 Hei, yn ymwhaith! Dyma'r Bethy Mae O, mae'n oed i'r prydau. Ac rwy'n ymhwynd i hynny, ond mae'n gwybod i gydag fanmwyaf o'r documenti yn ddwy'r gweithio, i'r cyfrifio cyngorol, ac yn cyfrifio cyfrifio cyfrifio yn y ddw i'r bywyd, rydyn ni'n trwy gael'r peth sydd wedi'u gweld. erbyr allan golygiadau ydyn nhw i'r prif syren. Felly, mae gennym ar y gwahbwych. Gocha eu adracstu eu gymryd ar ôl, oherwydd mae'r prif zesafogi'r cymdeithas i Llywodraeth i'r wych i ddarparu yno yn penistedd o'r ffordd ffordd o ffordd i'r cymdように a'r gallu rhoi geithasiu'r bydd ar y mynedr I pan oedd. A nhw'n dweud i ddefnyddio'r bydd ei dweud o'r rhaglwch i'r shawdd rhai o'r dweud i dweud einzigogi'r ddweud ystod, rwy'n amlwg ar hynny'n gwybod a'r dweud ar hwnnw i'n gwneud. Mae ni'n amlwg ond awtai bywyd i chi o fyngg gwaith, nid o'r gweithio. Yn fynd yn gweithio, hynny amdansion â hyn a'n amlwg a'r gweithio'n meddwl i chi. Fy enw i'n Lloria Lundi, iddyn nhw'n roi amlwg mewn i. Rydw i'n inchidemiu, rydw i ffagur yma i'r amlwg i Bal Ffast i'r Cork. Mae gweithio'r gweithio yw gweithredu gyda средdau, a'r gweithio'r gweithredu ywnosunfa a'r gweithredu. Mae'n cyystريwll yn cyfeiri'n gweithredu, ac mae'n cynyddu i chi. A'n cyflym Aelundi Gweithredu, mae'n gweithredu. Mae i fi'n cymrydau yng nghyddonhaeth â gweithredu o leeeth rheswm yn y UK, lle maeо Oxford i mi fân yn cyffredinol, dan yw Cardiff ac amser. Rwy'n ei fawr am ddiffrwntio adroddeddened gan ddiwedd iawn. I watched it, was blown away, found out who did this, you know? And then we had a phone call conversation, and as I was talking to Sarah on the phone one day, laying in my bed for some reason, but I know where I was, and I was talking to her because we have a phone. And I thought, she's just being completely rights compliant with what I'd ever really intended. It's just like a perfect example of how you should do something like this, and then we got connected. That was me. Hi, I'm Olivia. I'm a trustee for the Scottish Youth Parliament, and I'm here because SYP was involved in the creation of the documentary. They interviewed two of our former trustees, who unfortunately couldn't make it, about our views on school exclusion. We take very much a rights-based approach to all of our work, really. Particularly, we pay attention to Article 12, which is the right of young people having their voice heard. And so, yeah, I'm very excited to be having this conversation. I watched the documentary and was also blown away by it. It was on a topic that I don't really know too much about prior to watching the documentary, and that the Scottish Youth Parliament hasn't done loads of work on. But co-production is massive to us, the amount of projects that we have going on right now, particularly with outside organisations, really have co-production at their heart. So, I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Hi, I'm Juliet Harris. I'm director of Together, the Scottish Alliance for Children's Rights. Together is a membership organisation of over 500 children's organisations, but also academics and interested professionals. And it's really our vision that all children and young people in Scotland have all of their rights respected all of the time. And I know from watching the film and from all of my work that we're a long way from achieving that vision at the moment. Through our membership, we work really closely with children and young people to raise awareness and understanding of some of the breaches of their rights that they experience in everyday life. And at the moment, we're doing everything that we can to actually get these breaches recognised by the international community. So tomorrow is an exciting day that it's the UN Universal Periodic Review when lots of other countries review how well Scotland and the rest of the UK is actually doing in taking forward children's rights. And we are hoping for a recommendation from one of the other countries of the world around school exclusions because it's so important that we use that kind of power of the international community to influence what happens here in Scotland and that we use the power of children and young people's voices here in Scotland to tell the international community what we need help with and where we need recommendations. So, yeah, like all my other panellists, really impressed by the film, it's an incredible piece of work and it's pieces of work like this that provide us with the evidence and the power that we need to get that scrutiny of our human rights record and to make sure that things actually do change for all children and young people here in Scotland. So we've got a good amount of time today. It's a bit like question time. Like I said, we're going to have the questions, the panel are going to talk about it. What's not like question time is that there will be a coffee break and there will be hopefully biscuits. And at the end of both panels, we're going to have a wine reception like before we screen the film. So, yeah, I'm just going to do the little running around to put the first question up. So, yeah, a really basic question, I guess. Why should we do co-production? Be careful what we say here. There's young people on the board. Does anyone want to speak to this in particular? Trying to pass it to Betty. I don't use the term co-production because I think a lot of people do and it's a really important term. But I think the way I look at it and a lot of people do is entitlement and are right that if you see it that actually young people are entitled to be influenced, the decisions that are made about them, then it's just automatically you have to do it with them. And that's what you were saying at the start, Betty. And then the question is, how do you do that really well? And that means you do it early and you do it all the way through and you follow through. And that's, you know, we do it because young people are entitled to have it. That's my... Yeah, I agree. I also think that we should do co-production because we should just believe that young people know and I think that we should believe that... I think there's co-production of young people but as I was saying, co-production with all people who are marginalised from decision making, marginalised from being at the table, having seat at the table. And I think that it just comes from a belief that ordinary people just don't know how to solve ordinary issues and I think it's just not true. So we should co-produce to actually just shake the tables up a bit. Let's rethink that this system isn't working. The answers we've already got aren't working. They clearly aren't right. I don't think the answers lie in who's sitting at the table right now as we should co-produce to maybe get the right ones, ones like from people who are in the community facing these issues. And I think that that is the case for young people as well, that there's a lot of belief that young people don't know and we do. Yeah, so at SYP we kind of commonly refer to co-production as meaningful participation. Something that our chair said to me the other day which I keep quoting, Sophie, she said that people are always going on about how young people are the future and they kind of forget that we are right here, right now. And it's just that there's so many services right now which are failing young people and that is because they don't have young people at the heart of them. Young people aren't designing them. They aren't brought into the process. And like you said co-production, when it is done well it involves young people from the start throughout and then afterwards so it closes that feedback loop and then we can continue to improve. Thank you. My other panelist, I don't tend to talk about co-production. We talk about it in terms of article 12 of the UNCRC and we see it as a right. And importantly it's the right of all children and young people from birth right up to the age of 18 under the UNCRC. And so I know from the work that we do around article 12 that we do it because it makes children and young people's lives better but it makes the lives of communities, families. It makes everybody's lives better because everybody has the right to have an equal say in the way that their communities are and the way that they experience their communities. I think a good example of this is a piece of work that the children's parliament did in East Lothian where they spoke to children, primary school aged children about what they liked about their town but also what they didn't like about the town and how it could be improved. And I think if they'd have spoken to the adults the adults might have said, oh, we need a playground. We need some swings perhaps, children like swings. And maybe we need some more parking spaces so that we can drive our children to school. I'm assuming that's what adults would say and maybe being a little bit stereotypical there. But instead by speaking to children what do you want Trinent to be like? What do you see it being like? They said we want more green space. We want vegetable stores. There's nowhere to buy vegetables in Trinent. And all the vegetables that we buy from an unnamed supermarket are all out of date and horrible. We want to see more flowers. We want to see more green space. So don't build playgrounds on our green space. Create green space that we can play on and do what we want. We want to see more flowers. We want Trinent to be a place that we're proud and that we're excited to walk around and that we think is pretty. We want a rocket train because it takes too long to get to Edinburgh. But by talking to children and young people they drew a great big mural of what Trinent used to be like, what Trinent is like now and what Trinent will look like in the future. They were able to work with these children to actually create a Trinent where these children were proud and they did like walking around and they did like to be there to grow up. So since doing that consultation with Trinent they've actually won an award like a Scotland in bloom award or something like that. So there are more flowers in the street. They've set up a farmers market so that there is a possibility of getting fresh vegetables. The children and young people have really kind of established themselves as people who've got their own opinions, their own voices and now the local council listened to children in Trinent and listened to them about how they want to see. So this is an example of where actually through co-production through really respecting the rights of children to be heard Trinent is a nicer place for children to grow up in but it's a nicer place for families and there's that real value put on what children think and what children have to say and it's a better town as a result. Sorry, just off the back of that it's so true that when we involve young people in a process it gives those decisions so much more legitimacy. At SYP we're completely use led so sorry I'm looking at our MSYVs in the audience. So our decisions are made by young people, for young people and we find that people listen to us because of that and it just enhances the level of debate so much more. We hear so many more viewpoints and so sorry, Trinent is in my constituency and it's so true, you can see so much more difference, there's so many more flowers there's so many more people moving out there now and that is because we involve young people. Can you account positive experiences of engaging with large groups of especially mainstream children and I do want to say that because most of these questions came from the audience we haven't obviously put the names of the people but this is your question and you want to jump in because you had a particular thing that you wanted to find out and you need to hear the panel discuss please do. I guess when I see this question obviously I'm 23 technically I'm still a young person for a bit and so as a young person I can talk about what it's been like to be engaged with and I think that my first experience of that was with the advocacy academy we're based in Brixton and they they work with 17 to 19 year olds who are like deemed as marginalised young people with a bit of oppression like usually poor black or brown, queer like struggling in school basically angry at the world around them knowing that like actually life isn't fair and I don't think it's my fault and I think that like we were given a space where we were just like we were told that it was okay to be angry and