Summer holidays don’t seem to have slowed things down for the young people at Our Hearings, Our Voice. Our board members have been using their skills and experience of Children’s Hearings to continue ensuring Hearings are tailored around children and young people’s needs. Here’s a flavour of some of the work they have been involved in recently:
- Contributing to the research methods and data on whether virtual Hearings should remain part of the Hearings System. It has been difficult up until now to gather the views of children and young people on this.
- Exploring and learning more about mentoring so that experienced board members can help newer members to take part in our work.
- Designing and writing content for a quarterly magazine for young people attending Hearings, written by young people with experience of Hearings. The Voice magazine will be published around October and available in Hearings centres and online.
- Recording their views for podcasts to share what they are doing and how they are contributing to Keeping The Promise for Hearings.
- Taking the first steps to agreeing the written and spoken language that should be used in and around Hearings. This ‘word busting’ approach has the leadership and hands on support of all the key partners in the Hearings System and will be co-produced with Hearings-experienced young people.
- Changing the leaflets available to children to support them in participating in their Hearings. For now, this involves improving these, but there is a commitment to digging deeper and discovering just what is needed for children and young people to take part safely and fully.
- This includes providing some information in other formats, such as the film inspired by OHOV about being on a Compulsory Supervision Order.
- Last, but not least, remaining central to the reform of the Hearings System. Our board members have met regularly with Sheriff Mackie and Promise Scotland as part of the work of the Hearings System Working Group. The 40 Calls to Action have been used to inform the themes of the group The Hearings System Working Group: Issues List – The Promise and OHOV are represented on the Children and their Hearings Co-design team. Members of the working group and the designers involved will meet OHOV board members in October to test ideas from the co-design process before they become recommendations to government.
Please do get in touch with Gordon or Amy at OHOV if you’d like to hear more or support any of this work.
