Communities First – One approach can’t fit all!
Work in any community needs to take differences into account. There are different types of communities with different needs. These can be differences in terms of geography and location or differences in terms specific groups of people living in communities for example refugee communities or Welsh speaking communities. We are sure that you are aware of the best approach to suit your community’s development. There might be some specific issues that arise when trying to involve children and young people.

It’s also important to remember that children and young people like adults are not all the same. Different children and young people will have different needs. It’s important to take an inclusive approach when involving children and young people. If you try and think of these issues in advance, and try and do some things differently, than hopefully you will end up with more representative inputs and be able to develop your community to meet the needs of all.

Additionally you need to think about the stage that Communities First is at in your community. Communities First is not a uniform process. The process is led by local communities and therefore develops differently and at different rates in different communities.
 
The following section sets out to identify some of these issues in order to raise awareness of the types of issues you need to consider.
There are so many factors that will influence how you can best get children and young people to participate in their communities and many of these relate to the nature of the community itself. These might be practical issues such as lack of transport or isolated communities or they might be the social characteristics or the culture of a community. For example if parents are actively involved in local politics or in their community it might be much easier to involve their children. In other cases, parents might be wary about letting their children get involved or it might be very difficult to arrange transport for young people to meet together weekly.
 
There is already lots of information out there already about community development approaches in different communities. In terms of involving children and young people we suggest you:
  • Think through the specific needs of children and young people in your community and try and develop a planned approach to increasing the involvement of children and young people.
  • Try to ensure you cover things like transport costs to make sure people travel safely to events. If you are willing to pay for transport costs, try to give people tickets to travel rather than asking them to claim money back. Some young people just won’t be able to afford it.
  • Try and think of suitable times to set up events or meetings. Young people are likely to be in school, training or work during the day – so even if you don’t normally work evenings or weekend you will need to be flexible.
  • Try and avoid over relying on ‘broad brush’ approaches to things like consultations as you could well leave out some groups. Try lots of different ways to get information.
  • Be creative – try and work with groups that are already set up. Through youth-clubs, play schemes, youth forums, young farmers, healthy living centres, urdd, sports clubs etc. You may find it useful to carry out a mapping exercise before you start, to find out what groups there are in your community. However, you need to be careful that you don’t completely focus on groups which are already set up; but they can be a great starting place and you might be able to access support from other workers.
  • Try and link up with schools (infant, junior and secondary) in our experience they are very willing to help by doing things through school councils, helping set up after-school clubs or even letting you run a session during school time.
  • You need to consider in advance the language needs of particular communities. It’s important that children and young people meaningfully participate and being able to use their first language is often a key factor to consider. You may need to bring in other staff and will need to think about translation costs for written materials.
 
The Welsh Assembly Government’s Communities First Programme has three criteria types for the communities who are eligible:
  • 100 most deprived electoral divisions as identified in the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation
  • Communities identified as ‘pockets of deprivation’
  • Imaginative Proposals which are made up of communities of interest

Within these 142 communities there will be many differences and a ‘one size fit’s all’ approach will not work when trying to involve children and young people. Some communities will have combinations of factors you need to consider, for example yours might be a large rural community which is predominantly Welsh speaking. There are many different characteristics communities can have and issues they can face in involving children and young people in community regeneration. The best way to find out the characteristics different communities (geographical or other) have and the issues they face is from the people themselves. It may be useful to try and anticipate issues, for example lack of access to transport in rural communities which might prevent people attending meetings, but its important not to assume that all potential issues have been anticipated.

 
Here are some examples of the types of issues relevant to involving children and young people:
  • Rural communities – scattered populations, isolated communities, lack of transport provision, lack of service provision and leisure opportunities resulting in a lack of pre-existing groups of children and young people, low populations, issues of young people migrating
    Urban and inner-city communities – concentrated areas of deprivation, lots of different agencies involved
  • Welsh speaking communities – facilitating events and meetings either bilingually or in Welsh, translation costs
  • Traveller communities – appropriate mechanisms to include traveller children and young people including celebrating contributions all young people make to their communities
  • BME communities – many diverse communities with different languages, cultures, and needs. Need to develop good links and mechanisms and get advice from workers already engaged in these communities.

This is not an exhaustive list and there may be other characteristics and issues where you are working. In all cases it’s a good idea to try and get advice from workers already engaged in the community, and to ensure you find out from the community members themselves what the characteristics and issues are.

 
In addition to the list above and as stated earlier, children and young people – like adults – are not just one group. There are many different factors to take into account such as:
  • Age
  • Gender
  • Disability
  • Language
  • Ethnicity
  • Sexuality
 
Also children and young people’s circumstances need to be taken into account for example:
  • Children and young people in care
  • Young carers
  • Young people involved in offending
  • Young people with substance misuse issues

If you are not sure how to go about things or what issues to consider then ask for help. Contact a relevant agency and ask their advice. There is already lots of information about the specific issues to consider when promoting the participation of all children and young people.

 
Some of the resources in this CD Rom should help. For examples of the work in Gilfach Goch and other Communities First areas have a look at the Practice Examples section. Or if you want a quick guide on how you can involve children and young people check out the Ten Steps to involving children and young people.