Co-plan and co-design
Include children and young people in the planning and design of the participation activity.
Participation is more likely to be effective if it is co-planned with a small group of children and young people.
Seek advice from children and young people on age-appropriate, creative and engaging activities. Ask children and young people what helps them to participate and have their say.
When working with young children, consider inviting a specialist, parent or carer to co-plan.
Consider input from people with participatory experience, such as youth organisations, academic facilitators and teachers but ensure young people's voices are prioritised.
For co-design resources, visit:
Engage trained facilitators
Engage trained facilitators with experience working with children and young people for your participation activity.
Children and young people may respond more positively to facilitators who are closer to them in age or experience (or both).
If you know the facilitator is disabled, you feel a lot safer disclosing how you're feeling because they understand where I'm coming from.
You can find trained youth facilitators from organisations such as:
- Berry Street (Y-Change)
- YMCA Victoria
- Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare
- Foundation for Young Australians.
Consider ways to engage young people who have previously been participants as facilitators. This is a great opportunity for young people and helps ensure facilitators who are connected and familiar with the process.
Information, training and support needs
Consider and arrange the participants’ information, training and support needs.
Children and young people should receive information before participation on:
- purpose and method of participation
- who may be in the room during activities
- roles and responsibilities
- training and supports including what peak bodies like YACVic (Young Affairs Council Victoria) and CREATE Foundation offer
- recognition, reimbursement and remuneration
- processes for providing feedback.
Information needs to be given in a timely manner and aligned with participants’ preferences for how they wish to receive it. Ask participants when they register or apply how they want to be communicated with and what access needs they have. Make sure you act on their responses.
Consider how you'll make sure these are accessible to all, including children and young people with disability.
Give participants an inclusion checklist or similar to understand the supports they need – for an example, see PilotLight’s Inclusion form page.
Also consider:
- training the young person has received through school or involvement in extra-curricular, youth advocacy or professional roles
- what training may be needed to fulfil roles and responsibilities relating to the project
- how you will meet people’s psychological needs
- how you will meet people’s accessibility needs
- what supports participants may need to have advocates or support workers attend with them.
Design for meaningful participation
Follow the principles for meaningful participation.
Review the important considerations for successful participation:
Use the resources on Health.vic’s Designing for Diversity page.
Use the YDAS (Youth, Disability, Advocacy Service) Together: Building an inclusive youth sector online resource.
Consider the timetables of the children and young people and ensure you give them plenty of notice. Where possible, let the young people involved in the project decide meeting times and communication processes.
Avoid one-off consultations that don’t let children and young people build a relationship with the project team and provide deeper insights into the content.
Think about the communication needs of the participants and whether visuals (charts, graphs and pictures) will work better to convey messages.
Ask children and young people what sort of icebreakers and warm up games they enjoy.
Consider creative ways to capture discussions and insights like engaging a graphic recorder.
Use the tools available in the Commission for Children and Young People (CCYP) Empowerment and participation guide including:
- warm up games (pages 60 to 61)
- ‘V is for victory’ (pages 58 to 59) as an assessment and planning tool for any topic children, young people or organisations want to explore.
The CCYP Empowerment and participation guide is available on the CCYP website.
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