Legacy of Paris Brown's downfall

“I now feel that in the interests of everyone concerned, in particular the young people of Kent who I feel will benefit enormously from the role of a youth commissioner, that I should stand down.”

With these words, 17-year-old Paris Brown resigned as Kent’s youth police and crime commissioner (PCC). It had been just five days since her appointment was announced.

Her exit followed a media outcry over comments she made on Twitter about sex, drugs, “pikeys” and “fags” that sparked a police investigation.

Now the police have dropped the matter, Brown will doubtless be looking to put the controversy behind her – but will the affair have a long-term impact on youth participation?

Shannon Holland-Houghton, a former UK Youth Parliament member for Boston in Lincolnshire, thinks it has marred efforts to encourage youth participation.

“I’ve heard a lot of adults saying this is exactly why young people shouldn’t get involved in decision making,” says the 18-year-old, who wrote a comment piece for the Boston Standard newspaper defending young people in the wake of the scandal. “This has damaged it. If it had been successful, things like the UK Youth Parliament may have been taken more seriously. Now people are going to view young people negatively across the board.”

Fighting back
Despite her concerns, Holland-Houghton believes young people will fight back. “Young people I know are now more determined to get involved and prove people wrong,” she says. But she worries that there will now be fewer opportunities for them to get involved and to take up high-profile and influential positions.

Nottinghamshire PCC Paddy Tipping has confirmed that he will not be hiring a young counterpart as an advisor. But he insists that he had already decided not to before the controversy about Brown.

“I think you have to involve young people, but there are different approaches,” he says. “There are established structures and it seems sensible to use what already exists.”

Tipping has been consulting the area’s youth councils and taken part in web chats to glean opinions from local young people. He also suggests a youth commissioner system could still work in other areas if it was handled differently.

“In Brown’s case, it’s as clear as crystal that the application process could have been handled better,” he says. “There should have been more checks in place.”

Enver Solomon, director of evidence and impact at the National Children’s Bureau, says Brown’s experience does not suggest that youth participation “doesn’t work”.

“This was one high-profile example of putting a young person in a prominent role, but participation comes in many different forms,” he says. “Participation that involves ensuring young people have a say on what’s happening, for example in schools or among young offenders, is important.”

Practitioners who work with young people, he says, recognise the differences between the Brown case and the wide variety of participation work that goes on, such as “consultation, co-production or putting young people into positions where they are able to take authoritative decisions”.

Solomon admits there is a risk that the public will shy away from giving young people similar roles to Brown’s in the future, but says that good examples will outweigh her “isolated case”. “There are lots of examples of successful high-profile youth participation, such as children in care councils or youth mayors,” he says.

There are lessons to learn from Kent’s youth PCC debacle, but heavier vetting of young candidates is not one of them, he says.

“Participation isn’t about choosing young people who you think are more presentable. The challenge is reaching those young people who are excluded and don’t feel part of their communities. The most effective participation draws in children who don’t feel they have a stake in their community.”

Solomon says risks exist whenever user involvement plays a part in service delivery. “It’s important that challenges don’t undermine the value of letting people’s voices be heard on issues that concern them. Ultimately, it leads to better outcomes for all concerned,” he says.

Clear guidelines
Keji Okeowo, development officer for youth participation at the National Council for Voluntary Youth Services (NCVYS), says organisations should review how they manage youth participation in light of the Brown case.

She says youth participation should operate in a similar way to employment. With social media, Okeowo says organisations should provide clear guidelines for all staff and their young members.

NCVYS requires its employees to set up separate professional Twitter accounts, which the organisation monitors intermittently. It also provides social media training. “We don’t want our young people to lose their personality, but we always get everybody to set up a new account, or lines between personal and professional are blurred,” she says.

Okeowo notes that young participants have particular vulnerabilities that the organisations appointing them have a responsibility to support.

“Organisations, regardless of the experiences they have in engaging with and recruiting young people, should work with other bodies that are used to working with young people to develop training plans and identify the best way to work with them,” she says.
 
“Young people come from such broad backgrounds and a lot of them have views that they have not yet developed, because they are still growing. You need to put in training and support, and give them time to ease into the role and ensure they understand it.”