From Consultation to Social Learning in Community Participation with Young People

This 27-page paper, published in a special issue of Children, Youth and Environments titled "Pushing the Boundaries: Critical International Perspectives on Child and Youth Participation" (click here to access the full issue), is an effort to support young people's participation in community development and local decision-making processes. Author Barry Percy-Smith's core argument is that - particularly in situations characterised by conflict, power, and difference between adults and young people - the strategy of simply consulting with young people as part of a neighbourhood development process is inadequate. Rather, more substantial youth participation practices, which involve community members, local government officers, and decision makers as well - and which are characterised by genuine dialogue and mutual learning - are necessary to address deep-rooted problems. This rich type of participation is, according to the author, an effective way to build cohesive communities with high levels of social capital that acknowledge young people as "legitimate" users of neighbourhood space.

This more cooperative and democratic approach to local development involves creating processes through which youth and adults can come together in community-centred dialogue, reflection, learning, and action. Specifically, drawing on principles of action research and participatory inquiry, the paper outlines a dialogical social learning model of participation that involves all stakeholders getting engaged in identifying issues, developing understanding of issues from diverse perspectives, exploring possibilities for action, taking action, and evaluating what has happened. Social learning is described here as being: action- and experience-oriented, critically reflective, cooperative, and communicative. A "collaborative action inquiry" drawing on this social learning approach involves:

• the participation of a diversity of stakeholders in identifying problems and solutions;
• use of different forms of knowing and communicating to articulate views and experiences;
• practice-based research rooted in the complexities of everyday life;
• collaborative inquiry to develop understanding from multiple perspectives;
• reflection on assumptions (which are often taken for granted) and social norms which underpin practice;
• working across the entire system to explore paradoxes, contradictions and disjunctions between policy intentions and the realities encountered in practice; and
• using creative forms of dialogue and interaction to open up alternative possibilities for action and change which accommodate difference.

The author illustrates this participatory methodological approach in practice using an example from his work as a consultant in community health planning. (Percy-Smith details this "Mind the Gap" project and its strategies in the report; further information about it can be accessed through an additional report accessible in PDF format here.) In brief, in 2002, the Community Health Council (CHC) from Hounslow Metropolitan Borough in London, England, asked the author to undertake a consultation exercise with young people to learn more about their health needs. First, 11 youth peer leaders between 14 and 19 years of age - 9 of whom were female, and all of whom were from minority ethnic groups - were trained in a range of participatory research methods. The youth peer researchers then determined the methods they would use and the peer group they would research in their quest to explore the main health issues affecting youth in their community and to uncover unmet health needs. Of the 7 resulting pieces of youth peer research, one used video and the remainder used posters (the majority of which involved a mix of visual symbols, images, pictures and words). The results of the research process were then communicated and discussed at a large-scale event involving 62 young people aged 13-21 from diverse contexts and 36 professionals from education, health, youth services, the voluntary sector, and community organisations. The event is characterised here as an action-oriented dialogue whose purpose was to help professionals learn how well services were meeting young people's needs and, where necessary, to inspire collaborative youth-adult work to find appropriate solutions to unmet needs.

The author then evaluates the strategy of fully involving youth in this way, concluding that the CHC research project "brought to light the policy-learning gap between professional priorities and assumptions and what mattered to young people....It is unlikely that these findings would have emerged through more conventional consultation exercises in response to policy priorities....Through this process we were able to provide a context for young people to more meaningfully participate with senior professionals, rather than tokenistically being consulted on the policy issues of the day. More importantly, as a process it revealed how, through a deeper level of engagement, young people and adults can engage as equal partners in a process of learning to support and inform responses to issues and concerns."

In short, this example illustrates the author's conviction that participation which involves dialogue based on lived experience - not merely "consultation" - can highlight as well as challenge taken-for-granted assumptions, norms and practices. On this model, instead of policy and conditions for participation being prescribed by adult professionals on the basis of their own values and priorities, young people explore and articulate their own interpretations of health (or any number/type of other concerns) within the context of their communities and using their own terms of reference. (Percy-Smith stresses that a key element here is the use of communication media that are appropriate and engaging for young people and that can communicate feelings and experience.) The author concludes that, when youth are thus empowered to communicate and discuss their findings with practitioners and decision makers as part of a policy learning process, more tolerant, understanding, and cohesive communities can be created.