Co-production vital across child services

The first session of this year's Conservative Party conference is set to focus on education, housing and political participation. All three policy issues have, in recent years, under the same party's watch, produced deep fissures of concern, pushing many young people to the margins and causing anxiety, frustration and sometimes alienation. At the heart of this lies a dramatic deterioration in the subjective emotional wellbeing of children and young people, who are struggling to find out where they fit in the modern world. The Children's Society Good Childhood report 2017 is testament to that.

I hope another recent report, Making Young Minds Matter, by Respublica for Barnardo's, has also crossed their radar. It argues that the government must renew its focus on supporting young people facing difficulty and disadvantage, "providing them with the right support early in their lives so that they have the best possible chance of growing up to become active and valued contributors to society".

This is old rhetoric, but a new approach is recommended. In the spirit of contemporary ideas such as co-production, co-location and co-commissioning, the call is for greater equal collaboration between service providers and for young people themselves to have a much greater role in shaping the support they receive. For this to be realised, the report believes the government should place a duty on local authorities to promote collaborative working practices, to commit to more long-term funding arrangements and to ensure as much support as possible is provided through proactive early intervention.

Two issues are important here, both linked to the idea of co-production. We have learned over the years that so-called "clients" respond best when they have contributed, indeed sometimes formulated, what they consider to be the best solutions for their problems and predicaments. We also know that so long as there is clarity about primary responsibility and accountability, issues are best addressed over broad professional territory, with specialist intervention becoming a measure of last resort. This means young people in difficult situations need to be engaged alongside professionals in considering the best resolutions for their difficulties - how young people see them may be very different from professional perspectives.

It also means there should be no hiding place for the professionals. You never actually know where young people are going to show up and reveal their troubles. So youth workers, careers advisers, school teachers, police officers and health professionals all need to up the ante, and the antennae, in terms of being alert to young people's concerns if these are to be nipped in the bud at the earliest opportunity.

The Making Young Minds Matter report highlights the need for structural and cultural reform. Better, earlier, professional collaboration is one side of the coin. Improved, authentic partnership with young people in shaping the solutions to problems that are both theirs and ours is the other.

Howard Williamson is professor of European youth policy at the University of South Wales