that it's not okay that you're made to be angry but like your anger is like your power and it's like it's what's gonna like carry you through and I think that like coming from schools and education system that like this slightest glimpse of anger like punishes it which is like so tied to school exclusions and like I don't have experience of school exclusions myself but I think that's a lot to do with the fact that like my whiteness that like in school like my gender is still deemed as like a nurturing and sweet gender so like when I'm angry I'm just like sassy and probably a bit bitchy but like not actually like a threat whereas like my friends like black boys like excluded from the moment they open their mouth and like those friends like have been in prison since then and I think that like actually that's because we're not given spaces that like allow us to be angry that tell us that like actually yeah the world isn't fair and it's not right and instead like we're punished for those emotions and I think that like being in a space that that engaged us and told us that like that we are powerful and that we can make change and like actually went on to make change and like we did the we did the action on like educational exclusion in the school to prison pipeline and like we were angry and we were shouting from the rooftops about this and like to be given that space to just be allowed to like to be angry is a really really powerful is a really really powerful place to be and like as you see like I haven't left it Can you speak a little bit about how far that that you know campaign got like where it got to I mean I know we do cover it in the film so but some people might not be able to stay around and watch the film so I So basically we made like so like in like a tube map even here in like the subway has like the roots on the tube so we did we made our own map that we stuck over a map on the tube in London on the northern line and we made it so like the first stop was kind of like you go to nursery and then maybe like you you get told off then you're put in isolation then you're excluded then you're permanently excluded and then you're like unemployed and then you go to prison and it's like the school to prison pipeline like rather than going from Brixton to Morden school to prison and that was a little offshoot of that map that actually what would it look like if we had like compassionate education what would it look like if like these bad kids were actually just seen as children who'd probably just traumatised probably hurt have like some feelings and some some needs that aren't being met in school and what if those needs were met and people were just seen as humans and like that had a nicer ending but actually we don't have that yet that line was temporarily closed because that's just not the way like our systems are up now and so we stuck this over like the tube maps at like 11pm one night and actually it was the night before GCSE results day and so we said okay as we celebrate like all these kids that like have got their GCSEs congratulations but what we care about are the young people who like 99% of young people that get excluded don't get A stars like don't get um sorry five GCSEs that are C to A star and so we said we care about these young people today and we took pictures of these maps and we sent them to like all our friends on Twitter and we said okay even if you didn't see it this morning please can you just tweet so that you saw this picture and like and that you're so angry and la la and they did and it just like it blew up on Twitter and Robert Hoffman the chair of the education select committee saw it on Twitter and was like I want to meet that young people and they were like I want to meet that young people and they were like I want to meet that young people on Twitter and was like I want to meet these young people as we did we got into Parliament but like it turns out the Tories don't really give a fuck and so yeah that wasn't like not much up in there but like we got into Parliament right we got into these rooms and that is like from a really creative action and like having connections on like social media and like sadly like lockdown happens and sadly the Tories are in power and whatever but yeah like what good has come from it is that like this amazing documentary was made like by young people it's like just got you voices in it it's completely led by like voices of like young people who have been excluded and have all the answers like I really hope if you don't see it today like see it soon because like the young people in that absolutely have the answers they know it's not their fault and yeah so that's that a bit about the campaign um who else like to talk about being involved in young people um so at SYP obviously we revolve around engaging young people and it's at the heart of everything we do so if you don't know how we work we basically have MSYPs which kind of reflect the MSPs in the Scottish Parliament so we've got the same constituencies and and then we come together and we campaign on certain issues we have two sittings every year where we vote on policy and SYPs themselves put forward and then we can campaign on this and we have had so many instances of success through engaging these young people we have had campaigns that have been really successful so we campaigned on equal marriage way back when we campaigned on free bus travel we're currently campaigning on things like fast fashion which is like my bread and butter but there's other wee projects we run as well there's the mental health investigation team currently on going which is where our MSYPs are kind of reviewing local mental health services we meet with the SQA once a month to tell them about our issues with the exam system there are many and all of these projects we run all of these campaigns have young people at their centre and that is why they are successful and that is why people take them seriously because it's so unique there's no one else really like us in the world who have the same structure the same use led structure and who operate in the same way and that makes us really special not to like help us up or anything but yeah and we've one of our most recent ones was we engaged with Liam McArthur MSP who was putting forward the assisted dying bill I won't go too much in depth into what that is about but we made sure that in that consultation young people were involved and then we got to go to the bill launch and it was really exciting and it was just so nice to see kind of the product of our efforts and how that young people were included from start to finish because when young people are included from start to finish most of the time like the project is successful or the campaign is successful and you can really see the impact that we have I completely agree with that and I would say the Scottish Youth Parliament is incredibly special and they've changed Scotland for the better it's another example where I talked about Trenent before which is just a town an important town but just a town whereas SYP has changed all of Scotland and I think a real example of that is around the campaign for UNCRC co-operation because I honestly don't think we'd be in this position where soon hopefully fingers crossed rights will be binding children and young people's rights will be binding in law in Scotland and that again was so led by SYP I remember meeting a former chair of SYP came along to seminars that we had way back in 2017 learning about the UNCRC at that time and she met Laura and was completely captured by the idea and the power of incorporation of making rights binding in law and I know I think it was that same year SYP in its manifesto where they did a consultation with 70,000 children and young people to find out what their priorities were and one of the top priorities was make our rights binding in law and that kind of evidence how can government argue with it 70,000 children and young people say we want our rights to be made binding in law I mean government can argue with it they probably did argue with it they dragged their feet a little bit but SYP did not give up and they carried on that campaign they worked really strongly with us it together with the commissioner's office with the children's parliament and we had an incredible march down the royal mile to the Scottish parliament on universal children's day joined by a member of the UN committee so this just shows the power if it was lots of adults marching down the royal mile there's no way that somebody would have come over from the UN committee on the rights of the child to march with us it was because children and young people were leading those calls and pushing those calls to get rights made binding in law and again it was the nerve and I guess the anger of a young person standing up in the Scottish parliament and challenging Nicola Sturgeon at a time Scottish government had said yes we'll incorporate at some point in the future maybe somehow some kind of model little bit vague and Ryan McShane a member of the Scottish youth parliament got the opportunity to stand up in the Scottish youth parliament it was to celebrate I think it was either human rights day or universal children's day and unscripted he put Nicola Sturgeon on the spot and said I challenge you to incorporate the UNCRC into law by the end of this parliamentary term and what can you do if you've got a young person standing in front of you in parliament what can you do you have to keep that kind of promise and so this is why I fundamentally believe in co-production the right of children and young people to be heard the power of the Scottish youth parliament of children and young people in Scotland because it's through their work once the bill does go through once we sort out the constitutional wranglings that children's rights will be binding and this includes the right to express a view and to have those views taken seriously so what a legacy is that that we actually have in law or we will have in law that right to be heard and it's down to young people so well done I suppose this is my day job a lot of it is talking to lots of young people in the research that we do but Juliet mentioned the committee on the rights of the child and I think one of the things that I heard off over the past decade is I've done a lot of work with the committee itself trying to make it better talking to children and young people because when I first started working with them they weren't talking and I was saying well actually you're not modelling good practice and this brings me to the one example I want to give you because Juliet used it yesterday so it's in my head is that they write this guidance for world governments every couple of years and I was saying you write this guidance and you never consult children you've really got to consult children before you produce what are called general comments and they nodded and they nodded and then they came back and said right we're going to do it help us and I was like well what's your general comment on and they said public budgeting and I thought oh no who wants to go out it could have been in the digital environment it could have been in so many exciting topics and they went spending budgets and my heart sank and we went out and we worked with the international children's organisations and we did a global consultation on how governments spend money and it was eye opening because of course children and young people had tons to say about that and tons to say about the process and tons to say about efficiency waste involving them how to do it and we did a brilliant consultation with young people that informed the general comment that now informs governments just because you mentioned it brought it back on my head things kind of go in circles and a couple of weeks ago I got an email from the Finnish Government and they said way back in 2019 Finnish children filled in your survey and we are the Ministry for Finance and we thought it was really really good and we want to run your survey again and it was this last year they said that last week they told us what had happened so they ran this consultation and I said well what do you do and we had this call with them with Child Rights Connect and they are running this every year and they are helping it to set using the information to set priority and budgeting so for example we all think Finland is brilliant in education everyone