RESOURCES: Review - Much still to learn about youth involvement
Reviewed by HOWARD WILLIAMSON
Wednesday, February 12, 2003
For this is the essential message of the text. The dramatic pace at which youth participation, in many different forms, has been rolled out in recent years has not been matched by any corresponding evaluation of its impact and effectiveness or the processes by which it has been developed.
The involvement of young people in public decision-making has been at the forefront of public policy initiatives for, arguably, three core reasons.
It ensures compliance with Article 12 of the UN Convention on Children's Rights, it is claimed that it makes for better practice and it provides a platform for young people to learn the skills and art of citizenship.
This report calls for all organisations working with young people to have the capacity for self-evaluation. For it maintains that, to date, too much burgeoning practice rests on anecdotal evidence and untested assumptions.
The Carnegie Young People Initiative has been in the vanguard of promoting better practice on this front, but this report suggests that young people continue to have limited impact and influence, especially at strategic levels. There is still much to learn and much to be done if young people's contribution to decision-making in the public sphere is to be both broadened and deepened.
The report is a measured analysis of a range of evaluation studies. It assesses impact and process questions, such as organisational and community benefits, benefits to young people and issues of representativeness.
More critically, perhaps, it discusses barriers to involvement, notably ignorance of the possibility of becoming involved and some deeply rooted cynicism about the capacity to make a difference. It also raises the question of training, both for young people in the "art of compromise" and for those responsible for facilitating young people's involvement.
It is an excellent report, exposing the complex territory that remains largely under-explored. Far too much continues to be taken for granted - that youth involvement is inherently a good thing - and there continues, anyway, to be a significant aspiration gap.
Kirby and Bryson are adamant that young people should be involved in public decision-making so there is no dispute about the why question.
But the what, how and where questions have still to be resolved.
- Measuring the Magic? evaluating and researching young people's participation in public decision making by Perpetua Kirby with Sarah Bryson. Published by The Carnegie Young People Initiative 2002. 79 pages.
ISBN 0 900259 47 7.