A review of our 4 priorities - October 09

From previous discussions it was clear that having 4 priorities was too much for our advisory group given the limited time we have together, and it was thought best that we settle on reducing it to 2 priorities.

To do this we split everyone into two different groups. Each group had to prosecute two of our priorities and defend two of them. They did this by doing a quick presentation of their ideas to the other group. Prosecuting meant that the group had to say why it wasn’t a good idea to keep a priority (such as children’s Rights) and defending meant that they had to come up with ideas as to why it was a good idea to stay with a priority.

Once all their ideas had been voiced, it was down to the vote where each member wrote down which two priorities they wanted to keep and popped their vote into a box to be counted.

RESULTS OF THE PRESENTATIONS

Defence for Education and Careers advice

• If someone fails any of their exams then they should be given guidance towards what they can do next

• Education is an important part of a young persons life which they need support in their careers choices

• We need to know what types of qualifications you can get because they keep changing Prosecution for Education and Careers advice

• Out of all the priorities, this gets the most attention from different organisations

• We don’t have the expertise to come up with policy ideas

 • What would we do?

• Education spending in this country has increase drastically over the past few years, perhaps our efforts could be better directed towards areas which have less support

Defence for Children’s Rights

• Without knowing your rights you cant protect them

• We’re here today because of article 12

• UN – UK Government needs to do more to publicise Prosecution for Children’s Rights

• NCB are already doing some things on it so if we don’t do anything it’ll still be worked on

• We won’t be able to make as much of an impact on laws about children’s rights

• We wouldn’t be able to expand on this subject

Defence for Media Portrayal

• A better media portrayal should lead to less youth offending

• We as young people have a responsibility to portray a positive image of ourselves Prosecution for Media Portrayal

• People are more likely to listen to stories that are more dramatic and therefore media put in stories with violence to attract more viewers

• It might be better to not draw more attention to young people because it might make things worse

Defence for Youth Crime

• If people knew more about youth crime it might change their opinion

• If we merged it with media portrayal then it would make the priority more efficient

• If we try to make people less scared then they will see it won’t happen as much Prosecution for Youth Crime

• Home office and other organisations already working on this

• Hard for us to make an impact

• Different in every area – different crime rates

Here are the two priorities we decided to focus on and the kinds of activities we wanted to undertake

More ideas that we came up with Media Representation:

• Guidance on writing press releases

• Building up contacts in the media

• Finding positive news sorties and pictures

• Q&A session with Robin Elias

• Shadowing editors of newspapers – columnists

• Finding out the other side of the story

o How would they benefit from listening to us

o Social responsibility to promote positive images

Youth Crime:

• Surveys – finding our about the fear of crime (could we offer incentives such as vouchers)

• Creating proof/building up evidence to help us to understand youth crime