Perspectives: Safeguarding

Perspectives: Safeguarding

We came into this conversation knowing that safeguarding matters. We came out of it understanding that this is a conversation we need to be having and revisiting to make sure we are doing it well. Because good intentions are not enough on their own and because the conversations that protect children can be the ones hardest to start. Dr Catherine Knibbs created the term Cybertrauma. For fifteen years, she has worked with clients who have told her, again and again, that what they experience online is not like normal trauma. Because it does not stay in the past and the material persists. Because the harm can resurface in ways that physical harm cannot. Kristi McVee spent a decade investigating child sexual abuse as a detective and many years interviewing child victims. She left the police in 2020 with a PTSD diagnosis and a mission. What she saw in that time changed everything about how she understands risk, how she thinks about prevention, and how she talks to parents about what actually protects children. What they both stressed was this. The most powerful protective tool we have is not a law, not a platform policy, not a filter or a ban. It is a conversation. An honest, open, age-appropriate conversation that starts early, returns often, and keeps the door open for a child to tell us something we might find very hard to hear. Children who have body safety conversations come forward faster. They experience less prolonged harm. They recover more quickly. Not because the conversation guarantees their safety. But because it means they already know how to tell someone. And they have an adult they trust enough to tell. We also talked about something that we think gets lost in the noise around safeguarding. None of this is our fault. None of us were given adequate information when our children first went online. The platforms that profited from their presence did not make it easy to protect them. The systems that were supposed to keep pace with the digital world did not. And the result is a generation of parents who feel guilty, frightened, and unsure where to start, and who sometimes respond to that fear by shutting down entirely. That is completely understandable. And it is also where this conversation begins. This episode is not about adding to the fear. It is about the small moments and the everyday conversations. The ones that keep the door open. We hope it helps. 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 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]