Youth Parliament Takeover Challenge

Friday 20th November was National Takeover Challenge, an initiative of the Office of the Children’s Commissioner where young people participate in decision making in all sorts of organisations.

Youth Parliament Takeover Challenge

Four Deputy Members of Youth Parliament here in Devon met with cabinet members to discuss some tough choices around budget cuts. They also quizzed councillors about who makes decisions around their campaign issues and how those decisions are made. The young people said they enjoyed learning about how much money is spent and how Devon County Council works.

Cllr Hart promised to feed the young people’s suggestions into the next budget meeting.

This is what the young people said about the day:

“Really liked the ‘Tough Choices’ exercise - how things happen and the reason for decisions.”

“I learnt a lot more about where we can take our campaigns and who makes decisions.”

The afternoon bit - information and their opinions on our campaigns

“It was good to find out how the council works and how young people are involved in decisions.”

“It was really interesting to see what money actually goes towards and how much!”

Left to right: Cllr McInnes, Helena Read, Cllr Parsons, Bethany Lee, Haseebah Asharaf, Munkhbayar Elkins, Cllr Hart.

Alison Duckers

Participation Team

Care Leavers Takeover Challenge

In the morning young people worked with colleagues in the Social Work Workforce Development Team to audit the ASYE training programme and give their point of view how it can be developed and improved. One of the outcomes is that young people will be involved routinely in training

In the afternoon seven care experienced young people worked to devise an afternoon of training for Devon’s newly qualified social workers. Each of them worked with other young people in care to script presentations based on issues that are important to them. Topics included ‘building relationships’, teenage pregnancy’, ‘mental health & wellbeing’, ‘diversity’ and ‘moving on to independence’. The young people then hosted a question and answer session where ASYE’s got a chance to ask them directly for tips and advice.

The impact of Takeover Challenge doesn’t stop here. The training session will now be delivered to the Children’s Social Care Senior Management Team and filmed so that it can form part of an ongoing programme of training and development for social care and partner agency staff.

We all really enjoyed the day and are proud of what we achieved training such a large audience.

Feedback from participants was really good too,

‘Learning from the real experiences of young people is better than theory.’

‘I leant lots … I loved the bit about the difference between being reliable and making the feeling you can be relied upon.’

Beth Wakefield & Sam Heaton

Participation Apprentices