts as a shadow town council.

Youth forum funded by a grant of f3000 from the town council.

A grant of f 1000 by the town council employs a youth worker to seek out young people’s views.

A Community Council initiative, with local sixth-formers convening a shadow community council.

A young people’s council established to discuss community safety programmes.

Came together following a county conference for young people, funded by EU grant. The group canvasses young people for their views on local issues and lobbies for services.

Acts as a shadow town council.

Established by the town council, encourages young people to come together to organize their own events. A committee of young people drawn from local organizations, in order to advise the town council on services for young people. Three youth forums focusing on community action plans.

Nine young people’s forums, set up within each of the Police Divisional Areas, designed to involve young people on issues to do with community safety. Funded by a grant of f 3000.

A forum focusing on city centre redevelopment.

A forum comprising representatives from local schools. Office accommodation and administrative support are provided.

Source: Wales Youth Agency

Library Boards (Youth Service). The purpose of the LYCs was to get young people involved in tackling local issues and to ensure that their voices were heard by local District Councils. The NIYF, on the other hand, took on a broader role and attempted to provide a national platform for young people’s issues.

In a review of its achievements (NIYF 1992), the Northern Ireland Youth Forum draws attention to a variation of outcomes. T6ese arose for a number of reasons, including differences in funding between

each of the five Boards; a structure that was perceived to be too ’top down’ in its approach and emphasis, the lack of a clear agenda, and no formal methods of monitoring and evaluating effectiveness. Since then, significant changes have taken place. The NIYF now coordinates the activities of more than 50 groups and is proaFtive in campaigning for young people’s rights across four major domains: policing, accommodation, employment and education (NIYF 1996). As a result of high profiling in the media, young people’s views are increasingly valued by

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statutory providers such as the Training and Employ- ment Agency, police authorities, health trusts and Education and Library Boards. Currently being dis- cussed are proposals to get youth representatives on each District Council, and the formation of a Northern Ireland Youth Parliament. Amongst the assurances of the new Labour administration is to send a Northern Ireland Minister to the Youth Forum every year. Nonetheless, given the geographical spread of constituent groups, some difficulties remain (NIYF 1997). Notably, there is a diversity of infrastructure, inequities in support funding, and problems in coordinating the activities of groups. Furthermore, policy differences between statutory agencies complicate the ways in which young people’s suggestions are taken up.

When taken together, six main types of youth council/forum may be identified within the UK. This classification is designed to draw attention to their disparate constitutions and functions. Given that there is no national model, it i s inevitable that some of the categories are not mutually exclusive. In essence, what we are recognizing are the roles that organizations can fulfil, and there is a possibility that organizations may perform more than one role.

Feeder or constituent organizations Many of these have been established as outcomes of Local Agenda 21. They are characterized by a commitment to engage young people in decision-making of various kinds and are planned and resourced to fall within the orbit of the local authority. In effect, they feed into or contribute to ongoing strategies. The ‘Leeds Environment Initiative’ incorporates a number of youth forums and two major consultative projects (Freeman 1997). Together, these inform the ‘Children and Young People’s Strategy’, which is a major City Council programme (Burden and Percy- Smith 1996). Elsewhere, in both Manchester and Northamptonshire, ‘Young People’s Local Agenda 21 ‘ forums have been set up, coordinated respect- ively by the city’s Planning Department Sustainability Team and the county’s Planning and Transportation Department. In Manchester, a young persons’ Local Agenda 21 officer has been appointed to coordinate activities on a two-year basis. Five youth councils in Dumfries and Galloway feed views and information onto the council’s ‘Youth Strategy Executive Group’. This Group has recently been reformulated to comprise six young people and six councillors, all of whom have received training on ways in which to extend participation. One of the largest local

authority-supported forums is in Milton Keynes, which in 1995 had over 200 members aged between 13 and 25 years.