knows that yet but Finnish children were saying things like they get complete free school meals at all levels in all schools but the young people were saying your food is rubbish you know your food is terrible you need more money to get better food you need more lunches so there was that and Florence is here we are allowed to bring people in aren't we because that was the part sorry for putting you on the spot but if you are looking at these kind of fallouts in that particular research project I learnt a lot about how important it is to involve children and young people in spending decision making and then we were asked by BBC children in need in a particular programme the Million in Me programme and we did a pilot project here in Scotland so is that okay Florence to bring in because this all flows from that one thing would you like to say something about that I'll have to channel Paddy Sloan who's the programme director for it but I'll try and do your justice we had the Million in Me squad I think we called it the Million in Me consultation group but the children wanted it called a squad that was fine and the thing that I hold from it was that papers and documents was all produced given to the children and the question they asked was who speaks like that and we had to put up our hands and say we do and it made no sense to anyone so the whole thing had to be rewritten and we talk about it making sense to children but it made better sense to us as adults as well it was easier to communicate it was much clearer there was no jargon to get us caught up in and what we've done is we've used that that's what we're making we've just launched a new strategy and we're hoping to build more of that into it but the voices of the children we were trying to capture as part of that process and a top 10 list that they came out of which was what they would look for from a project not a funding application but what was the end point would make a difference to them so that's what we've tried to capture I'm sure Paddy would have an awful lot more to say than that but I think hopefully that's helped a consultation that affects national policy affects funding Paddy, do you want to talk about your funding thing? I think that's really good Yes, so I'm also I'm a young consultant for Esme Fairburn which is like a big philanthropy foundation and they give away like 45 million pounds a year to like charities in the UK and they started some called the Involving Young People Collective which I've been a part of for like three years now and when we first started they were like I don't know what this is or what you're going to do but we want you to let us know what you think about who we fund and how we should fund them it was so open and we've all never really been part of big co-production programs like that so we're like okay I actually have no idea we didn't even know what funding was and so there was a little bit of training that was needed that's really important but from that we were able to run like whole big projects on things that we were interested in so like we were like we want to see the big investment like we want to see your endowment like where does that money go and we want to see actually like who are you funding for the environmental sector that looks quite white like I want to diversify that a bit have you got any money to give us support that like we can run our own fund and so at the moment like we're building a participatory fund I think yeah we're going to have like some participatory like factors to it it's quite hard to make it like quite a purist part but it's like it's going to be ran by young people who have experience of like co-production and we're going to be giving money to organisations who want to involve young people in their governance of the organisations and we want to make sure that like we are like building as many opportunities like young people to like get foots on the door like get on to the table but also just like bring innovation and excitement and energy into organisations that like are very traditional and keep on just doing things just like because because this is how we've always done it and I just don't believe in how we've always done it and so yeah that's really exciting I really love co-production key tell okay so there's only two people really in the room with microphones so you can talk about this so it looks like I'm going to be talking a bit maybe I should come on stage can anyone talk about the experience of the co-production processes on the excluded this is where obviously I was creating a second powerpoint because I left my other one at home so that film is obviously the last word at the end there so who wants to go first you, because yeah you started it so I've talked a little bit about how the film was kind of like put together and about my expectations about how it was going to go and I mentioned the film that we made with the EHRC let me remember what this is Equalities and Human Rights Commission commissioned me to make a little film called Fair Play which is kind of cute but what I did with that, my background performance and I've done a lot of devised performance and this is where you get in a room and you don't have a script and you all come up with a performance and that's how that's what I brought a lot into into this role and so when we first did that film Fair Play a lot of people in the background at rights info which is what we were called at the time were suggesting that we try and take the children we were like well we know what we want them to say so let's take them on that trip and I was like it doesn't sound like the best idea but okay and so the very first day of filming that's what me and Jack did and I think Mike was there as well and it was really depressing because it just was trying to sort of like force these things through and we had like filming planned for the rest of the week we did something Glasgow me and Jack did a day trip to Glasgow it can be done and I wouldn't advocate it after a day of filming to London but what we did instead is that we got questions so we had some questions all about human rights and then we gave them to the children and these were children between 7 and 10 and so that film had this you know it wasn't kind of like the children involved from the get go but it involved them they could make choices about what they wanted to have conversations about and they chose the questions that they were interested in so that's already something that was in the background and so when we started the filming and I met Betty and Betty said I want to go involved and I was like okay this is like really interesting and we also worked with a filmmaker called Anna Merrifield and Anna had been trained co-production of communities and so she came on and she did some filming in London and then we decided to start work shopping so instead of kind of like just because we were saying things like how do you want to be represented and people were like we don't know what you mean like you know we don't actually know what you mean by that or what do you mean by that so we were like we have to kind of like unpack a lot of this stuff and we need to do it in kind of like quite a process in the least way so we had a workshop online because that was the immediately Covid had kind of struck and we showed everybody had the rushes of the filming that we had already done in a PRU pupil referral units we had done some filming already and we showed that film and then we said what do you think what should we be doing next who should we be talking to and we just took it from there really and from that first kind of like conversation people were saying well you know because we filmed Betty and some of your friends in Brickston and a lot of people were saying actually quite a few of this group don't actually have experience of exclusion so we are kind of like exclusion adjacent but we haven't had it so you need more people in this film who have experienced exclusion and we'll help you find them we know people like we're going to kind of like put you in touch with people in it and we want music and we want poetry and we think we should have some poetry from people who you interview so like it was we kind of like engaged people but we also you know we weren't saying to them how would you like us to find the funding for this do you know what I mean we kind of like tailored the engagement that we had but at all points people could get more involved do you know what I mean we probably annoyed them to be honest like you know after the film had been finished we kept saying um what would you like us to do with this and you could just tell people like oh we don't want to know anymore like we've done it and that was the limit of our kind of like engagement leave us alone um you know so there is that there is an interest there around how much you bring people in and how long for and you know how much you think about that and I'm somebody who feels like every single project even if it goes wrong is something you know everything's a learning opportunity and that we you know at each other afterwards we always have a wash-up and so what's really interesting about this is that this project has been going for an awfully long time um you know like we didn't get funding it was a it was you know and we had to do it around the back of other things so it would be eked out and have to stop and start again but we're constantly still learning now like this hasn't stopped um you know yeah no um it's it's really interesting like the I don't really know like what co-production was I didn't really know like that's what I was doing by saying I wanted to work with like each other that um for me like I was just being interviewed about the uh the action that that happened and then I was like oh my gosh you human rights charity like yeah yeah I love human rights and like it's and it's funny because actually I didn't really know what human rights were like if you asked me what they were I wouldn't be able to tell you but I just knew that like okay this is kind of adjacent to what I care about it's kind of sound social justicey um and there's like this is what I want to be working in and you care about exclusions like you're so my peoples um and so and so that I was brought in to like do some research and um I was like yeah like I'm really working I was in the office like I was sat on my like Trullo deck Trullo yeah I got on to Trullo I'm obsessed about Trullo and I think that like it kind of links to um like another question it's like what does it feel like to to really be in that co-production done well and I think for me it just feels like you're working like you are you're doing the work um and like yeah there's there should be a focus on like fun celebration and there should be like um space for you to be energised and passionate and all these things but like actually like you should just kind of be working you kind of just should be doing the job that like being given to you and you should feel like it's like it's going somewhere and that's what it felt like for me I was like oh yeah but like I'm just I'm just working um and we did I mean you know so you're using the word work right and I mean when you're working in charities an awful lot of the time people are constantly asked to do things for free and it's just something that I'm so resistant about you know we we've had moments where you know various people in the organisation are like well can't you get people to do some animation for free or can't you get people to do this for free and it's like no we should be absolutely paying people for what they're doing and like my hesitation when Betty first wanted to get involved was absolutely because of that like I could see that Betty was going to be amazing that wasn't the point was is I didn't want Betty to get used to being asked to do things for free and so the minute we got funding we started paying people and that is not without its own complications you know like if you if you pay kind of like young people kind of like you know a wage who's paying tax how does it work like does it affect especially people from you know marginalised backgrounds is it affecting their you know different kinds of like benefits like there's lots of questions about this and I've been involved with the Human Rights Consortium in Scotland recently talking about that but the minute we got it we started paying people for