Making co-design truly youth-centred
- Published
- 24.07.2024
- Author
- Marisha Landy
One of Kailo’s core pillars and guiding principles is that we will be youth-centred. One key mechanism that ensures young people’s voices are the focus of our work is forming co-design teams, where the group is mostly made up of young people leading conversations and contributions.
We wanted to commit to the designs being created by and for young people. We achieved this by working to several key principles, listed below.
These principles are centred on the core belief that young people should be given ownership over the project and that sessions are flexible and safe enough for young people to share their ideas, opinions, and experiences through different methods.
Principle 1: Framing opportunities areas through a youth-centred lens
We supported the young people to create systems maps (more to come on these!) for their opportunity areas. The system maps were a key output from the sessions, acting as a visual representation of all the factors affecting young people, and how they interact with one another to positively or negatively impact their experiences.
System mapping occurred during the earlier sessions of the process and helped young people articulate the ‘issues’ or opportunities for change in their community in a new way that was focused on root causes. By starting here and telling the story of their perceptions of the problems at the start of the sessions, facilitators were able to get a better idea of young people’s perspective and helped prioritise the most pressing issues, thinking where we could have the most impact for us to focus on as a group which reiterated the value in their contributions.
Principle 2: Bridging relationships between professionals and young people
In both sites, the problems that we were designing solutions for were complex and would require lots of different people in order to bring about a change. The groups recognised that they would need to bring in key professionals who had specific expertise relevant to the problems we were trying to solve.
We made it clear that the professionals were there to support the young people, not take over the space. This worked well, and the professionals’ presence meant that the young people’s ideas could be considered in addition to the perspective of adults who worked with them, and then developed further. This was reflected by members in our co-design groups.
“It’s nice to have a space where young people and professionals can come together and actually work together productively and proactively”.
Young participant
Principle 3: Creating sustainable ways for young people to contribute
Throughout the co-design process, we wanted the young people to feel listened to and valued so that they would want to keep contributing to the project. To do this, we reimbursed them for their time, made sure there was food for them during the sessions, and incorporated their feedback from the sessions into future activities. By doing these things, we were able to create a safe space that ensured young people felt valued for their time and participation in the group. This in turn, helped them want to continue coming to the sessions and feel confident to share their ideas and keep contributing to the project.
Principle 4: Blending different approaches to allow people to take part
It was important for us to be flexible and fun with the activities that we facilitated with the groups, where young people could use different methods to get their ideas and voices across. We used various methods throughout the co-design sessions such as games, Lego, arts and crafts, and other creative methods.
An example of this is the life-sized “Game of Life” activity that was done with the Bideford group, where the professionals and young people split into teams, and were given a persona of a young person, who was hypothetically interested in the intervention they were designing. They then had to make their way around the spaces and answer questions from their persona’s perspective such as ‘How would you sign up for the offer?’ and ‘What do we want young people to be feeling, thinking, and doing at the start/middle/end of the offer?’ to get them thinking about how to get people involved and how to make the intervention accessible. They would then use Post-It notes, stickers, emotion cards, Lego, and other inventive mediums to give their answers.
Mixing up our activities and giving participants varied ways of interacting with them meant that they could choose a method of input that would get their ideas and opinions across in a way that suited them.
Principle 5: Self-evaluation of our approach and sharing learning
“I want my opinions to be heard for the overall bettering of society and the Northern Devon community.”
Northern Devon participant
This approach isn’t always easy, and we relied on the reflections and feedback of young people to help direct and better us as facilitators. When we heard feedback like the quote above, this showed us that we were doing the right thing in giving these young people the space to come up with ideas to help their community thrive.
We were also given feedback that gave us confidence in how we made the young people feel valued and heard. One young person said, “I found it quite cool coming to a session and seeing stuff that I had said previously being brought back up. It showed me I was really being listened to.”
This quote emphasises how important it is to value young people in a way that is meaningful to them, as this will encourage them to keep participating and engaging in the sessions.
How you can help young people to co-design with you
Having young people lead projects that will affect them, their peers, and other young people in the community ensures that what is being implemented is useful and beneficial for changing the outcomes for mental health support. Don’t be afraid to have young people and professionals in the same space; give them the chance to work together on an issue that directly affects them both so that they are able to see each other’s perspectives. Young people are best to speak on issues that affect their day to day, but professionals can bring knowledge on systems that will help young people develop their ideas. When working with young people, find out what makes them feel valued and honour that, as well as give them a space where they feel comfortable to honestly share their ideas, feelings, and opinions. For support in doing this in your own community, do get in touch with us today.