This was a joint piece of work between Nottinghamshire County Council, Nottingham City Council and Connexions Nottinghamshire. The aim of the project was to involve young people in developing and delivering a training package to other young people to enable them to undertake local inspections of the respective service.
As there were 3 different agencies involved we needed to make sure that the training could fit the needs of all of them. It was agreed that the training would be done over two days. The first day focussed on training on core skills which provided all young people with the basic abilities needed to carry out inspections, i.e. observation, giving feedback etc. The second day provided specific training whereby staff from each agency took young people from their own areas and gave them specific information and resources to enable them to carry out inspections for their particular service in line with their own inspection policies and procedures.
The training development team was made up of two young people (from County) and 3 members of staff (1 from each agency). The young people played an active role in developing the content of the core training including designing activities and developing resources to be used by young people. The young people were also responsible for delivering sections of the training to other young people.
Because the specific raining had to be individually developed for each respective agency the young people were not involved in the development of this. However they did attend the specific training and supported other young people to participate.
Also, following the training one of the young people involved in the development team attended a national conference where he delivered a presentation to partners from various agencies around the importance of involving young people in Inspections. He designed the presentation himself and took along a booklet, that he had also designed, for young people to take with them during their inspection visits as a reminder and prompt of all of the things they had learned during the training.
All of the young people who were trained as inspectors worked towards either a Youth Activity Award or a Youth Achievement Award.
Lyndsey Radford