their time so they came they did a day rate we paid everybody London living wage no matter where they were in the country and people even the Scottish young people that we sent audio you know equipment to so they could capture we paid them for their time they told us how many days they worked we made sure that we paid them they came to a workshop we paid them you know and so absolutely its about feeling like you're part of the work but then the work has to recognise that you know you're not getting this stuff for free you should be ensuring that people are paid exactly like anybody else is paid yeah I agree with that I think that like with the work that I do now which is like partially like being like a professional young person like being in spaces like a young consultant but also now thinking about like what would it mean to like like consult for other organisations wanting to do this work and like what it means to coordinate that like it would always be I would always be a proponent of like definitely paying young people like I'm very anti that but also I think that like like you're very transparent like this is a small organisation actually we just don't have the fund it's not like I'm not it's not like I've got it here and I'm holding it and you're not getting it and like I felt like very grateful that I was able to make that decision for myself in that and like I really wanted to and I think that yeah I think that it's funny because like as Sarah was saying that like when you're involving young people like we're not really going to want to do everything sometimes you're going to ask questions like what should we do next and be like I don't know but like actually it's really great like just having that invitation to be a part of that conversation I think that like the what it requires from organisations is just like effort it's just like constantly having that door open and poking in your head and being like yeah do you want to do this do you want to come here do you want to do that and like maybe young people will come like 30% of that but like what a young person isn't going to do is like come and knock on door and be like please can I come here please can I do this and I think the organisations are waiting for young people to be like yeah I want to do this and I know organisations have said to me like oh yeah if we know that all young people want to do that like yeah of course we would have like there's loads of space for that but actually we're not taught to advocate for ourselves we're not taught how to like we're not taught that there's money there available for young people and I think that like it's that constant effort of like reaching out making sure that people are aware of like that there are conversations that people can be a part of and yeah it's like the effort of organisations and then like the young people can decide whether they are interested in that or not maybe have something better to do but like most of the time no like young people want to be in there yeah I should definitely have worn trainers today okay how in full do you think you need to be before something can be thought of as co-produced what's the minimal level of engagement I mean co-production it can be quite a vague concept in many ways it's you know there's no way of really measuring it but for me if you want something to be truly co-produced young people need to be engaged from the beginning to the end and throughout and they need to be involved afterwards as well getting the feedback whether that's feedback on the project that they've worked on where it's going or if it's feedback on their actual participation or it's feedback on the people who brought them into it and it's so important for you know these decision makers who are engaging the young people not to make assumptions like what you were saying it shouldn't be our responsibility to engage ourselves people need to reach out to us because that's the only way our voices can truly be heard and you know you need to consider all of the barriers that could come with meaningful participation or co-production one of the things that SYP is working on right now is some guidance for other organisations who are looking to involve young people and one of the key things we're talking about and that is the really basic things that people often overlook which is like is this accessible for young people like is the location of the meeting good should it be online are you paying the young people it goes back to like even is the food like young people friendly because we don't want to be eating anything really fancy but yeah and there's just there's so much that goes into it you know and it's such a wide-ranging and complicated topic really I think start with what's the minimum level because I always think of Laura when when I get asked this question because I remember Laura speaking at one of our conferences years and years ago and she said tokenism is a start but I think this was back in 2017 and I'm really with Laura on that because sometimes I think people run away from co-production because they don't think they're going to do it properly they think it's binary that either you do it or you don't whereas co-production is a journey and adults need to learn how to approach ensuring that children's rights to be heard is respected and taken into account and it's a real I really noticed this through our work particularly with Scottish Government it's a real journey to take adults on and children and young people take adults on this journey and so tokenism is definitely a starting point because it shows that people are aware of the need to speak to and listen to children and young people but tokenism isn't the end it has to be a journey and so once you've started to engage with children and young people once you've started to commit to co-production you have to learn from each other you have to feedback you have to create those safe spaces and that's where ultimately at the end you will come to what you might see as full and proper co-production so whilst I know when Laura said that back at our conference a few people were like oh really Laura I absolutely backer up on that and I think it's really important that we start somewhere as long as we recognise the failures as long as when there is tokenism we say this is tokenistic this is the beginning of the journey as long as you make that commitment then I think it's okay to have a minimum level at the beginning as long as you know the goal of where you want to end up I completely agree with that tokenism it's a big issue which we do face in these parliaments sometimes mainly with stuff that MSYPs are doing on a grassroots level but it is really encouraging to see other organisations taking that first step being like okay let's involve a young person even if that is a bit scary but there's so many Scotland has so many charities which are young people centric so it's encouraging those organisations who are just beginning this journey to even reach out to them we have young scot, youth link, SYP and as long as they keep in mind that the goal of this co-production is to have these young people's opinions influenced the outcome of the project people can look at the final product and say oh that was the bit that I worked on this is how I've changed this project as long as that is kept in mind and that is the final goal then you really can't go wrong with it Thank you did it for me Olivia that's what I was going to say to clarify on tokenism I suppose I should say something so thanks Juliet, I'm not an advocate of tokenism but what I really want to be clear about is I think sometimes we've created a chill factor where people are afraid to do anything because it's not perfect and my kind of point is participation is never perfect you never do something and think that's perfect I would just do it exactly the same way there would always be more young people more diverse children and young people more time or whatever so I think I just want to encourage people to start and that was where it's from so tokenism is the start but it depends how you define it and Olivia did it really well there for me it's tokenistic if it's not representative enough or it's not long enough and that's wrong it's only tokenistic to me if you don't go in with the right intention and Olivia defined it really well and the intention is to do as much as you can with the time and resource you have learn and get better with young people it's that better just in case anyone gets annoyed at me in the room and there's a whole article about that and it was because I was reminded today in my lunchtime conversation someone who'd read the article I won't put them on the spot but it was what I tried to say is this is a human right and there's no other human right where you would say I can't give you a good enough education let's use education because this is what we're here for today just to look where education was not good enough and because I can't do it really well you're not getting it at all and yet when it comes to participation adults sometimes I feel one of wee badge of merit for saying I wouldn't be tokenistic and what you're basically saying is I'm denying you a human right and you want me to congratulate you well I'm not going to do that you have to start and do your best and get better and a proper co-production young people will help you get better and just one or two other things I have a model of participation and better you captured it really well the first element is about space and what the right is it says it's to be assured assured which is really strong in human rights terms and that means that you don't just wait for young people to come and say can I here's my view that there is an absolute act of obligation on adults to create the meaningful conditions to go to what was happening to you they're coming around going do you want this one and then making it possible for you and the second thing the other thing I'm most excited for in the article that I'm known for is this is not the gift of adults it's the right of the child so it has to be voluntary so my answer to this really get me back to where I planned to start before is that it's not about a level have you created the right conditions and it doesn't matter what the level or wherever is it voluntary do young people want to do it and if they don't it doesn't matter so it doesn't matter if they're not involved in every bit because it might be just not interesting to them or boring or just they've better things to do it that time at least good that's not too much but this is my passion so what does it feel like to be part of co-production done well yeah I think that with my work with Esme Feben involving young people collective after a year and a half to two years of doing that work me and my colleague slash friend we made the involving young people values and it's like 10 values for what it means to have like best practice of like involving young people in like governance like we are young consultants and and like in there like we have like we have a framework of 10 things that we think are really important and like so the number one is that nothing about us without us and I know I said this at the start that's like a term from disability justice movement that is just like I think to feel the feeling that you get when you're when you're in a really good co-production space is that like there is nothing happening like for you without you being in that room or having the opportunity to be there and then second one is like accessibility like is that space accessible to me actually like if my mum couldn't pay the wife I build next month could they do that for me could they make it possible for me to make sure that like I can turn up and I can show up and like for young people that may mean different things like there's like you may have caring responsibilities difficulty in like transport could you provide a laptop I mean like if you are like giving a thousand like millions of pounds to charities yeah then like yeah you probably could and so like do that are you like focused on like my training and my development like is this nourishing me as a young person as well as you as an organisation or like is this extractive and I think that like all different not to be extractive like I want to feel that I'm making connections that my development's being nourished that you are training me in like facilitation and in