From journal articles to Quick Guides and webinars, you will find tools and information to support.
This guide from Youth Power explains how to measure youth engagement, and why this is an important part of working with young people. It also discusses a number of specific indicators of youth engagement, and links to tools that can help you measure these.
This collection of articles and presentations from the International Association for Public Participation provide advice and strategies for engaging the community during COVID-19. It focuses particularly on how to use digital methods of engagement in place of face to face contact, which may be useful for those who are wanting to collect data or conduct interviews during this period, as well as those seeking more general advice on how to maintain safe and connected service delivery.
This guide from ARACY gives practical guidance on how school communities can design and implement successful parent and family engagement practices. It draws from a wide body of research to provide evidence and examples of how you can make parent and family engagement relevant to your school and community.
In this activity young people are encouraged to fill in the page with words or pictures identifying different points of connection at various levels. This will open up conversations about a young person’s place in the world and encourage them to see themselves as one part of a connected network of support. If a young person doesn’t have strong connections in “Family”, they may be led to see that they do have connections elsewhere – perhaps via a connection to nature, culture, or a particular worker or friend.
An alternative to starting with the question, “What subjects are you good at in school”, recognising that for many disconnected young people this can trigger feelings of inadequacy and frustration. Instead, the activity encourages young people to simply reflect on things they like, not necessarily things they are good at or activities with a strong careers focus or pathway. This helps the young person with the practitioner to open up stories and reflection about favourite things, activities, people, and draw out useful stories and experiences that demonstrate skill, character, connection and competency.
This document developed by the Ontario Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health outlines a number of principles and practices for engaging with young people. These were co-developed with a youth advisory group and seek to ensure a high quality of client engagement and service.
This document developed by the Ontario Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental health outlines a number of principles and practices for engaging with families. These were co-developed with a youth advisory group and seek to ensure a high quality of client engagement and service.
In this OPEN Forum, Mary Ann Notarianni discussed how the Ontario Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health have developed their thorough 'Quality Standards' for engaging with both young people and with families.
In this presentation, Casey Howden (Kids First) explores how to bring children to the centre of our work. By using a strengths-based, child-centred approach, children can tell us who they are – and how we can partner with them to achieve positive outcomes. So, who is Casey Jones? Casey Jones is the name of a child’s favourite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, and the bridge that enabled practitioners to join with this child and his mother. Casey Jones sparked a positive transition by shifting the focus from what might fail, to what might work.
