Strategic Planning

Strategic Planning
Working through this section of the Making Change Happen module will help you build on your knowledge and skills to implement new ways of working with young people, particularly those at risk of exclusion.
Primarily, this section provides you with information about:

  • the wider policy context for youth involvement
  • the values and culture you will need to adopt in order to effectively embed young people's participation
  • how to develop effective partnerships to support young people's involvement in your service

It also includes practical tools such as the Participate Improvement Framework (Word) (a tool to assess current levels of provision and identify priorities for service improvement) and a Staff Skills Questionnaire (Word) to help you to audit staff development needs.

The Policy and Context (pdf) document outlines how your work with young people can help you to meet policy agendas such as Youth Matters, Every Child Matters and Aiming High. It covers Local Authority PSAs and NIs that are relevant to this work and includes information about the Library Offer to Young People. It includes information about how involving young people in your service can open up new sources of funding.

By working through Values and Culture (pdf) you will gain an understanding of the core values of Hear By Right (the National Youth Agency's standards framework which informs the programme). Assess levels of youth involvement against Hart's Ladder of Participation. The document also reflects on outcomes for young people and the community.

The Partnership Working (pdf) document will help you to identify and articulate your youth offer with key partners. It also addresses partnership agreements and evaluating success.

Share your experiences of youth involvement at the Participate forum

These online resources are taken from The Reading Agency's new Participate programme. You are welcome to share resources with library colleagues in, but not beyond, the South West.