skills that like are transferable beyond this placement and is it fun am I being celebrated are you actually like celebrating what it means to be a young person in this space is there chances for socialisation is there a budget for like for socials and I'm saying like this is like best best best and it's okay actually if you don't have the budget to do all of these things now but there's always a ways to have fun like without spending money but I think that like to what it feels like to work in a co-production space done well is that like that that you are really there in all the conversations and you can see there's accountability you can see like what these conversations that we're having the words that I'm saying how is this being put to use like there's a feedback factor there's a culture of learning in the organisation that it feels fun and that's like all very wordy but like I think that these are also as well as being like processes and as well as being things that like can put into policy in organisations it's also about a vibe that you create as well and I think that that's really important you just need to have people that are like are really on board people that really believe in your voice and if you have people in an organisation that really really believe in your voice and really believe that young people need to be there then like a lot of that will fall into place like a lot of that is about a feeling that it evokes Yeah, what does it feel like for you two? I can't comment on it as a young person because I'm definitely not young but it's making me think of some work that we did last year with a group of children and young people who named themselves Rights right now and they were from across our number organisations and they were working with us to influence and inform how Scottish Government take forward children's rights so having kind of meetings, high level governance meetings about what they're doing with their strategy with their action plans with their participation plans etc etc it was all on zoom so it was quite difficult to build the relationships that you need to be able to build and after one of the meetings the children and young people came into the space of the adults in the strategic implementation board and said exactly kind of how they see implementation of children's rights in Scotland what Scottish Government's priorities should be and they really challenged them on quite a few areas and towards the end of the meeting the children and young people asked for feedback from the adults in the room strategic decision makers about what they thought about their contribution and one of the adults said that was nice and we thought that is not co-production adults who have power who meet children and young people who are challenging them on things it's not nice co-production should be challenging it should be exciting it should be fun it should be inspiring it should be creative it shouldn't be nice so for me if I'm ever in an environment that's nice but it's not co-production done well if I'm in an environment where I feel challenged maybe a little bit scared really inspired excited nervous that to me is a space where I feel that co-production is happening properly but it's never nice I completely agree with both of you it's about the value but I think as a young person you know when the co-production is working just as you know when it's not you know when it's tokenism which isn't going anywhere one of the young people we spoke to when kind of developing these guidelines said that young people are gaining that seat at the table slowly but now we need to have our voices listened to as well because there are so many adults who do not realise that we are experts in our own lives and adults kind of sometimes it does feel like a checkbox activity where they're like right we've got the young person at the table we know what they're going to say so let's just like leave it it doesn't really matter um but when I mean we've touched on a lot of it already you know it's the decision makers being aware of the possible power imbalances making sure that it's accessible making sure that the conversations we're having are constructive and that they're being taken forward that these young people's opinions aren't just being heard and then they're going like well we heard them don't need to actually think about it I mean one of the examples of this is in our SQA learner panel where we kind of talk about various subjects all to do with exams in the curriculum with the SQA for all the SQA's faults they do come back to us and say this is where we've sent your opinions this is the person who we're inviting along to say to kind of hear from you and that is encouraging although it's not the most perfect example but it's encouraging when you can see where these opinions are going and that is when co-production is done well I've got my researcher hat on again and we've talked to thousands and thousands of children all over the world about what it's like and fun is always up there and trust and patience I mean these are really good qualities but I think you've made me think why don't we get out of it and I think for me the most exciting moments for me are just you're in a discussion and young people see something in a way you just couldn't have seen it you just and it just so makes sense and I don't know if anybody else can share these you've been in this and then you've just been told something and of course it's high a young person would experience it and you don't see it and I'm not going to give an example of my own I've many for my own projects but there was one this year I've talked about a lot Scotland's going to get a barnhouse a barnhouse which is a place for children who are victims or witnesses of crime can go and give their evidence really incredibly important development based on a Icelandic model and I have done work they wanted to use the Lundi model to look at barnhouses and how to involve young people and they're brilliant at listening to individual children but actually the barnhouses the barnhouses across Europe had not been developed with young people Scotland's doing it differently which is great and I've been partly involved in that and there was this example because it blew my mind away and it was this the Estonian barnhouse they realised on the model they had to involve young people in designing and planning the barnhouse and they invited a group of young people to come and co-design this house where children would come to tell their most traumatic stories give evidence once they would get their social services support they get their medical examination and counselling all happens in this house that looks like a house and the day the children went to the Estonian barnhouse the plumbing was broken and it was stinking, it was smelly you know it smelled really, you know you work it out okay and the children started complaining about the smell so these are the children who are co-producing the barnhouse and what they then said was I got a conversation about smell and we all know children have an incredible sense of smell don't they, really fine if you've ever been a parent where some of your children started complaining or sitting next to you on the bus children have a great sense of smell and they started saying smell is really important to us and they were like how should the barnhouse smell and they were like let's not talk about the barnhouse how should you smell how should you adult smell think about it and they said what should you smell of and they said we hate the fact that so many adults wear these strong perfumes and aftershaves and apart from the fact that it could be a trigger and many of these children are abused they just said it's really off-putting and as a result of that staff and the barnhouse in Estonia and I think every barnhouse in Europe not who heard the story were neutral body products and would you think of that no and it's those moments where we can't know or see or feel or experience what they feel and they tell us and then you change something those are the bits that really do it for me so the other thing was how do you think the barnhouse should smell they then talked about the house itself what did they not want to smell I wish I had prizes do we have prizes if you were a child coming along to give evidence of a traumatic event what should it not smell like what did the two smells children did not want to smell like the building the place exactly disinfectant they didn't want to smell like a clinic that was scary and they didn't want to smell like a school because apparently that smells like bad bananas they wanted it to smell like a home which is exactly what and so what does a home smell like cooking toast or cookies so that again could we think of that no did any adult in a barnhouse before think of that no and that's why we did co-production well one reason anybody else got good examples like that because I love those things and I'm a young person in something you were engaged in just told you something as soon as there's somebody we passed the mic done just told you something that you couldn't have known it until they told you and of course it makes sense and something had to change yeah sure this might actually be guessable but I wasn't one that I'd guessed it was a big consultation we tried to make it big as the Scottish Parliament was much better than ours and we were talking to them about what safety meant and they very much concentrated on their environment both the media and wider in their community big thing they said was streetlights they spoke about they did talk about playgrounds and what a safe playground environment was but was also talking about streetlights walking to school by themselves and we thought safety would perhaps be a bit more interpersonal they very much spoke about concrete things in their environment and a number of children spoke about streetlights that would make them feel safer it was absolutely concrete so your example was risen on that thanks any other examples? I love these, I collect them I just think it's weird but I think Bruce so I can see hi when I became children's commissioner a half-years ago I went around the country and spoke to lots of children and young people about what they wanted from me in the office and one of the things we talked about was communication and we made a lot of assumptions that a digital was the way forward that we'd focus on social media that we'd focus on digital and young people, particularly children said no particularly younger children aren't even using social media aren't digitally engaged anyway it also plays into digital exclusion so we want you to come to our communities and we want physical information we want belieflets and the posters and things we can hold in our hands we don't want you to focus online and then some of the older young people said where we are engaged on social media that's our space and we don't want you in it so don't come into our spaces we're there to do the things that we want to do so don't be trying to come into our spaces and turn them into your spaces and communicate in that way build trusted relationships with us but actually digital wasn't something they wanted us to focus on which totally challenged all the stuff that we're thinking of maybe that's changed a little bit during Covid but I was quite struck by that because we'd moved a lot of our budget towards digital but actually particularly younger children were saying that's not how we want to engage with you I'm going to leave here and just throw a question that's popped into my head and I'm a tiny, tiny charity there's five of us that don't work directly with people sort of like facing it so one of the things we have to do all the time is build relationships with charities like Includem who are working directly with marginalized communities because obviously nobody, we can't just go in and start those things going however because we're small and often those charities are small what will tend to happen is it will get a champion and in relation to Includem we had a champion in Meg who loved the project from the get go so he picked the phone up to me that day and I'm not entirely sure if somebody else had picked the phone up because there were other charities in Scotland that I spoke to who weren't interested and I think what does the panel think about the challenge of trying to expand that championness