Monday 20 May 2013

Words have power. Choose them wisely.

Anne-Marie Douglas
20/05/2013

I find the term ‘Participation’ relating to young people’s involvement in service provision patronising by its very definition. It aspires to the notion that children and young people are allowed to participate or offer their views on services that adults run, some of the time, and when it suits the adults who make the decisions about services designed to meet their needs.

I could talk about theories and degrees of participation, and of course tokenism, but it is all meaningless if service users don’t understand it; language used to demonstrate service user involvement is exclusively the language of professionals and so incorporates the power imbalance inherent within. If you ask a 16 year old attending a Youth Offending Service they may or may not know what ‘Participation’ means, especially to Professionals, but they will know the reasons why they (and their families) will or won’t engage with services. They will also likely have some thought provoking and insightful ideas into ways to increase engagement, and in our experience, will often want to help others who face similar circumstances. However, they will probably have to trust you to tell you what they know and therein lies the challenge.


We know from our own experience that trusting support agencies isn’t easy for some young people and families. I could tell you stories of staff, young people and families involved with projects at User Voice that you’d never forget, but they have been forgotten and failed by the many, many agencies that have been in their lives, not being listened to, not having a voice, feeling betrayed and not having consistent, trusted support at the times they most needed to help them to navigate and access these services. Professional service providers often call some groups of young people and families, ‘hard to reach’ and ‘disaffected’ (there seems to be a need to define the complexity of their situations from an external perspective). I can tell you that this is the very group we find ‘easy to reach’, and it is the professional service providers who can be ‘hard to reach’!


It is not enough to be ‘experts by experience’ though; we know, (because service users tell us) that we have to create the conditions that support young peoplein their journeys to self-discovery, (rather than simply counting reductions in re-offending as a measure of success) and to support them to access professional help. We do this by developing trusted, secure and consistent relationships, individual care and offering a choice based ‘open door’ approach that allows individuals to opt in and out as they wish, when they wish and to engage for as long as they need.


We could talk theoretically about attachment, inherent person centred approaches incorporating congruence, empathy and positive regard that support how we engage young people in the criminal justice system. But let’s keep it real (this is a User Voice blog after all!), this isn’t rocket science; many people instinctively know about this because it is the way we should look after and nurture our children; they need to know you care. So I ask, and will keep on asking, 
“Why is it still not happening in services designed to meet the needs of our most damaged and vulnerable children and young people”?

Involving service users meaningfully is a movement toward integrating service users into co-producing services, in partnership with professionals, designed to meet their individual needs. When we extend this into reaching and giving voice to our most vulnerable children and young people in society it will be a revolution in their service provision.

Monday 13 May 2013

For me the Council work we do in prisons is all about legitimacy

Jason Warr
11/05/2013

In the Woolf Report (1991), perhaps the most forward thinking report into prison
conducted by any member of the Establishment, Lord Woolf noted that

… a recurring theme in the evidence from prisoners who … were involved in the [Strangeways] riots was that their actions were a response to the manner in which they were treated by the prison system. Although they did not always use these terms, they felt a lack of justice.
In practical terms this meant that the prisoner participants of that, and other disturbances, were involved because they perceived their environment, and the authority inherent within it, as illegitimate. 

Legitimacy in prisons is something of a thorny and complicated issue (see Sparks et al 1996) and of course in this situation we are discussing the perspectives of two related but variant populations; which makes for an even more complicated picture. However, in essence people confer legitimacy to organisations or systems if and only if there is a shared commitment to the cultural, normative or structural values that underpin those organisations/systems.

Within the carceral state of England and Wales, the legitimacy of communities has most commonly relied upon a conjunction of the democratic nature of the community and the joint enterprise of therapy, which exists in the various TC models and units that are scattered throughout the prison service. However, for the majority of prisoners, who exist outside of these communities, legitimacy can be in short supply.

The problem then arises that if legitimacy is in short supply how do we keep prisons this side of the brink of disorder and riot? Having had experience of ‘a disturbance’ in prison believe me you do not want a prison to descend into the brutal maelstrom of disorder. It does no one any favours, not the participants, not staff and not the wider population or indeed the public. So what can be done to ensure this does not happen?

One such mechanism is involving prisoners in the regime in which they must exist, involving them in shaping the manner of their incarceration. This is not, as some of the more right wing press may attest, pandering to the whims of prisoners but is instead the opening of a dialogue between what can often be two entrenched and openly hostile populations –prisoners and the prison.

Ever since the Woolf report there has been a recognition of the importance of this process but many of the experiments have failed. The User Voice model has not failed. It has not failed because our engagement both instils from the outset, and maintains throughout, objectivity and open democracy – which can in turn lead to a process of communitisation (the adoption of the community values and structure) and thus legitimacy.  How does it do this?

Simples! Council’s fail when there is no investment (and thus no action) from the Number 1 Governor, if the prisoners who end up on it are staff favourites or patsies and have no respect throughout the population and if the Senior Management Team become alienated through the Council’s negativity. We solve these issues. How? Well, that would be telling … trade secrets and all that (I could tell you but then I would have to …)!

Let us just say that investment is ensured by contracting us in, we engage with the whole population whether they be those with GOAD issues (those like us!) or not and we are solution driven and focused. See, simples (maybe).

So for me its all about legitimacy. Without it Gaols fall, with it … well its not a panacea but it enables a process of dialogue, collaboration, co-production, civility, pro-socialisation, increased social capital and ultimately improved relationships and then … peace! 

That’s why I’m there, that’s why I do what I do.

Monday 6 May 2013

I use my experiences to connect with people and it shows others we can change and be an example


Max Tucker
03/05/2013

My name is Max,

I’ve been volunteering at user voice for nearly 8 months now and I have found that it's been a really valuable experience in my life. I have really enjoyed working on the London probation project.

I love working with the service users in probation of course it can be challenging but that’s par for the course- as a service user & ex offender and recovering addict myself  I can use my experiences to connect with people and it shows others we can change and be an example.

I love to see people try to help themselves, and when we are all working together alongside probation I get great fulfillment when the service users are enjoying what they are taking part in and seeing people that think they have nothing to offer or nothing to say smile and tell me that they really enjoyed that!!!  “MAKES ME HAPPY”