Our Hearings, Our Voice is famous for our use of duck aliases to protect the young people’s identities, but the rain was so heavy we were nearly swimming with the ducks on Saturday.
We had our first mini board meeting in person for 16 months, meeting in Kelvingrove park with those close to Glasgow that day. We plan to have another couple of smaller gatherings closer to the young people’s homes before bringing everyone together as a bigger group once Covid restrictions begin to be relaxed.
The young people met with Dr Kirsty Deacon to respond to questions about the evaluation of OHOV to date. They also helped to design some evaluation questions for the leaders of the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration and Children’s Hearings Scotland.
All of the adults involved in the Children’s Hearings Improvement Partnerships are being asked to share their evaluation thoughts through this survey.
Kirsty sent this message for the young people to read afterwards: “I really appreciate you all letting me coming along to the meeting today and taking the time to speak to me despite the rain!
“It was really interesting and great for the evaluation to hear about all your experiences of being part of OHOV and your thoughts for the future and what could make it even better. I really appreciate it!”
However, the most important and best part of the day was seeing the young people loving being back together in person and renewing their close bonds. We topped that off with lovely cups of bubble tea – who knew that was a thing?
Bring on more get togethers please!
