We have now sent out a Volunteering Handbook to all English library services and run subsidised training(free to partner authorities). v has created a recruitment campaign on their VInspired website (which gets 40,000 to 60,000 hits a month) to recruit young people for the Challenge. Young people's involvement will be recognised through the V50 recognition scheme.

This project is designed to be compatible with (rather than replacing) any existing youth volunteering arrangements you already have in place. v expects all 16 to 25 volunteers to be CRB checked. Your service will only have to pay the admin charge on CRB checks for young people (approx £10 per young volunteer) and we expect local monitoring requirements to be minimal as young people will document the experience themselves on the VInspired blog.

Volunteering for under 16s

Several authorities already involve under 16s in Challenge volunteering. You can use the guidance pack that we'll be sending out with this age group. However, for child protection reasons, the main v-Inspired website is open to 16 to 25s only. From April, v will be launching a new safer schools-based volunteer recruitment site for 14 to 15 year-olds. We are in discussions with v about how libraries can be involved with this, probably through SLSs. We will provide further guidance in the spring.

Background

Evidence from our young people's programmes shows that youth volunteering leads to increased skills, confidence and employment. Volunteers and 'buddies' already provide invaluable support to the Challenge in many authorities, enriching the offer to children and creating capacity for additional events and activities. Involving young volunteers has a positive impact on younger children's attitudes to reading. In 2009, 55 library services engaged volunteers to support the Challenge, over 500 of which were aged 16 to 25. Local authority requirements to provide volunteer experiences give you the opportunity to demonstrate your contribution to National Indicator 6. Volunteering is also a key element of the national Library Offer for young people.

MLA will be running generic volunteer seminars about community volunteering for the 2012 Olympics over the summer, which will complement the training and development of Challenge volunteering. Training for the Challenge project will take place in February/March.

Further news about the Summer Reading Challenge is that the final report from the summer 2009 impact study has recently become available, and the team will be writing to you again soon to flag up some exciting findings and recommendations.

MyVoice - write or wrong? awards bursaries to nine young people aged between 13 and 19 to support them to explore the issues of our time, such as contemporary life through the eyes of young people; freedom of expression; preventing violent extremism and young people in the media.

The project aims to create conversations and dialogues across languages, cultural perceptions and narrative disciplines.

Working in partnership with writers, local library services and publishers, MyVoice will give young people the opportunity to:

• Be mentored by a professional writer to support and develop their writing
• Be mentored by a librarian to support and develop their reading
• Help librarians to select books for their local library
• Be part of and help organise a writer's event
• Receive a £100 book token to choose their own books to own
• Share their writing/reading experiences with other young people involved in the project at groupthing.org

MyVoice write or wrong? is being run in Birmingham, Blackburn (Darwen and Pendle), Bradford, Leicester, Luton, Manchester and Oldham, Slough and Waltham Forest. It is a partnership project between Creativity, Culture and Education and The Reading Agency; funded by Communities and Local Government.

Bursary winners and their writer mentors

Maryam (18) from Birmingham is interested in journalism, poetry and short stories. She will be mentored by performance poet Akala.

Saida (15) from Blackburn is interested in poetry. She will be mentored by poet Daljit Nagra.

Kerry (17) from Bradford is interested in fiction, journalism and short stories. She will be mentored by short story writer/novelist Qaisra Shahraz.

O'Neall (16) from Leicester is interested in poetry. He will be mentored by children's author Bali Rai.

Entela (17) from Luton is interested in short stories. She will be mentored by published author Preethi Nair.

Ahlyah (14) from Luton is interested in fiction and poetry. She will be mentored by broadcaster and journalist Hardeep Singh Kohli.

Afshan (17) from Manchester is interested in fiction, plays and poetry. She will be mentored by journalist Robin Yassin-Kassab.

Grace (18) from Slough is interested in fiction, journalism, poetry and short stories. She will be mentored by broadcaster and journalist Hardeep Singh Kohli.

Saima (14) from Waltham Forest is interested in plays. She will be mentored by producer and memoirist Yasmin Hai.

To find out more about MyVoice - write or wrong? watch the videos. The links are in the Resources column on the right of this page.