Shadow organizations These represent a set of parallel bodies that mimic existing adult-based organizations. They range from shadow parish councils (for example, Woodford Hake) to local youth parliaments (for example, Stirling). Devon County Council runs a shadow county council, comprising 20 young people, with a full-time coordinator and a self-managed budget of f6000. A set of youth forums and district youth committees feed into the council (National Youth Agency 1996). In Hampshire, youth parish councils have been established in many areas of the county and their success has led to the formation of the ‘Hampshire Youth Council’, which is supported by the Hampshire Association of Parish Councils and the Hampshire Youth Service. The Community Council in Hawarden (Flintshire) works with local sixth-formers to convene a shadow community council of young people. In Wolverhampton, a series of area-based youth forums have been introduced through which young people elect three representatives to the council’s youth affairs subcommittee. In 1996, about 6000 young people voted to choose from 25 nominees. Most recently, Stirling Council set up Scotland’s first Youth Congress. The Congress i s made up of 22 members, aged between 16 and 25, but with a brief to represent all young people from the age of 12. Anyone living and working in Stirling was eligible to stand for the elections in June 1997. Stirling Council offered to train each campaign team in preparation for the election and pay the expenses of any elected delegate.

Issue-specific organizations Typically, these are initiated by single-issue bodies such as the police or health authority, with the intent of engaging young people in agendas that are organizationally led (eg crime reduction or drug misuse). As part of Connect Youth, and in cooper- ation with the Scottish Office Crime Prevention Unit, a programme of consultation with young people on issues to do with community safety has been launched throughout Scotland. In Girvan, Ayrshire, this gave rise to ‘Move On’, a young people’s forum whose members are directly involved in the delivery of drugs education programmes to primary schools and sit on the Community Council. Frequently, discourse of this kind spills over to encompass other


aspects of young people’s local environment. The Youth Service as an organization is increasingly involved in this sort of dialogue. For example, the Dorset Youth Service’s ‘Speak Out’ initiative is based on a set of area youth consultative committees, and their success is leading towards a form of youth council for the whole county. Within the London Borough of Sutton, a ‘Youth Issues Forum’ is being developed from within the youth service, in order to empower young people in the civic life of the community. Eight area youth forums established by the Wigan Youth Service provide a mechanism for consulting directly with young people and for involving them in planning and evaluating provision. As a result of an event organized by Cornwall County Youth Service and the NSPCC, which encouraged 10-1 6-year-olds to express their views on key issues such as the environment, employment, recreational opportunities and public transport, a formal youth network is developing across the county.

Community-development organizations These have a strong local focus. Often their purpose is to secure further resources for the immediate locality. The seedbed for these types of initiative is diverse, although there are a number of projects funded by the Single Regeneration Budget (SRB). Within the Northampton SRB area there are several schemes that encourage young people to express their views about their local environs with a view to improving provision (Buchanan et a/ 19961, whilst in Sandwell, SRB monies are being used to create a local youth forum. The ‘Bentilee Neighbourhood Project’ in Stoke-on-Trent provides an opportunity for 14-1 8-year-olds to have a say in what they want to happen in their neighbourhood, and a similar project is running within public housing estates in North Hull, coordinated by the local Housing Action Trust. Likewise, the ‘Camden Goods Yard Estate Youth Forum’ has been formed on a new housing estate with a high proportion of young people, in order to enable them to make decisions and participate in the way in which the estate is developed. On a slightly broader scale, the ’Leeds Listens’ programme consulted 2000 young people to estab- lish what they wanted for their city and to draw up an action plan that places young people at the heart of policy-making (Freeman 1997). In Shetland, a youth forum was formed because of an awareness that young Shetlanders are poorly provided for in respect to local leisure facilities. Unlike many places, there are no fast-food outlets, few cafes

and no cinemas. The forum campaigns for change and is assisted by Community workers and youth leaders.

