Participation in Action: Young people bring fresh insight to housing board

“I want people to have a chance to live life and if their housing is not good enough to allow them to do that, then things need to be improved,” says 18-year-old Shellesa Coke.

Shellesa is one of 15 newly appointed board members of the Plus Dane housing association’s shadow youth board, which has been tasked with debating and deciding policy for the Merseyside organisation.

Plus Dane has been training the 16- to 19-year-olds, who took up their posts on the board at the beginning of June, to challenge and influence the decisions that impact upon residents.

Challenging perspectives
Plus Dane chief executive Ken Perry says that by involving young people at the highest level of the organisation, the group is taking into account a key group of residents. “By bringing younger people into our governance structure we will benefit from fresh ideas and be challenged by new perspectives,” he explains.

“Our youth engagement teams and their partners have enjoyed great success in engaging young people from diverse and hard-to-reach backgrounds. It will be these people who will ensure that our mission of investing in neighbourhoods and fighting against inequality receives rigorous scrutiny.”

Youth engagement is one of the housing association’s stated priorities and as such, it has teamed up with other agencies including Merseyside Youth Development Service to offer young people free 18-month personal and career development courses.

For Shellesa, her work with Plus Dane has helped her focus on her career aspirations.

“I started off on Plus Dane’s youth forum and over the two years they offered us lots of training,” she explains. “I went to college to do business, but after I got more involved with Plus Dane I realised that I wanted something different and now I am on a health and social care course, and I am hoping to do a social work degree next year.

“I think other housing associations should follow what Plus Dane is doing and work more within the community and listen to young people’s views, because we might be future tenants so I think we should have a say on what happens.”

The shadow youth board will share agendas with, and make reports and recommendations for the group’s Merseyside board.

Adam Sexton, another youth board member who is studying politics and criminology at Chester University, says: “It is essential for young people to play a role at the top of an organisation like Plus Dane, not only because we can explain the challenges young people face and how they want their services delivered, but also because we can bring fresh perspectives to how Plus Dane is run as a whole.”