Subscribe Feed (RSS)More than just youth participation - accountability?!
March 12th, 2008 by mas | Filed under Participation & Citizenship.I finally got round to submitting our response to the DCSF Consultation on ‘Youth Sector Support‘ and one of the questions raised an issue I’d considered a while back.
Participation is the current ‘in term’ (although I see ‘empowerment’ is making a come back!). But while I think youth participation is in principle a good thing, its not the be all & end all. I also think too much apparent participation is in fact minority participation - it uses a model of representation rather than effectively allowing any young person to be able to participate in an organisation or service. Representation is very useful - but only if those doing the representing are effectively representing the views and needs of others (and often this is questionable).
So how do you broaden participation so that young people who are not ‘represented’ are able to have an input? Well I don’t have an easy solution to this, but something I think needs to be much higher up the agenda is ‘accountability’.
How many organisations and service providers that work with young people are actually accountable to them? And how many are also accountable to the parents and carers of young people?
The best example I’ve seen of some form of accountability to young people was an event organised by the Youth Participation Project in Donegal, Ireland.As part of their programme the Health Service organised an annual conference at which people representing the different services presented to an audience of young people on how they would seek to involve young people and ensure their services were meeting young peoples needs.
What made this interesting for me was that we attended the event in its 2nd year, and at this ‘return conference’, those same service providers were asked to report back on how well they had done against what they had said they hoped to achieve. This was very powerful and very interesting - there were clear differences between those that had clearly worked hard towards what they’d said they’d do, and those that for whatever reason hadn’t done very much.
Charities and many other organisations are required to have an Annual General Meeting. Wouldn’t it be interesting if all organisations and services that work with young people were required to provide an ‘Annual Accountability Event’ - an event that is open to any young person (and their parents) that is eligible for that service, and where the organisation has to provide a report on how they have used their funding, time and resources towards the best interests of the young people they are working for. At the event there would have to be opportunity for young people to ask questions and the subsequent minutes would have to be made publicly available in a format that could be easily understood and accessed.
This would allow organisations to continue the good work they may have started on the ‘participation agenda’, but would also require a degree of accountability to all of the young people they represent or provide services for. The reports would provide a way for anyone to be able to see how effectively organisations are using their resources and how genuinely they are working towards the best interests of young people.
Just an idea! But it would be nice to see a demand for accountability not just participation.
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