like when one person in an organisation gets it but then they have to do the work but what happens when they leave if they leave that post is there any examples that you've seen where organisations have taken that passion that one person's got and taken it on I can just name something that I've seen because I've been thinking about this too even as a young person in organisations you can feel when there's somebody who really really believes in this and really believes in you you can see your champion and you can also see he's probably not your champion and probably needs a little bit more convincing to be in a room of view and just like I don't know if anyone's heard of the young trustee movement but the young trustee movement actually does a champion training and so it's like a free one hour zoom training which I recommend everyone does I did it yesterday and it's just to build that championing it's just to give you the language to describe why it's so important having young people in governance and to meet other people who also want to become champions and to build a little bit of a network there and I think around that 2,000 people have done that champion training and it's just like spreading that but beyond that I haven't actually seen much I just thought that was kind of cool Have you two seen anything? I mean for me if you need to carry on that legacy I feel I mean documentaries like this one they're so eye-opening that when you show that to someone it almost kind of instantly strikes a chord within them so it is just a very simple way to put it but the passion is conveyed through the work and that then translates onto other people and other people tune in with that and they feel that I know I've had that with so many things like before I joined SYP there were so many issues that I was ignorant to which I am now so passionate about and that is just because of the people who have kind of handed the baton on to me where I've seen what they've done and I've suddenly been like oh wait I can do that too so yeah it is just kind of making sure that that passion is conveyed through the work Completely I think we've got a few examples here in Scotland start with the unfairties so this is something that the children's parliament has set up I don't know how many unfairties we've got in this room and I've got quite a few I'm not wearing my badge which is appalling you should have a really cool badge if you're an unfairty and the idea of being an unfairty is that we understand that it's quite hard to be a children's rights human rights defender it's quite hard to be the champion to be the one who's always speaking out so you need that community around you and it's not specific to your role in your organisation it's intrinsic to who you are if you're somebody who understands and is passionate about children and young people's rights it's not a job it's you isn't it and so the children's parliament set up the unfairty network so that we can all keep in touch and so that we've all got that we know who the unfairties are we're meant to be wearing our badges we've got Facebook page we've got an e-newsletter and it's just to provide that support and what we're looking at as well is actually having unfairty networks so for example the other day then I was giving a presentation to elected members who are all going to have responsibility obviously for taking forward children's rights under incorporation and a few of the elected members were just like oh it's quite nerve wracking always being the one who speaks out and how do we make sure that we've all got support so we're setting up a special network for an unfairty network for an elected members and I think that's absolutely key just making sure that where there are people who are passionate about children and young people's rights passionate about co-production we know each other and we keep in touch and we try and spread the word I think another good example is actually together the organisation that I work for because we are a network of organisations, individuals academics who are all absolutely committed to embedding children's rights into everything that we do and so I think being a member of together again means you've got that peer support training events and it's also a chance if you've got colleagues who aren't quite as passionate about children's rights as you are then you point them in the direction of some of our events and we'll try and capture their imagination and I think the final example so just one more and this is actually specifically about children and young people rather than kind of these adult networks we have now set up our human rights detectives and our human rights detectives are aged from they were 10 but one of them just had a birthday 11 to 17 their children and young people from across our memberships they've got trusting relationships with their member organisations and they come together with us to do missions and these missions are talking to other children and young people about their experiences of their rights about what's important to them about what issues they think we should be raising whether it's with Scottish Government with the United Nations or more publicly with our members so we've got six detectives and they choose how they want to carry out these missions so some of them have done missions in their school other have talked to their friends and their neighbours and their families others have set up an event coming up in Aberdeen with a group of children that one of our detectives have brought together and that again is a great way of finding more children and young people who want to be involved in co-production who want to be involved in pieces of work like that so again it's about spreading the word spreading the networks and I think that a number of the children who've been involved in these missions will go on to be detectives in the future and take on their own missions themselves This one short sentence was given to me by a young person and I think it's a really sensible way of capturing it obviously it's really important to have passionate pioneers who demonstrate good practice and convince other people or not even just convince them guilt them into trying something it's also quite effective at times but a young person has described to me what you're saying Laura is it's everybody's business isn't it that we have together across it's everybody's business and that's the entitlement thing it's everybody's business everyone should be doing it and after that if anyone in the audience has a burning question I'm giving you some time to put it together but what's the most important element to create meaningful co-production So I've got the mic and I'll start and of course some of you know my work and some of you don't but what I'm known for is a model of participation and there's no one bit but what I would say is I've spent my last 15 years saying it's space, voice, audience and influence and it's not one you can't just take and do space or voice or audience or influence and those are my four elements and together that's for my take on what makes meaningful meaningful participation For me to put it into one sentence meaningful co-production is engaging young people from start to finish and then their voices being taken into account with the outcome of the project or whatever it is they're working on and it's just making sure that young people are comfortable in that space and they're comfortable sharing their views and that it's accessible that is literally the bottom line and I think it can like you were saying it comes across as quite a scary concept for an organisation or a project to take that first step and involve in a young person but all they need is that safe space and that's what you build off of Completely agree again as always I'd say the participation captures everything and I think combine that with trusting relationships and you've absolutely got it and those trusting relationships have to be between children and young people between children and adults and between the adults themselves and take the Lundi model combine that with really strong relationships and that's it you can have really strong co-production Say one tiny thing I did so quickly I'm so used to doing the Lundi model one of the things I learned in the Barnahus project and it was from working with colleagues here in Scotland particularly Mary Mitchell in the University of Edinburgh and she added that into the model I defined a safe space as being one where children are not afraid of rebuke or reprisal and it being an inclusive space if you know the model you know that's what I emphasise but working with Mary on the Barnahus project we redefined space and in that we added a relationally safe space as well because relationships are everything and when we define relationships the type of relationship that defines meaningful participation for me is one of trust I think just to add I think that none of this is meaningful if I can't see where my voice is actually being used and I think that it's not necessarily a belief of mine that it's all about outcomes but I think that with this it kind of is that you can have a great journey but if I can't see the space for my voice and all this stuff if I can't see that all of this is actually amounting to something that I don't want to be a part of it and I think that's what tokenism is is that you've heard me but are you actually deeply listening are you actually willing to put what I say into fruition just a little bit even if it may mean that this may take a little bit longer because we have to then question these things too I want to see that that question is happening otherwise I just don't want to do it I don't want to be there just for people to hear some really cool opinions I think that really speaks as well to any kind of engagement I remember even if I could I probably wouldn't be very good of me to say who it was but there was a very big organisation that did a staff survey and they kind of like didn't understand why they were dropping percentages every single time they did a staff survey and finally kind of like somebody thought to ask why percentages were dropping every year and they said well look you asked us three years ago we had 75% response rate you did nothing that we suggested and therefore there's no point we understand then there's literally no point in getting involved because you're not going to do anything I completely echo Betty's point about the journey, yeah great but like you have to see some sort of accountability you have to see some sort of result even if it isn't actually you know the result you think is going to happen you still have to show it you still have to kind of like travel to that space I just want to, Betty and I agree on a lot of things we find out today but Betty I got to that journey later after I wrote the London model I emphasised in influence about feedback and finding out what happened and about ten years later I got really uncomfortable I've just been involved in so many, so much research talking to children where they say they just never found out what happened and they didn't know and that became increasingly frustrating to me hearing their frustration about this and I started to think a lot about that space and then I created this other little model it's now used by the Irish government and it's a feedback model it's called the 4Fs and it's exactly that but my take like many in the room I mean I look at everything through the lens of human rights and human rights is ultimately about accountability which is the word you just used Sarah and I think the feedback is this critical juncture in accountability because it's the point where the decision maker the adult, you know often the co-production shouldn't be like that but in some instances the decision maker is saying you told me and this is what I did or didn't do and children and young people are often getting just really bland responses or no responses at all so what I've really done is said feedback should be really fast, you know quick it should be full which I'll come back to and it should be obviously child friendly language and followed up and in full I've created a set of questions that if you work with young people and they give you their time I'm nice saying we don't commit to working with anybody unless they promise to respond in detail to say you know what's surprising what did you do, what are