Youth commissioners help shape your services around young people's needs

Early last year, we decided it was time to involve young people in the decisions that our council made. After visiting several other local authorities to observe the ways they worked with young people to commission services, we decided to recruit a group of young commissioners – local residents aged 13 to 19 who would help us ensure that the services we funded met the needs of young people. Now, a year later, our young advisors meet with members of the children's commissioning team every other week. Council staff describe their upcoming work to the group, and offer projects to the young commissioners. Then they get involved with the nitty gritty of our work, running focus groups, reviewing services, interviewing tendering parties, sitting on service advisory boards, carrying out research and conducting service inspections. The young commissioners make sure their voices are heard and acted upon. Their research has helped to recognise the contribution young people make to society, and is reflected in our sustainability strategy. They have been involved in interviewing new staff in the department, with their scores accounting for 40% of the applicants' results. And the involvement has paid dividends for our services; since we created the team, we have raised awareness of local youth services and improved engagement with other users. We've had fantastic feedback from our young people. All our commissioners work towards accreditations, and two have received youth achievement awards that have improved their employability and supported university applications. Our young team have told us that contributing to something meaningful that can make a difference to people's lives has been the biggest reward for them. Yet the project has not been without its challenges, and there are areas for development. Recruiting more volunteers is a priority, with future activities planned around university open days and school-based career fairs – ideal opportunities for offering voluntary work that can raise students' prospects. More staff training around engaging young people could be helpful, especially on ways to make community engagement more fun. And while the young commissioners use social media to talk about their involvement with the council, bigger council-led campaigns could improve the visibility of their work and offer young people an easy way to tell the council what they want from youth services. We hope the lessons from our scheme can help your local authority design or improve a system to get young people involved in your local services. Getting young people involved: four ideas • You don't need a big budget: The young commissioners team costs Reading council around £400 a year. Draw on your existing participation teams to organise and facilitate the project, and on commissioning teams to resource them. • Join it up: The young people should be involved in every aspect of the project, from deciding how they will be involved with the commissioning team, to what services they will be working on, when they meet and how they will be rewarded. It is much easier to encourage someone to volunteer if they are enjoying themselves. • A culture of participation: Create the right culture within the commissioning team. Your staff must be open to truly devolving power to young people, and having faith in their ability to use it. They must keep thinking of new ways to involve the young commissioners in their work and respond positively to suggestions from the young people about how they could get involved. • Engage as best you can: Activities and projects should be varied and interesting. Providing regular, visible reminders of the positive impact of their involvement is a huge reward; we have found that young people volunteer because they want to make a difference. Work around their commitments and work flexibly to plan meetings and sessions that suit their timetables. Support them wherever possible – balancingcommissioning projects around university or work can help young people gather strong material for a job or course application. Michael Beakhouse is children's commissioning officer and Tom Woolmer is a participation co-ordinator at Reading borough council This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. Join the local government network for more comment, analysis and the latest jobs direct to you