A research update from Falkirk Youth Involvement (FYI) Group

In this update, Falkirk Youth Involvement (FYI) Group describe how their Knowledge is Power project supported different groups of young people to help plan and carry out research into areas they were interested in. The FYI group have turned the challenge of young people continually moving on from the project into a strength by using this as an opportunity to freshen things up with new research topics and give as many young people as possible the chance to gain new skills.

Background

Through their involvement in Knowledge is Power, Falkirk Youth Involvement (FYI) Group have been carrying out action research with young people in the Falkirk Council area, based on topics that are important to the lives of young people and the services that Falkirk Council deliver.

The best laid plans…

The FYI group is supported by Falkirk Council Community Learning and Development, who initially applied to Knowledge is Power.

At the beginning the plan was that FYI were going to assess the needs of young people to see what sort of youth provision Falkirk Council should have been delivering. This changed when the pandemic hit and the young people took part in a number of different surveys both local and national (Lockdown Lowdown).

Testing, testing - surveys on children’s rights

They then became involved with the Children’s Right Commission in Falkirk Council to help them shape surveys which was based on the UNCRC and children’s rights.

The Children’s Commission were good at taking the young people’s opinions on board and ended up with 2 smaller surveys which flowed better than the 1 big survey they had originally tried to create. The young people in the FYI group then tested the surveys and asked the Champion’s Board Young People to test them out as well before they went live to the whole local authority.

They also did some online digital training about being an Internet Citizen which explored themes surrounding Bias/ Bias Media, Prejudice, Fake News and Hate Crime.

Summer fun - researching local history

During the Summer months the group took part in a fun research project where they researched the different areas of Falkirk Council and found different points of historical interest. The idea behind the project was for them to gain research skills and create their own summer programme. The summer programme was called History is Treasure and was both a digital and physical Treasure Hunt across the local authority – the idea behind it was to get young people and families active while learning something about the areas that they live. This was part funded by Fairer Falkirk. But was carried out by the FYI group.

Mental health and employability

More recently, the Knowledge is Power work in Falkirk has changed focus, working with another group of young people on a Mental Health and Employability Project. The young people have been working their way through a Participatory Democracy Certificate as this piece of action research. They have just completed their survey which was done at Graeme High school with S1-S3 students.

They chose a mixture of paper copies and a digital form that the young people could scan via a QR code. They are still analysing the results from this survey which will be fed back to the LEP (Local Employability Partnership) in Falkirk Council to help make changes for children and young people with regards to mental health support and provision particularly in employability.

Always in transition - a positive approach to a challenge

The Falkirk CLD worker supporting the research explains how young people tend to move on from projects, and that this was the case with the group. Instead of just having a static group of young people, Falkirk Council CLD team adapted so that young people who were interested in a particular part of research/youth voice could dip and out of the projects so it suited them.

The fact that they were flexible with letting young people move on and actively recruiting new young people for research/projects that interested them kept this group moving and fresh, but still able to carry on with the same theme of wanting to make youth provision in the area of Falkirk better.

Next steps

The group will be finishing up after this final group has finished their project. Then the work will focus on collating all the data that has been gathered into a final report.

More information

Find out more about the History is Treasure campaign. If you click into each article it will tell you about the point of interest and there is a short video that was created by a tour guide Ben Allison with the information the young people sent from their research. Visit Young Scot website.
As part of youth work week and cop26 young people across the Falkirk Council area took part in this mini campaign, 9000 reasons why. Everything was themed around the number 9 and the young people in the research group took part in pairs and each came up with 9 questions for their survey. Out of all the questions they chose ones that would be the final ones in the survey the carried out. Read more on Young Scot website.
See our growing list of Knowledge is Power project updates from other community organisations and partnerships taking part in the programme. Click to navigate back to our learning page.