The benefits to your libraries of offering volunteer accreditation include a structure for developing meaningful positive activities, quality assurance and the possibility of accessing new partnerships and funding streams.

Use the Accreditation Handbook (PDF) to think about why you might accredit, the types of accreditation that would best suit young people and your service, who to work with and how to get started.

Through our work on HeadSpace and Fulfilling their Potential, we have negotiated an agreement with the four main accrediting bodies so that library volunteering activities are recognised as contributing to their awards.

Depending on the accreditation award you would like to offer young, download details about a particular award:

• Duke of Edinburgh (PDF)
• Youth Challenge and Youth Achievement Awards (PDF)
• Getting Connected (PDF)
• ASDAN (PDF)

Use the direct url addresses you have been given to download the resources that support any other Participate modules you have purchased or get in touch with Claire Styles to purchase more Participate modules.

Back to Involving Young People main page
Back to Making Change Happen home page.

Share your experiences of running Participate at the Participate forum.

This section of Involving Young People focuses on the practicalities of developing young people's volunteering within your service.

The Volunteering Handbook (PDF) is a guide to help you to think through all aspects of developing volunteering opportunities for and with young people. It includes information on:

• Developing a volunteering policy
• Legal requirements including CRB checking
• Creating volunteer roles
• Volunteer recruitment and training
• Volunteer recognition and progression

Use the Volunteering templates (Word) for sample documents to help you to risk assess, recruit and sustain positive volunteer relationships with young people.
* Templates include:
* Sample volunteer policy
* Risk assessment
* Developing volunteer roles
* Promoting and recruiting volunteer roles
* Volunteer application form, induction checklist and agreement

Use the direct url addresses you have been given to download the resources that support any other Participate modules you have purchased or get in touch with Claire Styles to purchase more Participate modules.

Back to Involving Young People main page
Back to Making Change Happen home page.

Share your experiences of running Participate at the Participate forum.

"One thing that builds confidence is the feeling that you're being listened to. Here [at Haslingden] there is a feeling of satisfaction because we are listened to." Young person, HeadSpace Haslingden

Welcome to web based resources for Involving Young People; one of the modules of the new Participate programme which your authority has subscribed to. Use Involving Young People resources in conjunction with Making Change Happen.

Involving Young People gives you access to:

• Consultancy support to help you develop and sustain a youth-centred approach
• Seminars exploring Consultation and Decision-making; Volunteering and Accreditation;
• Online tools and resources to help you implement change
• Shared learning through the Participate forum

Follow the links below to download the resources that support Involving Young People. These are split into three sections:

• Involving Young People (download from the Resources colunm on this page)
• Youth volunteering
• Youth accreditation

Share your experiences of running Participate at the Participate forum.

Getting started

Involving Young People helps you apply successful young people's involvement, demonstrated initially through targeted work. Download the Why Involve Young People (PDF) from this page for the rationale and resulting outcomes for young people, library services and partners when you involve young people in your service.

Developing Youth Participation (PDF) outlines key partners, critical success factors and tough questions to ask yourself when embarking on youth participation work.

Youth Involvement Methods (PDF) describes the excellent Youth Involvement Model which you can use to shape a broad participation offer for young people. It includes practical ideas and approaches to achieving this in your authority. Download Tips for library makeovers (PDF) to help you when planning library spaces with young people.

Use the Evaluation Handbook and Project Planning template from Making Change Happen to help you develop your initial focus and decide how you will evaluate progress and youth participation.

Back to Making Change Happen.

Use the Evaluation Handbook (pdf) to:

• Think about what you need to evaluate, why and how
• Plan and demonstrate youth involvement, including using What's Changed
• Gather and review evidence, using creative methods which will engage young people
• Think about how to use the evidence you gather to create strong advocacy messages and widen support from stakeholders and partners.

Use the Evaluate, Review, Advocate (pdf) guide to help you to think through key issues in planning and getting the most out of your evaluation and to think about advocacy messages to young people, staff, partners and other stakeholders.

Use the Staff Skills Questionnaire (Word) to audit staff skills and confidence in working with young people at the beginning and again at the end of your Particpate work.

