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As part of our work with East Sussex Children's Services, we have co- authored an evaluation of the county's recent Young Inspectors programme.

The project involved training and support by participation workers for eight young people with a mix of disabilities, to carry out inspections of public venues and services. The report describes the significant benefits both to the inspected agencies and to the young inspectors, especially in terms of self esteem, skills and employability.

Following this, Kevin Harris ran a workshop with Equality and Participation team members to help them refine their mission and common purpose. This was a lively and positive session which included some in-depth exploration of the relationship between equalities and participation.

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We have been asked by East Sussex youth participation team to carry out an evaluation of a Young Inspectors scheme. They have been working with eight young people with a range of disabilities and disadvantages, who have been trained and carried out inspections of public buildings and a park. The national (Youth4U) programme was developed by the National Children’s Bureau between 2009 and 2011 and their evaluation published last year.

From one side, the young inspectors programme is about improving local services through young people’s participation in service evaluation. From the young people’s point of view, it can be about genuine participation, respect, self-confidence and a set of ‘employability skills’ such as communicating, presenting information and teamwork. Read Amy’s story as an example.

In addition, Local Level will be helping the Equality and Participation team with some of their own development, and supporting our friends at Breslin Public Policy in an evaluation and promotion of the team’s ‘Big Vote’ youth cabinet exercise. Some of this work begins immediately, and will run through until May 2012.

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_We recently designed and ran a consultative process for a public meeting on the sensitive subject of car parking, in a large village on the outskirts of Sheffield.

Our work was based on numerous written remarks in open questions from an online survey, many of which suggested solutions and many of which expressed annoyance at inconsiderate drivers.

The process we devised sought to ensure that the meeting was participative and produced an outcome. Residents apparently were expecting a conventional public meeting in which councillors said something from the front, were shouted at by a few worked-up voices from the rows, and nothing much changed as a consequence.

Instead we ensured that people had the chance to shape their own agenda; had the opportunity to augment and comment, in groups, on every live proposition as it was passed round; using specially printed sheets which included a street map; and they had the chance to vote, at the end, on preferred options to address the parking problem. It was local participative democracy in action.

We have now been asked to carry out further analysis to support the outcome of the meeting.
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