Perspectives: Youth Voice

Perspectives: Youth Voice

For a while now we have been sitting with a feeling we couldn’t quite shake. We have had so many rich conversations on this podcast with experts, researchers, authors, practitioners, all talking about young people. And those conversations are so valuable. But somewhere along the way we started to wonder whether, in doing that, we were missing something essential. Whether the people we most needed to hear more from were the young people themselves. We discovered that it wasn't easy. Getting young people to share their voices on our terms simply didn't work. We needed to make sure that they became stakeholders in the process, that co-design wasn't just a word we used but something we actually practised. And that meant we would have to listen differently. That is what led us here. Because we also just wanted to give young people a platform to share what they are actually doing. And what some young people are doing right now is extraordinary. That is what this episode is. Part of our commitment to do things differently. We hope it will inspire other young people to think that they too can get involved, that their voice matters, that they don’t need to wait for permission. And we hope it will encourage adults, in their families, their workplaces, their communities, to think more carefully about how they involve young people in decision making. Not just the big decisions. The everyday ones too. Because that is where the habit of being heard can grow. What became clear to us in this conversation is that the connection between generations has to start somewhere real. Not in a sterile meeting room where a handful of teenagers are invited to represent all young people. But in a relationship. A genuine, human, personal relationship where a young person feels known rather than consulted. Janet from CoGenerate put it in a way that has stayed with us, the shift happens when we stop seeing young people as our own children and start seeing them as valuable voices at the table. Not because their youth doesn’t matter, but because their perspective does. And the research bears this out too. Young people who feel genuinely heard don’t just participate more, they stay. The involvement and the commitment grow from the relationship, not the other way around. Leena founded the Golden Connections Club in Southern California to bring young people and the elderly together, after she noticed that most of her peers had never had a real relationship with an older adult. Not because they didn’t want one, but because the structures around them had never created the conditions for one to form. So she built those conditions herself. Jaan, who is sixteen and based in the UK, spent years navigating Type 1 diabetes and then cancer. That experience gave him a perspective on resilience and advocacy that most adults twice his age don't have. He talked about what it feels like to be in spaces that still treat young people's presence as unusual rather than expected — and about a social media debate where young people are subjects of the conversation without ever being truly part of it. Maja, who is seventeen, is the founder of Child in Court, a project she started after her own experience in family court at the age of twelve, with the aim of making court processes less frightening for young people by explaining their rights in accessible language. She is also a member of her district Youth Council in Warsaw, and her council's community refrigerator initiative, giving people a place to leave surplus food for those in need, was approved unanimously across all political parties. We were also joined by Janet Oh, Senior Director of Innovation and Programmes at CoGenerate, who offered what might be the most uncomfortable insight of the episode. The adults most committed to youth voice, she said, can sometimes become the biggest barrier to it. Not through indifference, but through over-caution. They step so far back that they are no longer partners, they are chaperones. And young people, it turns out, do not need chaperones. They need collaborators. We came out of this episode more convinced than ever that the change we are all looking for is not waiting on a policy or a programme. It is waiting on a relationship. On an adult who decides to show up differently. On a young person who decides not to wait. This episode is full of both. Listen in. Penny & Jennie Perspectives from the Informed Perspective Get full access to The Informed Perspective at theinformedperspective.substack.com/subscribe [https://theinformedperspective.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Perspectives: Youth Mental Health

