Case Study: HDRC Children and Young People's Takeover Event
In November 2024, 87 people, including over 40 young people from eight youth voice groups across Bradford District, attended a takeover event of the Children, Young People and Families Executive Board. The purpose of the event, which was held at Bradford’s City Hall, was to provide a platform for youth representatives to share their priorities, lived experiences and ideas for improving outcomes with decision makers to influence future policies and practice. The youth takeover event was planned and delivered by the Bradford Youth Ambassadors, the Child Friendly lead and the Youth Service, in collaboration with the Health Determinants Research Collaboration (HDRC) and Employment and Skills colleagues.
One priority of the HDRC’s co-production strand is to identify community priorities, including those of children and young people, around the wider determinants of health to influence research, policy and practice. To help achieve this, the HDRC collated previously published local insights from the council and partner organisations around the priorities of children and young people related to the wider determinants of health, mapping to existing themes in the council’s current Children and Young People’s strategy.
Priority themes
This insight was used to develop three main priority themes :
- Education and skills development
- Safe homes, places and communities,
- Physical and mental health
These were underpinned by two cross-cutting themes
- Participation, involvement and voice
- Tackling inequalities and discrimination
The priority themes were sense checked with representatives of youth voice groups, including the youth ambassadors, and it was felt that these themes represented current priorities for action from young people.
It became apparent that existing local insight lacked information about potential solutions across these priority areas, and there was limited insight from vulnerable groups. To address this, the HDRC worked with Bradford’s Youth Ambassadors to develop additional research questions focusing on the priority themes.
The Youth Ambassadors were supported by the Child Friendly Bradford District programme lead and Youth Service colleagues to undertake research visits to local youth voice groups, including those representing vulnerable groups such as the Children in Care & Care Leavers Council and Bradstarz SEND Youth Forum. During these visits, the Youth Ambassadors gathered information from the group about their priorities within the identified themes, and ideas for solutions to the challenges young people face. An online survey was also developed for any youth voice groups who were unable to attend a research visit.
The HDRC worked with colleagues to summarise the findings from the research visits into one-page documents for each youth voice group which they could use as a reference for the takeover event. An example of the collated findings for all youth voice groups is shown in Figure 2 below. The four agreed themes to focus on were: education and skills, safe places and communities, mental health and wellbeing, and equality and discrimination.
During the event, board members were split into four groups and placed into separate breakout rooms based on one of the four event themes. Youth groups rotated around the rooms to share their priorities and ideas around each theme with the board members, before reconvening to reflect on the topics discussed.
The top three topics from the event were:
- create more opportunities to develop life skills,
- peer support schemes for mental health and wellbeing,
- giving children and young people more voice in decision-making
Attendees completed a short survey at the end of the event, showing that there is an appetite for similar meetings in the future by both young people and board members. Further work around the top priorities identified will be taken forward in collaboration with other boards and partners who have committed to have their own ‘takeover’ approaches and embed youth voice into decision making as a result of this project. Following the success of this process, the HDRC is considering how it can integrate this work into its wider ‘areas of research interest’ planning for future projects.
The HDRC would like to thank Bradford Council’s Youth Ambassadors, Youth Service, Child Friendly Bradford District programme lead, and Employment and Skills colleagues for making this event possible and enabling the HDRC to improve our understanding of young people’s priorities for wellbeing.