Croup-specific organizations This sort of structure represents groups of young people who share a common identity, often through their marginalized position within society. Issues and experiences of intolerance, discrimination and inequity provide powerful forces of cohesion for young people with disabilities, gay and lesbian groups and ethnic minorities. Sometimes these groups may be set up within a local context. For example, the ‘Somers Town Youth Forum’ in North- West London represents one of the anti-racist initiatives developed after a local murder. Following the disturbances in the Manningham area of Bradford in 1995, a local forum, open to 12-25-year-olds was formed. Divided into under-25s and under-1 85, this forum is regarded as a major conduit of communication for the views of young Asian people regarding their local area.

Young people-initiated organizations Few examples of this kind of initiative have as yet arisen. In conception, these are organizations that are established independently by young people and run on agendas and activities set through their own volition. In the first place, these may have been convened in response to a successful local campaign, but in due course they evolve to take on a broader brief. More typical, however, are those structures that are set in motion and supported by an external agency, but that operate as an independent body. For example, in Liverpool, the local Youth Service provide a support worker, office accommodation and secretarial and financial support for a forum open to anyone over 13 years. It is up to i ts members to organize meetings, decide upon an agenda and negotiate on their own behalf with local decision-making organizations, as well as council committees. In a similar vein, the Coventry Youth Service is supporting a group of local young people who are planning their own conference on Local Agenda 21 and who wish to publish a newsletter to link together the activities of other groups within the city.

Participation or another case of rhetoric?

Whether youth councils/forums are effective mechanisms for the incorporation of young people into

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the environmental planning process is as yet difficult to judge within the UK, given the developing nature of these structures. In the absence of well-defined performance indicators there are, nonetheless, a number of important issues facing any organization claiming to represent the views of young people. These issues relate to the initiation, the process and the outcome of youth participation.

Successful youth participation depends in part on the conditions in which it is initiated. There i s a need to identify who has initiated the participation and their purpose in doing so. Where adult-dominated agencies or authorities initiate participation, there may be ulterior motives such as conflict resolution or social control. Even where there is a genuine commitment to participation on the part of agencies and authorities, the participatory mechanisms must be examined carefully to ensure that participation amounts to more than tokenism (Hart 1997). This requires a clear interface between young people and the environmental planning process, and meaningful links with adult decision-makers.

A further significant aspect of the initiation process concerns who is included and represented. The age of youth ‘participants’ in the UK has generally been in the older age group (16 and above). Yet the French case study (see below) illustrates the successful involvement of much younger children. The constitution of the group in terms of sex, class, ethnicity and ability is important if youth participation is not to be open to the accusation of elitism. Elite participation may be acceptable if the participants represent the interests of a wider constituency, but there is a danger that participation advances the interests of the vociferous, articulate and confident, at the expense of others. This appearance of youth participation lends legitimacy to adult decision-making and may increase marginalization among the silent majority of young people.

The initiation of youth participation has implications for training. In order for young people to participate fully in these councils/forums, they need to be equipped with the generic skills of communication and versed in the debates about citizenship (Lansdown 1995). This question raises issues about whether space should be allocated within the school curriculum for these matters or whether, by being active and creative members of organizations, young people are both developing skills and defining notions of citizenship for themselves.

If youth participation is to be successful, consideration must be given to the setting in which it is

initiated. Places where adults meet may not provide appropriate spaces for young people. A committee room in a council building can be an intimidating setting for the exchange of views. Venues and meeting times will also affect levels of attendance.

Where participation has been successfully initiated, there are a range of issues to do with how the process of participation might be managed. The agenda of a youth council/forum is an ongoing concern and there is a need to examine how issues are identified and negotiated if adult-directed groups are not to obfuscate the real concerns of young people. This conflict is all the more problematic where the adults concerned are ’experts’ on youth matters, as there is the potential for them to propose what they consider to be in the ’best interests’ of young people, rather than enabling them to decide for themselves (Hart 1992). This enabling role should ensure that participants have a clear brief. In particular, they need information about the range of options available to them, the procedures and processes that control these options and the implications of their decision-making. Yet, for the brief to be enabling, it cannot be prescriptive, and this balance is not an easy one to achieve.

