In this collaborative project, young people co-designed the questions; participated in an online survey across four states and 15 sites; and engaged in a project workshop that brought together young people, teachers, youth workers, government policy officers and others to explore the data and how it might inform practical initiatives and outcomes for young people.
Background
Youth Voices was prompted by a recognition that youth justice is a fragmented social policy area, with multiple and diverse stakeholders, and a long history of deeply-embedded approaches. Working on the basis that achieving different outcomes require different input, we started exploring some specifically designed methods and tools for working in complexity. These included the use of Sensemaker® software and the Cynefin framework for decision-making and action.
Youth Voices was designed to make use of some of these tools and processes to offer new insights into youth and youth justice issue, drawn unfiltered from the lived experience of young people; and to begin to identify small scale, low risk initiatives, next steps and strategies for improvement.
The aim of Youth Voices was to seek insights rather than test a particular hypothesis — to identify questions and issues that we or others might explore further in an ongoing conversation about what’s good for young people.
One of the most significant outcomes was an Australian Research Council Linkage project, Young Women’s Voices, that aims to discover how the youth justice system, and human services that have touch points with justice, could be improved to generate better outcomes for those who identify as young women.
The voices of the young people heard through this project also continue to inform our submissions to government on issues that matter to young people.