you not doing why, what are you doing, when are you doing it when are you going to do it and that's a set of questions that we ask them to commit to and that is it sounds like just do it's another tick box but it's not it's ultimately about accountability and that is crucial from a human rights perspective tell them, I think it's transparency as it is well and what we've done there's a Leicester City Council in the UK have adopted the model and they've done incredible work and I've worked with young people there and this amazing young woman has defined that and she's talked about that element of being it doesn't matter if you you're not always going to get what you want but it's really really important to know why if you can't have what you want it's really important especially important to know why when you're not getting what you've asked for as well as when you are you're not getting quite there and just very very quickly and I think what makes me excited about this is that actually it doesn't matter the journey necessarily that you go on to get this that actually I really deeply care about youth participation but like actually maybe the way that the organisation is set up right now maybe like we just need to start with a survey that you send out to young people and like yeah that isn't necessarily like having a youth border or youth trustee but I don't think we should be putting in young people into places where organisations aren't ready for that to goodness and so maybe it's just about having a survey and if from that survey you get really great feedback and you act on it it is literally doing the work that is it, it's about taking these outcomes from the voices of young people and people who are affected by different issues and using that and then like yeah that's the springboard actually now you've shown that your organisation actually probably is ready for a little bit of a shake up you are creating more of a culture of learning and a culture of being open to change and a culture of being open to different perspectives and voices and then maybe we could springboard maybe we meet some consultations maybe we have a youth advisory board but I don't think that there is necessarily a dream journey or a dream structure of how that happens I think it's just about actually just getting voices and getting the outcomes from it and in a way that suits an organisation Okay we've got about 10-15 minutes before we are hopefully getting some coffee tea and biscuits Has anyone got any questions or comments or examples or anything Sorry I'm really rubbish at sitting quietly I wanted to jump in all the way through there I feel like I should have talked to you more before So I worked with Includum One of the voices you hear on there is a boy I worked with for a couple of years before he was at a point where he could articulate himself that well and I think that creating space element is also a big lot of time in there because you can't build a relationship straight away I had to knock on that boy's door every day for it was more than a year I think then eventually the door opened a little bit I got things thrown at me until I got to a point where I got him to say why the issues where he wasn't going to school because when he went to school he was being excluded because he couldn't cope and I got him to articulate a bit I went to the school, I come back and what he articulated in that in this film was all of that stuff I was so happy hearing that boy saying that after all that time and I think organisations and adults need to acknowledge that takes a lot of time to build that sort of trust and a lot of times we don't we go to young people to ask their views but we should be listening to their views and acting on them when they bring them up it should be directed the other way around that's my part of what I wanted to feedback I love that and I think just to say as well it's so true that if you're an organisation like an adult wanting to work with young people particularly with lived experience of oppression if you're working with young excluded people these are people who are at the butt of oppression and also not giving the space to voice what that means and behind that there are going to be youth workers like you who are facing shut doors for ages in order to do that and I think that it's like that's like an accessibility piece that actually also are these young people is there also space for them to be like safeguarded and cared for in this process if you want people to give opinions on their lived experience of oppression well then like there probably should be like therapy after that and there should be like provisions after that that means that like that these people aren't just extracted of their like oppression and like nothing following after that but it's like it's never going to be perfect but I think that it's just like the real cases of like of course there are youth workers behind the scenes that haven't accessed these relationships so thank you so much for bringing that in Time is such a big deal it's so invisible this project it took time to film and part of the reason it took time to film was because of Covid but it took time to film because I had to find people and that meant I had to build relationships so you know you had to build a relationship with the young person I had to build a relationship with different charities with different organisations often who are really small often who have no time to do this kind of thing and cannot see the point of it like okay well there might be a film what in three years time well you know how's that actually going to speak you know to me and you have to try and so I mean you know sometimes we get amazing champions but sometimes it's about trying to work out okay what you know we could maybe do a film about your organisation and find the exchange points to sort of like you know labour it up but explaining how long these relationships take to you know create is a huge I think invisible sort of like aspect has anybody else got I don't know yes I'm chair of the Scottish Chief Parliament and I thought the point that you raised Betty about young people in governance positions was a really interesting one I think I've sat on many groups that are not made for young people and are not accessible to people outside of the sort of government sphere and yeah I think it's a really interesting point about when our organisations are groups ready for young people to be in that space and I've been thinking a lot about young people in board positions recently and I had a conversation with an MSP the other day talking about an education body being set up and the advisory group for that and I was talking about the fact that we have all this time to plan so why not plan now about how we make that space accessible from the start rather than put a young person in and see what happens but I think I could talk all day about being a young person on a board but it was whether any of the panellists have any thoughts about what makes a board space accessible to young people it's kind of not my expertise because I'm not a trustee but yeah I advise and I think that but I know that I have sat on boards before and they're just so random the people in there are just so they just say such random things and I kind of sit there on my face like this a lot of the time and I don't really want to contribute because I don't think that it kind of feels like we're a little bit light years away and how we think about issues and that's okay but that's actually fine but also if you're one or two people who have a perspective like you in a group full of 20 then of course you don't want to share and I think that that boards there's just a lot of questions that I think that should be asked to boards before young people just plonked in those spaces like are you willing to not use jargon are you willing to listen are you willing to actually maybe think about the structure of the work are you willing to learn what a pronoun is so that genderqueer people can join this space are we willing to actually learn what the issues are that young people are facing so that there's some point of connection in that room because I think that young people have to do a lot of learning in order to access boards and I don't know if the trustees do that much learning to have young people on the boards just feels a little bit unfair so this kind of is my expertise but I I knew that was going to happen at some point but yeah I do come from a very privileged position though because the Scottish Youth Parliament's board is designed for young people we only allow young people on the board so for that reason I haven't really experienced a board where the young person is kind of the young person you know we are just it's almost like a group of best friends running a charity in some aspects but we are put through quite a vigorous training the communication is so clear I know a lot of other boards you kind of get sent the papers and you turn up and that's it sometimes it's less of a meeting and more of a presentation you just hear how the charity is doing and there's not much else doing but for us we do so much outside of just the board meetings we do stuff like this we're trying to educate people about how having a young person involved can be so effective I don't know Ellie you're on the young sorry I'm putting you on the spot you're on the young Scottboard aren't you what was that like for you because I know that is quite a different board in its structure what was it like for you kind of settling into that as a young person yeah I think it's really interesting to see how different charities are set up it was quite eye-opening actually to go from our board where it's all young people into that space that it's definitely more adults than there are young people I think young Scott though are great at making things accessible and like had a meeting with me to see what they could do to support me in that role and I think it's about again having those adults already in those spaces who are advocating for it to be accessible for young people and giving young people the tools to be involved but I do think that you know we shouldn't be inviting young people into a space that isn't accessible and we should be able to call out that it's not accessible for young people yeah definitely and especially a board set in it can be really stressful and to throw a young person into that without the adequate support in place can be really damaging we're quite lucky in SYP where we have like these regular check-ins where the staff members who are absolutely lovely are always like how are you doing, do you want to chat is there anything you want to go through so while all the decisions are coming from us the staff are still there to support us and make sure it is as accessible as possible for us as young people Jonah? This is a really difficult question for us to answer we don't have a young person on together's board our trustees are voted in by our members we have had chairs of SYP on our board before but we don't currently have a young person we did do a piece of work last year with the rights right now and now with the human rights detectives to talk to children and young people about how we want to be involved in our strategic plan and taking forward the direction of the charity and they said that they weren't really interested in joining the board they wanted to get involved in our policy influencing work work with reporting to the UN work with government and so we put together a funding application for this piece of work about how we involve children and young people in delivering our strategic plan and informing how we deliver our strategic plan because we don't have a young person on our board so we're going round in circles on this one and it's a constant constant issue and so I think if children and young people want to join our board we would have to make a big change in how our boards run it's definitely I don't think it's even adult friendly the number of papers that go out I think it would actually probably improve the way that we run our board and it would mean that other board members who at the moment perhaps don't want to speak out about too many papers too much inaccessible information it would actually make it better for the adults involved as well but like kind of you've both said at the moment I don't think it is that space where children and