Newcastle City Council - Children's Fund Project 2008

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Aims

• To involve children and young people in the allocation of the city’s £2.25m Children’s Fund. The Fund aimed to prevent children and young people from:
  - developing low self-esteem
  - having poor school attendance
  - entering the criminal justice system
• To involve those children and young people who would benefit most from the fund i.e. those most at risk of low self-esteem, low school attendance, and entry into the criminal justice system.
• To test whether the Udecide method can give children and young people a voice in complex decisions.
• To test a new model of Udecide where the young people voting were not the direct beneficiaries.
• To learn from the experience and improve future projects as a result.

Where did it happen?

• Citywide

How did it work?

• 20% of the decision was placed in the hands of children and young people.
• They would have to score the Children’s Fund project ideas against 3 questions at a special conference:
  1. Were young people involved in creating this idea and would the project listen to children and young people?
  2. Will it reach the young people who need it most?
  3. Will it make a difference?
• Officers contacted the key groups / organisations across the city that worked with the target young people.
• These included Pupil Referral Units, Additional Resource Centres, special schools, the Youth Inclusion Project, a young carers group and a number of BME youth groups; in total 39 settings and 450 young people.
• Every young person had to complete 3 training sessions with council officers in order to attend the conference.
  In Session 1, they shared their thoughts on the 3 themes.
  In Session 2, they looked at the 3 questions and scored some dummy projects.
  In Session 3, they discussed the short listed project ideas to prepare for the conference.
• Young people from the Voices project planned the conference with council officers to make sure it was fun.
• 139 young people attended the conference at St.James’ Park to represent their peers.
• They listened to the project ideas, discussed them and gave a score of 0, 1, 3 or 4 – poor, ok, good, excellent – against each question.
• Five of the top six projects chosen by the children at the event were successful with their bids.  Conversely five of the six lowest rated projects were unsuccessful.

Who was involved?

Children and Young People – from across the city who are targeted by the Fund.
Council officers – from the Udecide Team, Investing in Children and the Area Locality Development Teams.
Mainstream schools – 4 from each area of the city.
School based behaviour units and the Newcastle Pupil Referral Unit
Community and Voluntary Sector – support levered in from a range of partners to deliver the sessions and escort young people to the event.
The Udecide Crew – a group of young people from the Children’s Society Voices Project who designed the event.
The Newcastle Participatory Budgeting Learning Group – comprised of local residents, reps from the public, private, and community and voluntary sector, and experts from the PB Unit who met to share experience and improve the project.

What did it achieve?

• Involved a range of young people in helping to spend £2.25m. These young people represented some of the most marginalised groups of children and young people in the city.
• Set a benchmark for the engagement of young people, showing that with the right method, the barriers to engagement can be overcome. 
• Proved that children and young people can have a voice in complex decision making processes.
• Challenged service providers to think differently about their services and give more priority to the views of young people in the design, promotion and delivery of these services.
• Listened to young people. The final decisions showed a strong match with the decisions made by the young people.
• Introduced more time to reflect. The young people approached their decisions with great maturity and invested considerable time preparing for the day.
• Raised young people’s confidence and capacity to engage in decisions.
• Kept the buzz. Udecide remains a popular method of engagement irrespective of whether young people are direct beneficiaries on the day - 93% said they were having a good time.
• Gathered important intelligence on the views of young people during the sessions which will inform future work in Children’s Services.
• Streamlined the approach. The Udecide brand levered in extra resource from both the public, and community and voluntary sector to meet the tight deadlines.
• Learned that Udecide is a flexible method of engagement which can be applied to more mainstream funding decisions.

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