URL shoutout.11million.org.uk
CASE STUDY OWNER Office of Children’s Commissioner
Overview
The Office of the Children’s Commissioner (OCC) was created by an Act of Parliament in 2004 to give voice to the concerns of children and young people – especially the disadvantaged and vulnerable – living in England.
An independent body, the OCC raises the profile of issues that affect children and works closely with organisations whose decisions affect their lives. To ensure adequate representation of young people, the OCC has begun to run engagement exercises via schools and youth projects to find out what children care about and provide them with resources.
Called the 11Million campaign, this part of the OCC’s work is designed to strengthen the Children’s Commissioner’s representative function, providing younger people with opportunities to have their say on matters that affect them. As well as running offline events, the 11Million campaign has used online forms of engagement; its social networking pilot is the subject of this case study.
Policy purpose
The OCC hopes to run on- and offline deliberations as a way of identifying and tackling the problems faced by young people. It then feeds the issues raised by young people back to the organisations whose decisions affect them. ShoutOut was a pilot that tested the techniques of online engagement used by the OCC.
Model
To date, there has been one major engagement opportunity for younger people: the ShoutOut event took place in August 2007, involving children of all ages and backgrounds.
Children were invited to take part in ShoutOut via their schools, community groups and youth projects and to participate in online discussions about issues prioritised at the event. These were selected by participants from a range of subjects – the 11Million website displays a video that explains how the themes were chosen (1).
The discussion website was developed to enable social networking while ensuring that the branding was consistent with that of the main 11Million platform. It aimed to provide multiple channels for engagement, combining a forum with a news blog, polls, and a question-and-answer section. Each registered user had a personal dashboard, which could be used to find out about new activity on the site, and to create content. Since most video-sharing sites (such as YouTube) have age-based restrictions, opportunities to allow users to post or view video content could not be taken up in this instance.
Publicity
The OCC invited participants to attend its ShoutOut on- and offline events. It also promoted them on its website and via press releases.
Other methods of engagement
Young people and children were encouraged to write to the OCC (by email or post) in response to questions raised by the ShoutOut events – many did.
The OCC is working to develop sustainable relationships with schools, community groups and youth projects so that they can develop online discussions about how to tackle issues raised in the ShoutOut events.
User profiles
Registration was required of visitors to the site, but to ensure that the process was as simple as possible, little information was requested. From the user profiles, we know that almost all of the 74 participants were aged between 14 and 19 (some participants did not specify age).
As is standard with Digital Dialogues pilots, participants were asked to fill in pre-engagement and feedback surveys. Few did – partly because participation was treated as a one-off.
Site performance
As the table below shows, the site attracted a good number of visits (from people beyond the registered participants). However, there were few repeat visits and few comments made to the site following the initial postings.
The figures here represent activity on the forum and in the ‘question-and-answer’ sections of the site. In addition, 17 votes were cast in a poll on bullying; 10 each on polls about ‘safety where you live’ and ‘safety at home’.
There was some good discussion between the OCC and one of the participants in the ‘question-and-answer’ section of the site in November; few other users came back to the site, however, to follow up on points raised.
User feedback
The feedback survey was answered by six participants. Views were mixed but largely positive, with the majority saying that they would recommend the site to a friend, and that they had learnt something about the role of the Children’s Commissioner through taking part.
The site was efficacious; the majority of participants said that they would stay in touch with the OCC. Motivations were mixed with half of the respondents saying that they wanted to ensure that their voice was heard and the rest saying that they wanted to hear other people’s views. After taking part in the ShoutOut website, most respondents said that they felt fairly positive about online political engagement.
The site was praised for creating opportunities for teachers to work with children on topics as diverse as social issues and IT skills and to hear what they think; children felt that the site offered them a space to have their views heard.
There was some criticism; one respondent described the site as ‘unpopular’ – its lack of success attributed to ‘political correctness’ and an unwillingness to enforce discipline. From the perspective of the case study owners, the problems faced by the site were administrative: without systematised login processes, it was difficult for young people to engage with the site via their school/project in the limited group time available and was unlikely that they would feel motivated to log in at home.
Other issues raised were that teachers missed some of the opportunities presented by the site since the different sections were difficult to spot. Regular updates were also encouraged by those who had made repeat visits but felt discouraged from posting because there was little new content.
Follow up
The OCC has launched a new website as of 15 May, this now provides each user with their own ‘room’ (or dashboard) which they can decorate as they wish: they will then be able to enter different communal rooms – each covering a topic that is being covered by the 11Million campaign.
The new site will encourage users to visit it in their own time (even if schools/projects facilitate their engagement in the first instance). The plan will be to organise key events and engagement opportunities for participants that will take place on- and offline.
Notes: 1. See: www.11million.org.uk/11million.html
