Creative consultation events

In October and November 2008 we held three one day events for children and young people. These events gave children and young people the opportunity to tell us what they think about our work and what they need from the people that work with them.

• Friday 31 October in Birmingham
• Saturday 22 November in Manchester
• Saturday 29 November in London

Creative workshops

Children and young people took part in a creative workshop. Children and young people chose between drama, visual art, video, music and rap, sculpture and masks or puppetry. During the workshop they explored three key questions

• What do you need from the people that work with you?
• What do your workers need to have/do to meet your needs?

• What should CWDC be doing?

Marketplace

On arrival and over lunchtime children and young people took part in a whole range of short consultation activities. These included

• Life-size outlines of workers (foster carer, social worker, Connexions PA and educational psychologist) asking "What do I do?" and "What do you want or need from me?"
• A questionnaire to decide how a postcard competition could be run
• Flip video asking "what should you be able to expect from your workers?"
• Web activity looking at how to improve www.direct-kids.gov.uk and www.needtoknow.org.uk
• Video booth asking "how would you inspire someone to do better?"
• An opportunity to meet a director or board member of CWDC

What did children and young people tell us?

We're currently writing up everything that children and young people told us over the three events. We will be using this to inform the work of individual teams and our business plan for 2009-2010.