How did children, young people and families contribute to our Children and Young People's Plan?
Our Plan is for the children, young people and families of Nottinghamshire, so it was vitally important that they contributed to its development. We consulted with them through a series of interactive group discussions. We included groups from a variety of backgrounds, to make sure that we heard representative views. The groups we talked to included:
- primary school pupils
- secondary school students (from both mainstream and special schools)
- young people from youth forums and assemblies
- asylum-seeking children and young people
- young people experiencing housing difficulties
- young people affected by substance misuse
- young people in local authority care
- the traveller communities
- parents and carers using Children’s Centres
- parents and carers from forums linked to schools.
We also consulted with our Nottinghamshire Young People’s Board.
We were interested in finding out what life is like for children and young people growing up in Nottinghamshire and for their families. We wanted to know what they like or dislike about living here. Children, young people, parents and carers also told us what they thought about each of the improvement priorities for our Children and Young People’s Plan. They told us what they thought we should do to achieve them.
In total, over three hundred children and young people and seventy parents or carers gave us their views. They told us that they wanted:
- parks and outdoor spaces that are safe and free from litter and dog muck
- affordable leisure activities for children and young people
- good, accessible public transport
- schools and other services that are open, friendly and non-judgmental and that recognise individual circumstances
- support for parents
- adults to have respect for young people
- positive stories about young people in the media.
People in some parts of Nottinghamshire told us that they already experience these things, while others told us we need to do more to make them a reality.
Children and young people have also told us about their lives in other consultations and surveys. One of these was the Tellus 3 survey, carried out by OFSTED in Spring 2008. This was a survey of children and young people across England. In Nottinghamshire, as sample of schools was selected, to represent the different types of school in the area.
The TellUs3 survey suggests that most children and young people think Nottinghamshire is a good place to live. They feel happy in their lives. They like their local area and contribute to their community.
- 88% said they felt very healthy or quite healthy
- 71% said their local area was a fairly good or very good place to live
- 79% said they tried their best at school always or most of the time
- 60% said that, in the last year, they had given their time to help a charity, a local voluntary group, a neighbour, or someone else in their local area.
However, some children are concerned about bullying and many children do not feel safe in their communities. Not all children enjoy their time in school.
- 30% worried about being bullied
- 39% said that they felt a bit unsafe or very unsafe in their local area
- 46% said they enjoyed school all or most of the time.
How will children, young people and families continue to contribute to our Children and Young People’s Plan?
In Nottinghamshire we share the vision that all children, young people and families will have the opportunity to participate in decisions which affect their lives. They will have access to services which they need and the opportunity to shape how these services are planned and delivered. Nottinghamshire's Participation Strategy sets out how we will achieve this vision, and was endorsed by the Children and Young People’s Partnership Board (now the Nottinghamshire Children's Trust) in July 2006.
Over the two year lifetime of the Plan, we will be reviewing progress and deciding what actions we need to do to keep us on track to achieve our improvement priorities. Children, young people and families will be at the heart of this work. We need to work with them to find out what they want and need, and to identify solutions for them and their communities.
To do this, we will continue to work with the same groups that contributed to developing our Plan. We may also ask other groups for their views. We will ask whether what we are doing is making a difference to their lives and if we need to do anything differently.
When we move on to developing our next Children and Young People’s Plan for 2011-2014, we will ask children, young people and families to work with us to decide on our priorities for that plan.