We recorded this episode on youth mental health in response to what we are picking up in our community. We knew it would be an important conversation and it was. We came out of it feeling genuinely hopeful and that is not always the case with this subject. Rachel Kelly author of The Gift of Teenagers: Connect More, Worry Less, opened up about her own mental health journey in a way that took real courage. Ten years of severe depression. And here is the thing that struck us most, the first time it happened, she didn’t address it properly. She pushed through, carried on, and it came back. It was only the second time that she finally stopped and did the work. She was honest about what helped and what didn’t, about the years it took, and about what she now wishes she had known sooner. That kind of honesty is rare. And it matters, because her honesty gives permission. Permission to struggle. Permission to ask for help. And permission to try again when the first attempt doesn't work. What came through again and again in this conversation is that connection is at the heart of mental health. Being around other people. Showing compassion to others, and how that, perhaps surprisingly, builds compassion for ourselves. Rachel described a school where one house had measurably better mental health outcomes than all the others. The reason was a child in a wheelchair. The daily experience of showing up for someone else had built something in those young people that no lesson could teach. Yes, the statistics are dire. Half a million young people in the UK on waiting lists. A ten year delay between first symptom and getting help. But there is hope too. Stigma is reducing. More people are talking. And former teacher Vicki Barsby's Life Story Education programme , where teenagers role-play as parents navigating real life challenges, is producing results that formal sessions never reach. Because it gives young people agency. The sense that they can navigate difficulty rather than be overwhelmed by it. Because it gives young people agency. The sense that they can navigate difficulty rather than be overwhelmed by it. Both guests were clear that the change we need is not just a system change, it is a culture change. A culture in schools, in families, in communities where mental health is not a topic reserved for a rushed lesson once a term, but part of how we live alongside each other every day. Where asking for help is seen as strength. Where adults model the behaviour they want to see. Where young people do not have to reach crisis point before anyone notices. But it’s also clear that we need more spaces for this work. Spaces where young people can share their burdens without pressure, without a grade attached, without the bell about to go. We need an education system that sees the mental health of each child, not just their academic performance and gives them the tools to navigate difficulty and challenge before the pressure becomes too much. That means knowing who they can turn to. That means making mental health part of the fabric of school life rather than a rushed lesson once a term. And it means recognising something we sometimes forget. The mental health of parents and the mental wellbeing of their children are not separate things. They feed each other. Which means this conversation is for all of us, not just the young people in our lives. Listen In! Penny & Jenny Perspectives from the Informed Perspective Get full access to The Informed Perspective at theinformedperspective.substack.com/subscribe [https://theinformedperspective.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Perspectives: Family Dynamics

In this episode we chatted with Catherine Carr, author of Who’s The Favourite? The Loving, Messy Realities of Sibling Relationships, and Dalton Conley, Professor of Sociology at Princeton, whose research into the genetics of family life has produced findings we weren’t expecting. Here is the one that has stayed with us most. Children shape their parents just as much as parents shape their children. From as young as 18 months, children with higher genetic potential for educational success are drawing more reading, more play, more cognitive investment from their parents, not because parents are consciously choosing it, but because the child is eliciting it. The parenting is a response to the genome. Catherine brought something equally striking from the human side. The roles our families assign us in childhood, the responsible one, the funny one, the difficult one, follow us into our adult lives in ways most of us don’t realise. Into our workplaces. Into our relationships. And the labels hold even when the person wearing them has long since moved on. There is also something in this episode about the conversations we never have. The ones where we sit down with our siblings as adults and ask: what was childhood like for you? What did you experience that I didn’t see? Catherine describes it as spinning around and suddenly seeing the whole story from the other side of the room. Most of us keep putting those conversations off. This episode is a gentle argument for having them sooner. The tween talk question at the end — “I love my family, but sometimes they really annoy me. Is that normal?” — got the most immediate answer of any question we’ve asked. Both guests, simultaneously: yes. Completely. The episode is out now — wherever you listen. Penny & Jenny Perspectives from the Informed Perspective Get full access to The Informed Perspective at theinformedperspective.substack.com/subscribe [https://theinformedperspective.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Perspectives: Youth Engagement