Use the direct url addresses you have been given to download the resources that support any other Particiapte modules you have purchased or get in touch with Claire Styles to purchase more Participate modules.

Back to Making Change Happen home page.

Share your experiences of running Participate at the Participate forum

Doing the Groundwork (pdf) is a guide to help you to lay strong foundations for your practical planning with young people. It includes information on:

• Strategic ownership and business planning
• Establishing outcomes and an evaluation strategy
• Auditing staff and creating a staff development programme
• Partnership opportunities (also covered in the Strategic Planning section of Making Change Happen)
  

Building on your experience through HeadSpace and regional FtP projects, we have developed guidance and resources to help you to develop good practice in planning and managing a focus activity to test your learning and use as the basis to roll out new approaches across your service. You can use the Project Planning Template (Word) to help you develop your project planning.

See the Critical Success Factors checklist (pdf) which describes the key elements that we have found from experience are needed to get your participation work with young people and partners on track and keep it going.

To help you with your evaluation strategy we have developed a comprehensive Evaluation Handbook (pdf) which includes:

• the characteristics of good evaluation
• qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods
• how to measure the outcomes for your service and for young people (including those who are socially excluded)
• practical, fun and creative tools to measure outcomes for young people.

Use the Staff Skills Questionnaire (Word) to audit staff skills and confidence in working with young people at the beginning and again at the end of your Particpate work.

For good practice in evaluating your youth involvement work we recommend the National Youth Agency's What's Changed tool

Use the direct url addresses you have been given to download the resources that support any other Particiapte modules you have purchased or get in touch with Claire Styles to purchase more Participate modules.

Back to Making Change Happen home page.

Share your experiences of running Participate at the Participate forum

Primarily, this section provides you with information about:

• the wider policy context for youth involvement
• the values and culture you will need to adopt in order to effectively embed young people's participation
• how to develop effective partnerships to support young people's involvement in your service

It also includes practical tools such as the Participate Improvement Framework (Word) (a tool to assess current levels of provision and identify priorities for service improvement) and a Staff Skills Questionnaire (Word) to help you to audit staff development needs.

The Policy and Context (pdf) document outlines how your work with young people can help you to meet policy agendas such as Youth Matters, Every Child Matters and Aiming High. It covers Local Authority PSAs and NIs that are relevant to this work and includes information about the Library Offer to Young People. It includes information about how involving young people in your service can open up new sources of funding.

By working through Values and Culture (pdf) you will gain an understanding of the core values of Hear By Right (the National Youth Agency's standards framework which informs Participate). Assess levels of youth involvement against Hart's Ladder of Participation. Values and Culture also reflects on outcomes for young people and the community.

The Partnership Working (pdf) document will help you to identify and articulate your youth offer with key partners. It also addresses partnership agreements and evaluating success.

Use the direct url addresses you have been given to download the resources that support any other Particiapte modules you have purchased or get in touch with Claire Styles to purchase more Participate modules.

Back to Making Change Happen home page.

Share your experiences of running Participate at the Participate forum

"When young people are involved in the design and delivery of services, they are more likely to access them and sustain their participation." Aiming High for young people, DCSF 2008

Welcome to web based resources for Making Change Happen; the first module of the new Participate programme. As a Participate authority, you have free access to this module.

Follow the links below to download the resources that support the Making Change Happen module. Resources are split into three sections to make them easier to work through:

Strategic Planning
Practical Planning
Evaluate, Review, Advocate

Share your experiences of running Participate at the Participate forum

Making Change Happen gives you access to:

• Consultancy support to help you plan, develop and sustain a more youth-centred approach
• Seminars for senior managers to explore Values and Culture; and Leadership and Partnership.
• Online tools and resources to help you implement change
• Opportunities to share learning with other Participate authorities

Making Change Happen helps you embed the values of successful young people's participation across your service, demonstrated initially through targeted work. It supports you to nurture vital partnerships and discover new funding and policy opportunities to make your development sustainable.