A further problem with the process of participation relates to the issue of lifespan. Young people who engage in these groups are likely to be involved in many other activities and thus able to participate only on a limited basis. For some, the group may be something in which they are involved for a short time, especially as the ’present’ or the ’now’ of young people is constantly changing. The deadlines of adult decision-making processes may not coincide with the activity of the group, and the rhythms of the local planning process may be discordant to the practice of the group. Many forums arise out of the identification of special concerns which may be both spatially and temporally determined. Once the particular issue has been addressed, the need for that type of representational structure may no longer be appropriate. The pressure to prolong the life of a group in the interests of adults, who may need to claim that consultation is taking place, rather than those of young people, is something to be guarded against (Freeman and Veerman 1992). Where there is commitment on the part of young people for an ongoing participatory mechanism, there will need to be a resource commitment. Without some limited funding or support in kind, such as the provision of a meeting place, most youth forums are unlikely to survive in the long term.


The value of any public participation is likely to be judged by the outcomes produced, and youth participation is no exception. To ensure that such outcomes are meaningful, the process must involve genuine communication. Young people need to be confident that their opinions will be treated with respect and given the seriousness they deserve. Without this assurance young people will quickly become discouraged and dismiss the participation process as ineffective, with all the implications this has for their confidence in democratic processes as they grow into adulthood. We would suggest that poor participatory mechanisms are very effective in training young people to become non-participants. Even where consultation i s genuine, there is an unresolved issue of power: to what extent participat- ing groups of young people can or should have any authority. There is a danger that youth councils, if not carefully constituted, become little more than sound- ing boxes, capable of making considerable clamour, but without the means to bring about change. Yet, the devolution of power by local authorities and planning agencies raises issues to do with public accountability, which must be carefully thought through if participation i s to be effective. Where participation does occur, it is important that proper feedback is ensured. Children have the right to know the outcome of any decision, and if these decisions are contrary to their wishes, the reasons should be clearly explained.

Many of these issues resonate with concerns about the effectiveness of public participation in general, but we would suggest that young people are doubly disadvantaged. In the absence of legiti- mate political rights, any participatory opportunities afforded may be perceived by authorities and agencies as optional favours. As such, these opportunities are subject to the vagaries of political fashion and the transitory resource allocation entailed.

The French experience: a comparative model

Beyond the UK, however, there are examples of many successful youth councils/forums which provide evidence for the effectiveness of participation. Satterthwaite et a/ (1996) and Hart (1997) draw attention to prominent participatory structures in Norway, Sweden and Italy. Among the most successful and the longest standing, however, are those coordinated in France by the Association

Nationale des Conseils d‘Enfants et de jeunes (ANACEJ 1996). In this capacity, the UK lags behind many of its European partners. This section briefly describes the ways in which ANACEJ coordinates and manages the youth council programme, with a view to providing a model for future development within the UK.

ANACEJ is responsible for ‘Children and Youth Town Councils’ across France. The growth of these town councils has been rapid and widespread. The first was set up in 1979, in response to the International Year of the Child, and by 1987 there were still only 40. In the early 1990s these had grown to around 200, rising to 740 in 1995 and 930 in 1996. The town councils vary in their age compo- sition, but most fall into one of three categories: 9-1 3 years, 9-1 5 years and 14-1 8 years. The youth councillors are generally elected for two years and the only condition for nomination is that candidates must attend the local school or live in the locality. Candidates are drawn from schools, clubs and local communities, and elections take place in October or November. ANACEJ recommends 30 delegates for a city of around 25 000 population. The principal goals of these institutions are to provide a place for the expression of young people’s values, a place where young people are listened to and may acquire the skills of citizenship. In the experience of ANACEJ, four major types of issue are raised by the young councillors:

1 Issues about the general quality of young people’s lives. These are matters that do not lend themselves to projects, but that raise questions about the way in which young people are growing up within a society. Through discourse and dialogue between adults and young people, both parties become more keenly sensitized to each other’s cultural worlds. In addition, these sorts of discussion are seen as providing training in the processes of democracy and citizenship.

