Consultation With Young People

Introduction

As part of our Strategic Review during 2005, FOCUS undertook a two-stage consultation process with the people that matter to us most – young people! Building on our many years’ experience of running a wide range of projects, we wanted to ensure that our new work fitted in with the views, needs and hopes of young people today.

Stage 1

Between May and November 2005, we consulted with 248 young people across London, Leicester and Nottingham. We asked them about a range of topics, including:

• the type of activities they wanted to do during the summer holidays;
• their views on themselves and the skills they would like support in developing; and
• their opinions on volunteering and their local communities.

If you’d like to see these results, please click here: Stage 1 Consultation Results

Stage 2 – Getting FOCUSed

With the generous support of the Y-Speak Consultation Fund and the Community Champions Fund, two teams of young people from Leicester took part in this unique three-day event, at the end of August 2005.

Held at the Pioneer Centre in Kidderminster, we started with our usual ice-breakers and team building activities, before leading into our specially designed consultation activities. Ranging across eight different key themes, the purpose of the event was to gain the opinions and advice of young people about what we do, how we do it, and how young people can continue to influence FOCUS. Topics included everything from our marketing literature, through to the kind of ongoing support young people would like from our programmes.

With the support of our trained volunteers, the young people were encouraged to present back their findings to their peers and to comment on each other’s proposals.

Since the project, the staff team and Review Body have met to discuss the implications of the young people’s feedback, and to consider how to take their suggestions forward. These have now been built into our Business Plan and project preparations for the year.

If you’d like to see these results, please click here: Stage 2 Getting FOCUSed Results

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