We are very aware that parents are any child's first and most enduring educators. There's plenty of research which shows how important parents are for their children's learning and development. Where parents are involved in their children's learning, children do better at school.1

For all children, the quality of the home learning is more important for intellectual and social development than parental occupation, education or income, according to a report from the Department for Education and Skills2

One of the best things parents can do to support their children is to read together at home. This starts with babies. Parents who introduce their babies to books give them a head start in school.3 It continues as children grow, with reading aloud, sharing books and much loved bedtime stories. Research shows that parental involvement continues to be important well into the teenage years and even into adulthood.4

Librarians, teachers, early years workers, family learning tutors and others concerned with education and child development know what a difference reading makes. So to support everyone working with families, we have developed a range of offers to help libraries to engage families in reading.

Our programmes for families:

• The Big Book Share - using reading to bring together families separated by imprisonment.
• The Six Book Challenge - helping adults with literacy needs to gain confidence with reading, and being used successfully in a growing number of family settings, as a focus for children and adults to grow their reading together.
• The Summer Reading Challenge - the biggest national promotion of children's reading through libraries. An ideal way to engage families to support their children and expand their reading too.
• Chatterbooks - reading groups for four to 12 year-olds, which offer a great way to involve parents too.
• groupthing.org - online reading groups for young people aged 11 up to 18
• Family Reading groups - where adults and their children can come together to share and build their reading experiences.
• Training opportunities - we offer a range of training courses which support libraries and their partners in working with families - see our training page for current offers.

"Libraries are just totally different for my children than for when I was a child - you weren't allowed to speak! If you go to our library over the summer, adult customers can barely move for children rushing around looking at books, cutting and sticking and making things. I think that's really good." Debbie Jarrett, Yaxley library, Cambridgeshire

1. (Fan & Chen, 2001); (Feinstein & Symons, 1999), (Melhuish, Sylva, Sammons et al., 2001).
2. Sylva,K., Melhuish,E., Sammons,P., Siraj-Blatchford,I. & Taggart, B. (2004). Effective provision of pre-school education (EPPE) project: Final Report. London: DfES.
3. (Wade & Moore, 2000).
4. (Desforges & Abouchaar, 2003).

The report on phase one of this project is now available and you can download it from Resources.

We are aiming to achieve this by:

• encouraging young people in youth groups and other settings to read more
• supporting activities that encourage young people in youth groups and other setting to read more
• getting young people involved in choosing reading materials
• developing projects with librarians and youth workers that get young people reading more
• spreading the word about the most effective ways of getting young people reading more.

Six projects in Dorset, Portsmouth, Stockton, Hertfordshire, Lancashire and Norfolk are currently testing the Out of the Box approach. The plan is to learn from their experience so that by the end of March 2009 we will have increased our understanding about what works and does not work.

In particular we are looking at:

• how librarians and youth workers can work in partnership
• how opportunities can be developed for young people in non-formal setting
• pracitcal ways to get young people interested in reading, including through groupthing our new website for young people
• how reading can support informal education opportunities
• if librarians, youth workers and young people's have different attitudes to reading
• if reading activities are a sustainable way of supporting informal education
• if there are any pre-requisits for things working (or, indeed, not working)

We'd love to hear from you if you are running or have run any reading based projects with young people. If you have any case studies or reports please email them to outofthebox@readingagency.org.uk

Download the report on phase one from Resources and check back for more information soon as we enter phase two.

Participate will help you deliver on the national Youth Offer and give you a clear direction on your own reading offer to young people across your library service. It will help you demonstrate libraries' key contribution to local authority targets around positive activities, volunteering and work with excluded groups.

Participate offers expert consultancy, seminars and brand new resources based on current government policy and national indicators including:

• service-wide strategic business planning
• identifying new funding streams
• fundamental culture change across your library service
• demonstrating your contribution to key LAA targets
• increasing youth participation
• developing staff skills
• introducing new youth-led services, like HeadSpace and groupthing.org
• exclusive access to online resources.
  
  We are now recruiting for the next Participate programme. If you are interested in being part of the next round please contact Claire Styles.

To find out more download the further information from Resources. There's information for public library authorities and for authorities that are already running HeadSpaces.

Other support for young people

Participate is part of a package of programmes and products that we are offering to support work with young people.

Anyone working with young people (you don't have to be a librarian) can subscribe to our innovative new social reading website groupthing.org. groupthing.org is available to libraries, schools, youth centres and anyone else working with young people.

