The Centre for Youth Impact have published a report that forms part of their Youth Voice, Power and Influence project, which is collaboratively funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, BBC Children in Need and The National Lottery Community Fund. The motivation for this work is to support, inform, and influence more meaningful youth voice work in the future, both across the funders' collective vision for young people, and more widely across society.

Young People’s Participation in DecisionMaking: UK 2022 Survey Report

There are four key aims for the project:

• Increase understanding: Better understand current youth voice activity in the UK in terms of where and how young people have a voice, which young people access these channels and what they are saying

• Increase reach: Ensure more young people, particularly those who are seldom heard, such as excluded or marginalised groups, or groups that are less well known, are listened to and have influence in decision-making processes

• Enhance equity: Better understand the barriers to engagement, and evidence priority areas where we need to focus on equitable access for young people to ensure their voices are heard and able to have influence

• Improve access to information: To ensure practitioners and young people can access information on national youth voice and insight activity

This report discusses the findings from the UK-wide survey. The survey invited organisations to respond to questions about their practice to support young people’s participation in decisionmaking outside of their own organisations, including:

• The groups of young people they work with;

• The type of activities young people engage in to enable them to participate in decisionmaking;

• The resources and support organisations have available for this work; 

• Perceptions of what is needed to support this work better. The survey was open for responses between 01 June – 14 August 2022. It captures responses from 269 organisations across the UK that work with young people