Young people with experience or feelings of loneliness and isolation must shape the work we do. It is obviously important that responses are not developed based on the views of just one or two young people, but young people with a lived experience bring an insight into this issue that the majority of workers may not have – regardless of how long we have been working on this subject or even if we have had our own struggles with loneliness and isolation. Involving young people in our work to tackle loneliness and isolation also gives them a degree of control, which is helpful in terms of their confidence in taking steps to improve their own wellbeing. This section provides a range of information and guides to support the involvement of young people in your work.
As well as providing useful information to help develop responses to youth loneliness and isolation, this NPC qualitative evaluation of the Co-op Foundation and government-funded Building Connections projects considers the involvement of young people in terms of the co-design of projects.
Enables people to measure/consider the degree to which young people are involved in decision making and planning.
Participation Works has produced an info sheet that has a number of tips on what disabled young people say they want in terms of their participation. The tips actually work for all kinds of young people.
Participation Works has developed a training pack for those workers who want to provide appropriate development opportunities to improve the ability of the children and young people they work with to participate in decision making.
This document provides a guide to evaluating the involvement of young people in our work.
This document includes some suggested ways of obtaining evaluation from young people.