Devon Youth Service - Youth Participation Team

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3 Comments

Comment by Katie Bacon on December 3, 2008 at 12:43pm

Brilliant news about the work your doing in Norfolk! I shall forward our notes form the meeting on the 18th for you to check out.

Be great if you have any good practice to share.

The main challenge I have is that SNS outreach is only 30% of my work load so it's demanding as all the above needs to be developed. We're hoping to establish a work task group within the Youth Service.

I am NOT developing the policy/guidance - Senior Team leader John Calvert has that responsibility. I have offered several times to offer support. Watch this space.

There needs to be an aduit of Devon youth service to discover which staff are using SNS for work. This will need to lead by the quailty and development team.

We're about to do a huge publicity launch early 2009 to encourage young people to join our SNS page and groups. Working with some young people in a college to develop the publicity and review our training.

The next main challenge beyond training is........supporting adults to hear and respond to the feedback. Also being really clear about the reason for bringing yp together in a space but for what purpose? My brief is about participation and yp views being heard within Devon County and local youth provisions. I am trying different approaches to gain their on line participation, what I'm finding is yp want to chat about meet friends. The challenge is for me to find the appropriate tools/approach ..............or the right subject!

The greater success has been linked with 'live' group discussion then taking it on-line. This links with a new project we're launching in Feb 2009 - 4 local group meetings across Devon every 6 weeks. Where yp are invited to meet their locally elected young person, find out what's happening, present their views, challenge and network. We're hoping to find out the 'local stories' of young peoples lives in the different areas of Devon, rural, village and urban areas and encourage learning and exchange on line. I need a magic wand!

Comment by Tom Gaskin on December 2, 2008 at 6:43pm

Hi Katie,

It's really interesting to hear how it's developing in your area. We have been working on very similar things; I delivered training for our Children's Workforce last week. This was limited to using SNS as a tool within the workplace for communicating, collaborating and consulting internally. Our next training session will be with a smaller group to promote the active engagement of c&yp through these sites. The pilot we initially carried out regarding virtual detached youth work and the online collaboration project that I delivered with a group of young people will inform this. I am now working on a registration/declaration process, which I hope will be adopted across Norfolk County Council. This process will enable workers to register/declare how they use or are intending to use SNS for work purposes and to gain authorisation to do so. It will include:

- A registration/declaration process (enabling staff to explore how they plan to use SNS for professional purposes and to gain authorisation and support)
- Establishing a small group that can review the registration/declaration forms and approve the use of SNS
- Ensuring regular training is available for those interested in or currently using SNS for professional use (which might be embedded within the induction training provided for each member of Children’s Services staff)
- A generic risk assessment (which will be incorporated within the registration/declaration process to enable staff to consider the risks)
- Policy and guidance to inform staff (which will differ depending how they intend to use the sites)

How are you getting on with your policy/guidance? Have you discovered that staff are already using SNS for work purposes? If so how are you dealing with this?

Thanks

Tom

Comment by Tim Davies on November 29, 2008 at 5:54pm

Hey Katie

This is a fantastic clip - distilled learning and key points... will reblog over the YWSN blog and mine if that's ok...

Thanks again for continuing to inspire and catalyse work in this area :)