Libraries that are refurbishing their spaces or building new libraries can get young people involved through HeadSpace. HeadSpace offers exciting opportunities for young people to get involved in designing library spaces and services to create an environment where they can read, listen, surf and chill.

This is the question that the National Youth Libraries Board, which The Reading Agency is part of, has been working to answer.

The answer that we came up with is the National Youth Offer, which you can download from Resources. The youth offer describes the sorts of services libraries can, and should, be providing for young people and how young people can get involved in running services in their local libraries.

It is based on extensive research, consultation and all the good examples of young people and libraries working together. The National Libraries Board hope that this youth offer will challenge libraries to look again at the services they offer to young people. And illustrate the vital role libraries have in running activities that young people want to get involved with and learn from.

The offer was launched at a national conference on 29 January 2008 ran jointly with The Reading Agnecy and the Local Government Association.

Following this conference, we have written more about the youth offer, gathered examples of initiatives involving young people and libraries working together, and made suggestions for how libraries can campaign to deliver the youth offer. It's in the second of our New thinking series of publications available through our online Shop.

Resources for libraries

In Resources you will find a number of documents to help you understand and deliver the youth offer. These include the:

• heads of library services PowerPoint presentation to use with your Director of Children's Services and other strategic partners
• guidance notes to use with the presentation
• a briefing paper for heads of library services and ASCEL members, about the youth offer and the National Youth Libraries Board
• an evidence-based research report on young people's views, which inspired the youth offer.

Multiple copies of the youth offer have been distributed to library services and other key partners across the country. Order additional copies through our online Shop.

National Youth Libraries Board

The National Youth Libraries Board is chaired by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and is managed by The Reading Agency.

Other members are:

• Society of Chief Librarians
• MLA Yorkshire
• Local Government Association
• Department for Children, Schools and Families
• Department for Culture, Media and Sport
• National Youth Agency
• Association of Senior Children's and Education Librarians
• Head of Community Learning and Development at Norfolk Children's Services.

Follow groupthing on twitter - sign in at http://twitter.com/groupthingpro

Calling all young writers and journalists

groupthing wants to work with young writers and aspiring journalists from across the country to act as editors for groupthing.
 
The groupthing media team get free review tickets, exclusive interviews, sneaky preview copies of the latest must-have books and the chance to showcase their work. They also have the opportunity to hone their skills by organising and writing interviews, reviews and news features. We've already interviewed a range of top performance poets, music artists and publishers. Groupthing is also undergoing an exciting revamp in order to profile the work of young people who contribute to the website. The media team will be working closely with publishers through Children's Reading Partners, as well as Apples and Snakes, English PEN and the Booktrust.
 
If you know any young aspiring writers, journalists, or artists, aged 11 to 19, who would like the opportunity to develop their skills and showcase their work, then we would love to hear from you. Contact Anna Selby

Background to groupthing

There are two sides to our groupthing offer - groupthing.org and groupthing professional.

groupthing.org is a safe, accessible social network for young people to have conversations with other young people about reading, writing and words and where they can publish their own creative work.

groupthing professional offers libraries, schools and other organisations working with young people:

• the opportunity to have conversations with other professionals to extend and develop their work
• resources, ideas, competitions, give-aways and promotions to help engage young people in creative reading activities

Over one-third of the UK library network are subscribers to groupthing.

You can use groupthing to create a digital presence for your short-term reading projects, like a book festival or poetry competition, and digital support for your ongoing work such as reading groups or manga, games or flim club as part of your extended schools' or youth activities.

groupthing provides the tools for your young people to engage with digital participation activities. It also provides local and national online volunteering opportunities that could be part of accredited award schemes.

groupthing.org's functionality includes the ability to:

• set up as many groups as you want
• run polls
• post events
• create a shelf of what you are reading, listening to and playing
• chat, rate and review
• add friends
• upload creative work in video, audio, text or image formats

Find out more by reading the briefings available to download from Resources.

Subscribe to groupthing by going to the Shop. For more information email Ruth Harrison, senior project manager.

It's about you and them and us, it's a groupthing