Voice and Influence
Spring 2015
Update
Welcome
The Spring issue is packed full of amazing voice
and influence stories. From children and young
people planning an award ceremony to film
making, training new foster carers, elected as
Chair and campaigning from Pupils from
Bramley St Peter’s Primary School and Leeds
Youth Parliament to name a few. The VIC
conference was also a big success!
Leeds Children’s Mayor update
Last November a new Children’s Mayor of Leeds
was elected after over 6,000 votes had been cast
and counted. Amy Eckworth-Jones from
Strawberry Fields Primary School won through
with her fantastic manifesto based around
encouraging children to have fun whilst staying
safe.
Since being elected, Amy has attended a full
council meeting to read her manifesto to the 99
city councillors. An Executive Board report is due
to be published at the end of March which will set
out how Leeds City Council can help Amy’s idea
take shape.
Speaking after she was elected, Amy said “I am
so proud to be the 10th Children’s Mayor and
when I wear my robes I feel like I can achieve
anything. This year is going to be one to
remember without a doubt. Watch this space.” For more information about the programme you
can visit the website, follow on Twitter
@LSChildrenMayor or email
[email protected]
VIC Conference a big success!
The Voice Influence and Change of Children
and Young people’s Network organised a
Conference on 26 January 2015. 139
professionals and practitioners attended the
event. 12 workshops were delivered by partner
organisations from across the city. 17 children
and young people played an active role in
facilitating workshops and running information
stalls. Workshop themes included developing a
cluster council, involving looked after young
people, listening and responding to younger
children, supporting young people to take part
in consultations and accrediting their
involvement. Email us for a copy of the final
report at [email protected].
On the day 103 attendees signed up to be VIC
leads. We learnt about 15 different groups of
children and young people who would like to be
further involved in voice and influence activities
and have a say about decisions that affect their
lives. Attendees identified priority themes and
issues they would like to be the focus of future
events and training. Feedback from one young
person attending the event when asked “What
impact has having a voice and influence had on
your life? “Makes you feel important the fact
that you helped make big decisions and
improved services”.
Young people plan city wide awards
You can now relive all the glittering moments of
the 2015 child friendly Leeds awards in a new
highlights video!
The video features performances and winners
announcements, alongside interviews with the
young people responsible for planning the
ceremony, Thumbs Up Productions, Councillor
Judith Blake, deputy leader for Leeds City
Council and Nigel Richardson, Leeds City
Council's Director of Children's Services.
The whole awards show was planned and led
by a group of young people who signed up
through the Child friendly Leeds young advisors
programme. The group had responsibility for
setting a theme, managing the budget,
auditioning performers, writing the script and
running the whole awards show.
People across the city submitted a total of 547
nominations for the awards, voting for
individuals, children, young people and
organisations who are helping to make Leeds a
more child friendly city. Under 10’s ‘Promise’ to children looked
after
Storybooks and posters have been developed
with the 0 to 12 teams Manager’s as part of a
task and finish group, with support from the
under 10’s learning improvement team and
foster care team.
The story books were developed as examples of
interaction of children with cartoon characters,
which represented significant individuals in their
care experience, including their social worker.
After a four week pilot, with social care
practitioners using the material with children and
developing characters, so far we have Lucas the
lion, Jessica the jellyfish, and Robby the rabbit.
In November 2014 we presented the story
books and posters for feedback at the social
work conference for final approval. Practitioner’s
feedback included: “Like the metaphorical
element of it think it would appeal to children up
to age 8”
“Very good; Child friendly! Can be used with
children and young people with a disability”.
Speaking about her experience, young advisor
Sophie Poole said: “I think this experience has
helped me develop my organising skills, it has
helped me to work better in a group and it has
meant that I have learnt some new and exciting
things that many will not get the chance to.”
The highlights video and full-coverage of the
awards is available on the child friendly Leeds
website. Any young person aged 8 – 18 can
become a Child friendly Leeds young advisor,
get in touch to request an application form.
Agents of Change– young film makers
Children from primary schools around the city
have been working with Leeds Development
Education Centre to take part in an “Agents of
Change” film competition. The competition aims
to encourage young people to explore changemakers and role models from history and living
today. The young film-makers each chose their
own subject. You can view the films and vote for
your favourite by clicking here.
2 SEN and disability stories shine through in
the latest Brighter Futures magazine
Children and young people in
specialist residential settings
provided articles for
Brighter Futures magazine
which they had written about
things they like doing.
Several of these were picked up
by the publication and one
young man from Rainbow House made the front
cover of the new edition which he was delighted
about. Other young people submitted articles
about days out and visits to museums and events.
Realtalk– youth voice shaping Leeds Youth
Offending Service
#Realtalk is our new user-lead group for young
people that have had involvement with the Leeds
Youth Offending Service (YOS). Our mission
statement: “Todays choices will make our future”,
shows that even though we have offended, we
believe we can change things we do to ensure we
don’t offend in the future.
So far we have agreed our name, identity, held a
team-bonding away day (pictured below) and met
with senior managers within the YOS and a local
government councillor, to talk about our
experiences. We have a say in how YOS is run
and we have seen some positive changes as a
result. Next we will look at other things such as
mentoring and volunteering within the service. It’s
good to be part of something that will not only
change the service for us, but also for other young
people in the future.
