Wokingham

Almost 60 young people from the Wokingham Borough recently attended a ‘Hear by Right’ event to discuss what it is like being a young person today.

Organised by Wokingham Borough Council’s youth service, the event offered children and young people the right to be heard about their views on a set of seven standards taken from the national ‘Hear By Right’ guide, which are: shared values, strategy, structure, systems, staff, skills and knowledge and style of leadership.

The Wokingham conference took place on March 25 at the Oakwood Centre in Woodley, and involved young people from the borough’s schools, youth clubs, and Connexions projects. During the morning, the young people took part in a traffic light exercise whereby they had to identify a traffic light colour on a range of issues. Red highlighted a negative feeling, amber showed a feeling of being unsure, whilst green highlighted feeling of happiness. During this exercise young people discussed whether they felt safe, pressure to achieve, the right for a voice and being healthy.

Wokingham Young people also discussed their priorities for influencing council services. During the afternoon sessions, young people were joined by council officers and elected members including interim general manager children’s services Heather Thwaites, head of integrated youth services Guy Masters, and deputy executive member for community development Cllr Malcolm Bryant to name just a few.

This allowed the young people to have open discussions with key people at Wokingham Borough Council and detailed plans of how to involve young people more in the future have been agreed after young people told the council that the most important issue for them is to be involved. They want to be consulted on changes to services and they want the chance to share views with each other and discuss possible changes. They also want the council to draw up an agreed set of rules for involving young people and, if asked to attend meetings, ensure jargon is not used and that the young people are fully briefed in advance.

The young people also want to know from the Wokingham council when their views have been heard and listened to as they are keen to know where they have made an impact. Young people are also keen to be involved in recruitment processes for key members of staff in children’s services. They would like to see an event where all school councils can come together to discuss issues and views.

Deputy youth MP Subi Wahogo (15) said: “I was invited to attend the event and I was interested in making a difference for young people.” Jess Goodwin (16) added: “I have learnt that if you are determined enough, it’s not that hard to communicate with others in order for you to get your point across.” And Matt Thomas (13) said: “The event gave me many opportunities and everyone listened to each other.”

Deputy executive member for Wokingham community development Cllr Malcolm Bryant said: “I believe children and young people have a right to be involved in decisions that affect them and the council is committed to improving their involvement. By gaining their views and involving them in decisions being made locally hopefully we can make sure their needs are better met.

“We had a good turn out on the day and I was pleasantly surprised by how many good ideas came out the meeting. The results will be monitored and lots of the ideas raised will be put into place. This is young people deciding their own future.”

Heather Thwaites, interim general manager Wokingham children’s services, said: “The energy of the day was fantastic. The information from the event is incredibly useful to the council for pulling together our updated children and young people’s plan.”

The event was recorded by media studies pupils from St Crispin’s School in Wokingham supported by Real Time Video.

So what next? The findings from the day are being written up and will be posted on the activeyouth website at www.activeyouth.co.uk All views will feed in the process for updating the council’s children and young people’s plan. The council has also made a commitment to all the young people to provide regular updates on improvements made to services following their input.

Wokingham Borough Council