We’ve just finished recording our Youth Engagement episode, and it has left me truly hopeful. We spend a lot of time worrying about whether young people are engaged. We spend considerably less time asking whether we are. This podcast is all about how we can co-design along side each other. Our guests were Abbee McLatchie, Deputy CEO of the National Youth Agency in England, and Paul Stepczak, a community engagement specialist who has co-facilitated nearly 100 co-design events across Wales. Abbee told us about a campaign that produced the biggest surge in youth voter registration the UK has ever seen — in one day. About 16-year-olds sitting with the Prime Minister, not for a photo, but for a real conversation. And about young people who shaped a national strategy — her hope being that they’re the ones who drive it forward. Owned, sustained, and decided upon by the very people it was built for. Paul told us about a room in Wrexham where businesspeople, politicians, and 14-year-olds wore the same lanyard. First name. No titles. And what happened when the hierarchy dissolved. There’s also something in this episode that gave us pause — about why so much well-meaning engagement still falls short. Paul has a name for it. You’ll want to hear it. One exchange has stayed with me in particular because it made me refect on our daughter. Our tween talk question: “Is there any point doing anything now, when nobody cares what we think?” Paul: “I care. Get in those spaces.” Abbee: “Start from where you are.” That’s the whole philosophy, really, in two sentences. Listen In. And in a few weeks, the floor will be entirely theirs: an episode devoted entirely to youth voice. Until then, keep listening. Penny & Jenny Perspectives from the Informed Perspective Get full access to The Informed Perspective at theinformedperspective.substack.com/subscribe [https://theinformedperspective.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Perspectives: Listening

I’ll be honest, this episode has been sitting on our agenda for ages. Jennie and I have explored a lot of subjects on our podcast. Sleep. Identity. Discovery. Shyness. Motivation. Digital Balance. Third Spaces etc. But listening, really sitting down and dedicating a whole episode to listening, has been well overdue. Because in many ways, it’s the thread running through everything we do at The Informed Perspective. It’s the reason behind everything we do. We were joined by three incredible guests, Corine Jansen, co-founder of the Global Listening Movement; Jenny Smith, a receptive listening practitioner; and Dr. John Coleman OBE, a psychologist who specialises in parent-teen communication. Between them, they brought such different perspectives to the table. Something Corine said really stopped me in my tracks. She talked about how the real question in listening isn't whether you meant to listen well, it's whether the other person actually felt heard. And when I think about conversations I've had, or ones I've been on the wrong end of, that really hit home. Jenny brought in something I hadn’t come across before, the idea of co-regulation. That when one person in a conversation is genuinely present and grounded, the other person’s nervous system actually starts to settle. Listening isn’t just emotional. It’s physiological. I found that genuinely fascinating. And then John spoke about teenagers in a way that I think every parent needs to hear. The teenage brain is going through enormous restructuring and understanding that, changes everything about how we show up for the conversations that matter most. But honestly? The moment that got me most was at the end. We always close with a question from one of our tween contributors. And this time it was: “Why do adults always say ‘listen more’ — but never seem to do it themselves?” None of our guests could fully argue with the premise. Corine’s answer was the one I keep thinking about, she said that when most adults tell a child to “listen,” what they actually mean is “obey.” And that real listening only begins when our need to be right becomes slightly less important than the reality of the other person. That’s a hard thing to sit with. But worth considering. Jennie admitted that her boys are now so conditioned to hearing “listen” as a command that even when she genuinely wants to share something with them, they brace themselves first. I completely relate to that. And my youngest, who is 7, has started turning it back on me. Very calmly, he’ll say: “Mummy, you’re always talking about listening. Now you need to listen to me.” Which is, frankly, fair enough. 😄 This is exactly why we created our Are You REALLY Listening? events, intentional spaces where parents and young people come together to actually hear each other. In a world that pulls us in every direction, making that space deliberately feels more important than ever. And this episode is the heartbeat of all of that. This episode also connects to something bigger that I’m working on, a research project exploring how well we truly listen to one another in today’s world. If you haven’t already, I’d love it if you took five minutes to fill in the questionnaire. It’s completely anonymous, open to absolutely everyone, and every single response genuinely matters. 👉 Link to Take Part [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdpxyabWEa8enyuTZGt3rJysbp5_Dsj5OiYpJzlu0UpQ5wxSQ/viewform] I’ll be sharing the findings once they’re collated and I can’t wait to find out what everyone is thinking and experiencing. In the meantime, press play and notice how you are listening today. Get full access to The Informed Perspective at theinformedperspective.substack.com/subscribe [https://theinformedperspective.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]