2 Issues that are site specific. Usually these are matters that relate to a particular problem of local concern, for example, the poor upkeep of a local recreation area, or damage to local street lighting, most of which can be accommodated within existing servicing programmes.

3 Issues that lead to short-term projects. Sometimes the young representatives initiate projects that may last three to four working sessions. These may be campaigns for better drug awareness or the removal of graftiti from public areas.

The right to say 77

4 Issues that lead to longer-term projects. There are occasions when this sort of solution becomes the only feasible strategy. These projects may extend over the working life of more than one council and are often outcomes of young people’s com- plaints about the lack of facilities or recreational opportunities within a locality.

The success of the French model provides a useful counterpoint to the UK experience. A major differ- ence is that in France one organization has been central to the development of the youth council/ forum programme. In consequence, ANACEJ has been able to define a strategy for implementation, which includes plans of action, monitoring and dis- semination. A culture of participation is developing, in which young people’s involvement (from an early age) is seen as normal and responsible. At present, this is not the case within the UK as a whole.

Conclusion In contrast to the expectations of the development and socialization models of childhood, the growth of the youth council/forum movement in the UK and elsewhere suggests that there is a growing recognition that children and young people both are entitled to a level of self-determination and are capable of participation consistent with their competence. However, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the international body that was set up to monitor the implementation of the Convention, expressed concern in its meeting in January 1995 about the lack of progress made by the UK Govern- ment in complying with its principles and standards. In particular, attention was drawn to the insufficiency of measures relating to the operationalization of Article 12. It recommended that:

. . . greater priority be given to . . . Article 12, concerning the child’s right to make their views known and to have those views given due weight, in the legislative and administrative measures and in policies undertaken to implement the rights of the child . . .

and went on to suggest that:

. . . the State party consider the possibility of establishing further mechanisms to facilitate the participation of children in decisions affecting them, including within the family and the community. (United Nations 1995, 15).

To date, a major problem confronting the development of a structure of youth councils/forurns in the UK i s both the piecemeal and ad hoc manner in

which they are being set in place and the experimen- tal nature of many of the initiatives. At present, unlike in France, there is no single organization responsible for their inception. Even when national agencies are involved, decisions are largely left to individual statutory and voluntary organizations. As a consequence, within a relatively small geographical area, such as a county, there may be an example of each type of youth/council forum (detailed above), none drawing upon the experience of another. Also, there is no agreed model or constitution that defines the structure of these councils/forums. There is still a sense that these are novel and slightly ‘risky’ experiments, which gives rise to attitudes that place them outside the mainstream in relation to environmental planning. Indeed, there is no commitment on a national scale to ensure that, when these councils/forums are set in place, appropriate actions will follow.

Although there are signs that the campaign for children’s active participation in their environmental, societal and economic futures is gaining both momentum and credibility, what is striking is the current disengagement of so many young people from mainstream democratic activity, increasingly known as the ‘democratic deficit’ (Lansdown 1995). The youth council movement provides an opportunity for young people to re-engage in the decision- making which affects their social and physical worlds.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Mark Taylor and Barry Percy- Smith, both researchers at the Centre for Children and Youth, for their help in data collection, and to the information and development teams of the National Youth Agency (Carolyn Oldfield and Peter Lowenstein), Scottish Com- munity Education Council (Kirsty McCran and Marc Liddle), Wales Youth Agency (Liz Sharpe and Liam Kealy) and the Northern Ireland Youth Forum (Mo Sykes).

Note

Further information may be obtained from the following: British Youth Council, 57 Charlton Street, London NW1 7HU. National Youth Agency, 17-23 Albion Street, Leicester LE1 6GD. Scottish community Education Council, 9 Haymarket Terrace, Edinburgh EHl2 5EZ. Wales Youth Agency, Leslie Court, LBn-y-Llyn, Caerphilly CF83 lBQ. Northern Ireland Youth Forum, The Warehouse, 7 James Street South, Belfast BTZ 8DN.


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the right to say: the development of youth councils/forums within the uk

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