Actively Involving Children and Young People Partnership
AICYPP
ACTIVELY INVOLVING CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE PROJECT (AICYPP)
“To improve the engagement of all children and young people in the provision of public services in the Harrogate District”
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOLLOWING THE 25 MAY NETWORK MEETING:
Launch of the new Actively Involving Children and Young People Partnership Project Fund:
open for applications now
The fund is designed to promote the involvement of young people in the design and delivery of local services. Grants of between £200 and £2000 are available to support community, environmental, sports, arts, heritage and play projects/activities. The awarded funds must deliver an outcome of benefit to children and young people, their families and the wider community.
Applications must support one or more of the following: Harrogate District Strategic Partnership local priorities, the North Yorkshire Children’s Trust Integrated Participation Strategy and the North Yorkshire Sustainable Communities Strategy.
Currently the Fund has £12,000 available to allocate before the end of March 2011. Funding will be granted to cover a 12 month period.
The Harrogate District Strategic Partnership (HDSP) is the supporting partnership for the Actively Involving Children and Young People Project Fund in the Harrogate District.
Application information is available to download below:
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Partnership update
The Partnership will continue to send out information and updates in 2010 and 2 further network meetings are planned, one for later this year and one in spring 2011, when we hope to be able to showcase some of the projects which have been successful in getting funding for their participation work.
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The Actively Involving Children and Young People Project (AICYPP) was set up in late 2007 to support all local organisations wishing to improve the involvement of children and young people in the shaping and delivery of public services in the District.
It is a multi-agency partnership project, funded by Harrogate Borough Council and NYCC Children and Young People’s Service in Year 1, with North Yorkshire Police and the Harrogate District Safer Communities Partnership joining the original funding partners for Year 2 (2009/10). The project is endorsed by the Harrogate District Strategic Partnership.
The main way in which the project promotes the active involvement of children and young people is to support the AICYPP Network, which brings together people from a wide range of local organisations with an interest in this type of work (around 115 members at present). Harrogate and Area CVS co-ordinate the Network Meetings and database.
Via the Network we aim to share good practice, celebrate success and provide practical support on participation skills and techniques for public and VCS organisations seeking to involve children and young people in the development of services. Training activity is organised by North Yorkshire Youth, who are key partners in the project.
A Steering Group supports the Partnership, made up of reps from the funders, together with NYCC 4Youth and Harrogate Hospital Foundation Trust. The Steering Group’s role is to monitor and evaluate the success of the project and to secure further funding for future activity.
The Project is also working with NYCC 4Youth to support the roll out of Youth Councils in the Harrogate District and to link with developments across North Yorkshire in this area of work
More information
If you would like to be added to the database or want more information please e mail carol@harrogate.org
Available to download
Participation: A Practical Guide (an easy to use toolkit developed by the project)
SOCIAL MEDIA AND YOUNG PEOPLE
More and more the opportunities of using social media in consultation and engagement are becoming obvious. The Department of Children Schools and Families (DCSF) has created a set of Guides to help communicate and collaborate with young people through social media and inspiring video content. The advice (click here) will help those needing to reach out to a youth audience.
The first of these guides is Engaging through social media: Social media explained. This explains social media and how you can work with it. It will assist you in starting a conversation with young people and get them actively involved in creating and maintaining a social media group, page or account. The second, Engaging through social media: Video production explained, outlines how you can develop creative videos to promote your activities. Finally, three short films have been produced to illustrate the stages of video creation.
We are really keen to hear from anyone using social media and videos in their consultation and engagement activities, especially if you are willing to share your successes (and failures …?). Please e mail Carol@harrogate.org if you can help.
January 2010 Update
The January network meeting was kindly hosted by Knaresborough Community Centre (Harrogate Borough Council) and once again attracted a really good mix of colleagues with an interest in ensuring children and young people can have their say in the services we provide.
James Parkes and Julie Spink from North Yorkshire County Council (NYCC) 4Youth gave a really interesting update on the roll out of Youth Councils across North Yorkshire and shared some of the challenges and successes to date. Participants provided their thoughts to the Harrogate Library Redevelopment Project on ways in which children and young people can be attracted into this fantastic venue when it re-opens later in the year.
We also allowed ample time for networking, with Harrogate College, HBC Parks Division, and 4Youth sharing some examples of good practice in participation, and Harrogate LINk and the NYCC Children’s Rights Officer receiving ideas and suggestions on some issues that they are currently facing around seeking the views of children and young people.
The morning finished with a look ahead, to test out views on whether there is a need for the Partnership to continue when the current round of funding comes to an end. This feedback will be looked at by the Partnership Steering Group when it meets in early March.
October 2009 Update
There was a good turnout for the AICYPP Network Meeting at Henshaws on 7 October with some very positive feedback and a variety of helpful comments and suggestions that will be taken on board to make future meetings even more useful and enjoyable.
At the meeting participants were asked if they would be able to fill in the HyBRid Assessment Tool for a project, service area or activity they were involved in. The most important section is the action plan, not the score achieved.
Available to download
A copy of the presentation from the meeting
A copy of the project update and “bullseye” diagram
A worked example of the HyBRid assessment tool
Participation activities
Can you help us develop more resources for the network? We are keen to share good practice and examples of successful participation activity so if you have found something which works please use this template to write it up and e mail to carol@harrogate.org. Any activity no matter how simple will be valuable to members of the network, so please think about the things you may do automatically when working with Children and Young People and let us know so that we can share it!
PARTICIPATION WORKS TRAINING COURSES
Participation Works is a consortium of six national children and young people’s agencies. They are working together to ensure that every child and young person can influence decisions affecting their lives. Participation Works offers a wide range of training course and the 2010/2011 training schedule is now available. Visit http://www.participationworks.org.uk/