How we’re Changing Up the system to respond to what young people want and need
When Dartington designed the 2011 and 2017 ChildrenCount surveys in Renfrewshire, we hoped to learn from young people’s experiences. We wanted to hear their voices – but more than that, we wanted to get to grips with the detail of the challenges they see and the supports they need.
In 2017, we had responses from 10,000 young people in Renfrewshire. That’s 10,000 voices. That’s 10,000 young people telling us the truth of their experience. That’s 10,000 reasons to listen and act.
Young people told us there were three urgent issues in their lives:
Of the 3,058 young people who had been in a relationship, one in four reported concerning levels of coercive control.
One in ten young people met the threshold for a likely clinical diagnosis of anxiety and depression.
One in five children met the threshold for “high need” but only a small percentage of them were receiving service support.
These figures represent the realities of young people in Renfrewshire in 2017. For Dartington, each one of these numbers represents a child who told us their story.
In response to these three priority issues, we set up the Early Action Systems Change project with Renfrewshire Council, Renfrewshire Health & Social Care Partnership, Engage Renfrewshire and partners from across the voluntary sector. With funding from the National Lottery Community Fund, we’ve spent the last three years working to chance to change things up.
A system that understands itself, can change itself
One of our first priorities in the Early Action System Change project was to understand how need is matched with available supports. The ChildrenCount Survey survey showed us how services intersect with wider community supports and relationships. However, it also showed that despite 1 in 10 meeting the threshold for clinical diagnosis of anxiety and depression, many were not being connected to either services or social supports. It’s this information that has galvanized Renfrewshire’s services to make a change.
“Nothing for us, without us”
Such a mismatch between need and services had to be addressed – but it needed to be done on an equal footing. To respond, we needed children, young people, families and services to work together to educate each other, empower each other and equalise the conversations on how to respond to issues in the community.
Fast forward to 2019, 50 community sessions were delivered with over 500 young people to collect their views, reflections and responses to coercive control and anxiety and depression.
Again, youth voice is central to the way the Early Action System Change project works. We learned three core lessons from young people – with more detailed insights available here:
Young people comprehend and can articulate the complexity of these issues
Adults have difficultly talking about coercion and emotional wellbeing
Young people have identified the are deep-rooted social norms that promote coercion and poor mental health
What’s clear from young people’s experience is the multitude of contributing social norms that create toxic normalisation of coercion in these early relationships. Such norms require a systemic response.
There’s now a responsibility for leaders to respect this deep, honest exploration by also engaging and holding the complexity of systems change. For meaningful change to happen in this area, it requires ongoing coordinated and intentional responses from services that respect youth voices.
In 2020, youth work organisations in Renfrewshire began to build responses to these issues with and for young people. Their work was undertaken during unprecedented uncertainty due to the global pandemic, and an even greater urgency to support the emotional wellbeing of young people.
Here we are in 2021, and young people have again given us the gift of their voice and their insights. Over the last year, eight youth organisations have supported a co-design process working together with young people. They have produced innovations aimed at changing the system to better respond to ill mental health prevent coercive control among adolescence.
Changing the System Up
We’ll be celebrating and sharing the exciting work these young changemakers have been designing – in person – at the #ChangeUp Exhibition in Paisley. This exhibition, open to everyone in Renfrewshire and beyond, is packed with the innovations designed by and for young people and system leaders, to inspire all of us to educate, empower and equalise systems to tackle coercive control and take early action on mental wellbeing.
From training packs for teachers on how to respond to disclosures of abusive relationships, to resources for young people on how to recognise the signs of coercive control, there’s something for everyone to feel better educated on both topics and empowered to take action so that young people and families have their needs met.
To attend, simply book via our Eventbrite. We hope you’ll see how working together to co-design these resources has only strengthened the response, and by doing so, we hold each other to account to truly Change Up the system.