Have a Voice Council elects new Chair
and Vice Chair
At their last meeting the Have a Voice Council
(the children in care council for Leeds) elected a
new Chair and Vice Chair.
The new Chair of the group, Peter, 17, wrote “I
joined the council 4 years ago because I didn’t
like the way young people were being treated in
Leeds. I get a sense of achievement from being
involved in changing things”.
Peter will get off to a flying start in his new role
by leading and supporting the other young
people when they attend a Corporate Parenting
Board meeting later this month, where they will
work with Elected Members to help ensure
Children Looked After are getting the best
support possible!
Three of the Elected Members recently attended
a Have a Voice meeting where the young
people explained to them how important good
contact arrangements are and discussed how to
get more looked after young people involved in
extra-curricular activities.
Peter at Corporate Parenting Board last year
3 Bramley St Peter’s Primary School pupils
gets on—track with rail safety campaign
Speaking of his experience, he said: “I wanted
to design a poster that would highlight the
problem of overloading buggies or letting them
roll onto the track because the brake hadn’t
been put on.” His story shows that how with a
great idea mixed with a lot of determination can
go a long way and is an example to other
children and young people around the city of
how a small idea can make a BIG difference.
Every year, hundreds of children around the city
write manifesto’s for the Leeds Children’s Mayor
Programme. Only ten entrants make the finals
and get to stand in the citywide election but for
one pupil at Bramley St Peter’s, missing out on
the final ten was just the start of his journey.
Luke Lazenby (10) chose to write his manifesto
about the important issue of safety on train
platforms. Despite another pupil at his school
being selected for the final ten, Luke was
determined that his amazing idea should not go
unheard.
Youth Parliament continue campaigning
Leeds youth councillors and members of youth
parliament have been hard at work over the last
few months planning their annual campaigns.
Fresh from the success of getting nearly 20,000
Leeds teenagers completing the Make Your
Mark annual ballot and delivering Democracy
training to students around the city, Members of
Youth Parliament are now hard at work on the
national UK Youth Parliament campaign,
improving mental health services for young
people.
After looking at Network Rail’s safety material,
Luke realised there was nothing specific about
this issue available and as such he was keen on
having some posters designed to highlight the
problem and encourage rail passengers to stay
safe.
Luke and five other pupils decided that they
would design posters, and wrote to the station
manager at Leeds Station who loved the idea
and agreed that she would display the posters
throughout the station to help families and
children stay safe. Luke and his colleagues
were invited to the official launch of the posters
at Leeds Station and a special announcement
was made for them over the speakers!
Meanwhile, the Leeds Youth Council have
received a prestigious Diana Award for all the
campaigning work they have been doing in the
city on issues such as road safety, disability
awareness and improving work experience.
To keep up to date on the work of the Youth
Council and Youth Parliament, follow them on
Twitter @LeedsYC and @UKYPLeeds. Any
young people aged 11-18 interested in joining
either group should email [email protected].
Both groups will be recruiting and electing new
members in the Autumn Term.
Luke (pictured below, far right) and his
classmates with one of their safety posters at
Leeds Station.
4 Young people train new foster carers group
Bright Sparx day at Leeds Art Gallery
Kiya, Katie and Kiefer from the Care Leavers
Group are supporting the foster care team to help
train new foster carers! The programme ‘Skills to
Foster’ training is to give applicants who are at the
beginning of the assessment process an insight
into how to become foster carers.
The Family Group Conference (FGC) young
person’s service user group (Bright Sparx) spent
a Saturday at Leeds Art Gallery getting inspiration
for their current project of making a film about
FGC from a young person’s perspective. The
group consists of 11 young people ages 8-16
years.
The care leavers delivered an excellent workshop
to the group in January 2015. This included
quizzes, group discussions, a case study and
sharing the young people’s personal experiences
of foster care. We received exceptional feedback:
“What I really enjoyed was your opinions,
experiences you had in care”. “They have given us
information that should help us along the way”. “I
want to talk to more care leavers to get their views
and experiences, also very impressed by how well
presented the session was.” For more information
about how children and young people can use their
voice to improve social care in the city please visit
our youth voice in social care website.
After viewing the art the young people joined in a
conversation where they discussed:
What can you see?
What question would you like to ask the artist?
The young people then worked collaboratively to
make mixed media puppets and develop the
characters for their movie.
When leaving the gallery at the end of the day,
one of the young people reflected as he noticed a
statue outside the gallery, “I am seeing the world
differently now”.
Report about children and young people’
mental health services in Leeds
YouthWatch, the young people’s group at Healthwatch Leeds and Young Minds have just published
a joint report about Children and young People’s
Mental Health Services in Leeds. This follows a
consultation with 300 young people, parent/carers
and professionals. The two organisations came
together to do this piece of work after young
people in the city expressed their concerns about
access to mental health services. The report found
amongst other things that the threshold for referral
to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services
(CAMHS) was very high, that there are not enough
early intervention services, and that young people
were slipping through the net because of gaps in
service provision.
The report was presented by young people as
evidence at an inquiry into children and young
people’s mental health services at Leeds Scrutiny
Board who said this was their “best example to
date” of partnership working. The report is going to
feed into a review of children and young people’s
emotional and mental health services.
Contact us
You can contact the Voice, Influence and
Change Team by email at [email protected]
If you have any feedback or would like a printed
version please email us or visit the VIC website.
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