young people would feel able to contribute, want to contribute would be interested in contributing but I think it is something that we'll continue to look at and we need to first of all get this group together to involve children and young people more in our strategic plan and then take the steps towards how we include children and young people in the board meeting and it's definitely not a case of kind of allocating one place and going here you are young person sit on our board it wouldn't work we've got a lot that we need to do with children and young people to make sure that when we do get children and young people on our board it actually works for everybody there's a new initiative I'm not recommending it because I don't know enough about it yet but they've set themselves up they're calling themselves the Child Friendly Governance Project it's an international initiative and I'm really curious there are people who are really concerned about this worldwide and they're trying to bring in and develop best practice and they're setting up a board and they're putting young people on it and my question to them was this it's not the board, it's not the trustees it's the decisions it's the decisions and where the decisions are made and which decisions young people want to be involved in or sit through and I think if you think of it like that rather than there has to be a young person on the board it's like where are the major decisions made and which ones do young people want to be involved in and then how do we change the way in which young people are informed about those and involved in those and that's what meaningful participation is to me isn't it, it's not having a youth trustee yeah Hi there even when we're working with kind of marginalised groups how do we ensure that it's not only the most confident and outspoken that steer the co-production process I think that's a constant challenge and it's something that I think looking at the Lundi model it's about space and it's recognising the space that you create for children and young people to give their views and express their views, have them taken into account it varies completely depending on the child or young person and it's something that we've really tried to take into account with our detectives project we're working with children and young people from all sorts of backgrounds young carers young boy with learning disabilities and the space in which they want to participate is very different to each other and the space in which they want to go out and do their missions and their detective work is very different to each other and so I think in Safara's resources allow that's the important thing is talk to children and young people about their space and create a space that's safe for them for their circumstances and don't think that one size fits all even in a small group it doesn't every young person is different and every child and young person needs to tell you what that space looks like for them to get involved I would 100% agree with that I think the decision maker who is facilitating the space needs to be so aware of the power imbalances because even the most comfortable and outspoken young people can still feel intimidated when they're invited into a space and asked to be an expert in something and so I would 100% agree it's about making sure that that space is safe and they're aware that they're not going to be judged it's just about sharing views because so often adults assume that young people all share the same experience or share the same opinions when in reality we are just as diverse in our opinions as adults are so yeah it's about making sure that that we have ground rules in those spaces almost in a very practical sense the projects I work on in my constituency often it is bringing together a really random group of young people from lots of different schools and every session we start off with what are our expectations what do we want from each other how do we want to communicate with what are we uncomfortable with and it's going back to those really basic things that kind of you do it like circle time in primary school just to make sure that the communication is kind of top notch and the decision the people facilitate in the space understand what could be barriers for these young people yeah I think that like there's a couple of things I think that when I think about accessibility that speaking to a room of people is like not accessible for like a lot of people especially when there's a paradigm you are here as a young person talking to adults that can be really really hard and I found that really hard when I started so there's thinking about different ways that young people can feed in is there actually a way that we can ask a question go into a breakout room of young people maybe write something can I write a song about it if that's actually how I like to communicate instead of actually draw your picture of what my feelings are so there's different ways of feeding into a conversation but I think that also it's taken me a long time to realise the boundaries of what it means to be a young person in adult spaces and I say this quite a lot that I feel a little bit like a professional young person that I've kind of got it now you kind of want somebody who's a little bit rough around the edges and isn't going to say what you want them to say it's not going to come out in a polished way and I might not have a solution but here's the problem and deal with it and I think that it took me quite a long time to realise that and sadly I'm now phasing out of being a young person just when I think that I've actually nailed that down but it has made me thought that actually what would it have meant if I could kind of see what challenge looked like modelled for me as a young person that a lot of organisations went young people to come in with these really really radical views and to be the innovators and like we're the ones who like think outside the box and out of the system and actually like when you've been schooled in the education system we have you're probably not that radical of a thinker you're not encouraged to be especially when you're in rooms with organisations of people who look like your teachers or look like your family these aren't the spaces where you're going to get really really creative and radical and challenging and it takes quite a long time to build a confidence to do that and so what would it look like to actually see challenge modelled or to be given a couple of examples of like just kind of how far you can go just how you can communicate this do I have to put on my voice that's a bit more palatable and all that kind of actually just come as my whole self and like bring my experiences and maybe not have a solution maybe not have all the answers but this is my truth like what are you going to do with that and I think that like it takes me a long time to kind of of being in these spaces quite frequently to realise actually just how I can show up and so I think that like even it sounds counterintuitive but like training young people maybe get young people in who have this experience of this to kind of train young people just to like what does it mean to like show up as yourself what does it mean to show up in a group of adults and not feel like you have to perform because I think that like I actually don't know any young person who doesn't feel like they have to perform around adults and it takes quite a long time to take that like performance off and just show up especially if you're marginalised especially like if you've been told that because of like your blackness your working classness your gender your sexuality that like that what you say just doesn't matter and so yeah modelling challenge and allowing people to just take off their mask and just become as their full self How do you follow that? I want to give you a really practical example because I think you've touched on like a dilemma from many many people how do we get out to those children who don't normally get involved in the processes I couldn't I couldn't have been these people I just with the culture and community I came from I would have been sick to stand at a stage like this as a young person I just wouldn't have had it in me and we need to get to those young people too we need all sorts of young people and I want to give you a really practical example that came from one of my doctoral students but not when she was a doctoral student when she was a teacher because I'm really we're here to talk about children who are excluded from school and she became a principal of a school in Northern Ireland that would have a really high level of exclusion and social disadvantage and she came from a grammar school you know quite a posh kind of school she came into the school and she knew it wasn't working and she wasn't thinking children's rights but what she said was I needed to know and I didn't need to know from this just the school council you know because the school council were all functioning pretty well and she did this thing and I just love it and I often give it an example so apologies if you've heard it she went into the assembly hall in the school in the middle of rural Northern Ireland and she gave out two sets of post-its and she said to the children, young people, students write down one thing you like about this school and one post-it put it in that wall write down one thing you really like about this school and you'd want to change put it in that wall okay cheap, efficient, effective put everybody out teachers not liking it became really complicated it's me my poor people don't know what I'm talking about and then she read, she just sat and read she read what they liked and she read what they didn't and one of the things and it does relate to this that she read one of the things that the children and young people did not like was setting setting, I don't know what you call it in Scotland when children are put in the ability groupings they're taken away from their friends and thrown into the bottom set and she read how much this was here and the school thrived on setting the teachers loved setting and she just saw this had to change it was ruining friendships it was getting people bullied it was destroying self-esteem and so that was her thing then she went in to stop and that's what her PhD was about so two sets of post-its every young person in the school got a chance and some of them of course would like to read pictures and stuff and that's okay too cos that's an act and then I don't know I'm going to embarrass her but the other thing is she knows I'm going to do it my amazing Amy is at the back and all of her work is on silence and voice and actually how silence can be one of the most profound expressions I don't know if you want to say anything Amy she doesn't but anyway you don't have to and then we're going to have some coffee and tea okay then I'll talk so I think it's really interesting to listen to how do we reach young people who aren't the articulate students who always seem to have their say and as they should but how do we reach the students who might not be quite as articulate and sometimes I think well maybe we should think about it the other way around and what I looked at in my study supervised by Laura was what do young people not say and how can that tell us about their experiences and how they feel in a school space which is where I did my study and it was profound what they said they used silence as a means of resistance which is an expression and they used it as a way of negotiating situations where they felt really uncomfortable and teachers also used silence as a way of negotiating very particular situations often came down to authority and young people often would use silence in terms of I'm not really sure what that adults agenda is so I'm just going to keep quiet until I've sussed them out and they are very very good at establishing what adults want to hear that they are really good at knowing what adults want to hear and they are really good at knowing when someone is coming to ask them for their views and they don't feel like they are going to have any influence and so looking at silence looking at the young people who maybe don't articulate their views in the ways in spoken means maybe it's a good idea to look at how they might actually be articulating and expressing their views in alternative means and silence is one of those ways