The Victorian local government youth charter: opportunities and dilemmas.

Since 2004, a process has been under way to support and enhance the role of Victorian local government in youth engagement--the centrepiece of which is a youth charter guide, This paper, written by one of the project designers, explores the context of local government and the intentions of the development project. It is argued that this not only involves organisational change, but re-thinking foundational assumptions about participation, democracy and young people. The project has provided opportunities to support and enhance youth--local government engagement. It also illuminates many dilemmas that relate to change in these contested social systems.

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The idea of youth participation has been in and out of vogue in official government rhetoric for decades, while in youth work it has consistently remained a key principle of working for change with young people (Maunders 1987). The definition of participation is often assumed to be self-evident; however, it is a highly contested term that depends on related constructions about young people, the nature of society, and the process we as citizens undertake in co-creating a democratic society. In recent years, "participation" has experienced a resurgence at the local, state and national levels, in part as a response to the perceived failures of both states and markets (Giddens 2001).

In 2004 the Victorian Office for Youth further acknowledged that local governments are the most appropriate level at which whole-of-community planning can be undertaken, and where young people can be included and celebrated as vital contributors to--indeed, creators of--the wellbeing of community. The Office for Youth funded the Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) and RMIT University to develop a process that would support the role and capacity of local government in youth participation. The project hypothesised that it needed to tackle two interrelated themes: the first was a process encouraging a re-evaluation of the taken-for-granted perceptions, images and position of young people in local communities; second was a practical strategy for enhancing innovation in the large and complex institution that is local government. As a member of the project, I discuss the process of creating two documents: A guide for the development of a local government youth charter (Nabben 2004a) and its companion Engaging with young people: Local government in action. I explore the institutional context in which these documents evolved and show how this context influenced the outcomes of the project. I describe the process of arriving at a conception of "youth participation" which focuses on young people actively shaping the future of community, and, finally, I offer some theoretical pointers for a to-be-evolved conceptual framework that might be utilised by those local government actors intending to adopt and implement the processes and relationships implied in a youth charter.

Context

In 2002 the Victorian Office for Youth invited applications for funding under the Youth Services Program (YSP). RMIT University and the Municipal Association of Victoria had a history of supporting local government's involvement in youth development through programs like the Youth Service Quality Improvement Project (Nabben 2001)--an innovative peer review process--and the Rural Councils Youth Project--funded by the National Office of Local Government. Based on what we had learned from this experience, we felt that capacity-building in local government could best be achieved through face-to-face action research with councils. The project applied for funding to establish a statewide consultancy service that would support local governments in their explorations of youth engagement, and thus locally-relevant organisational development, training and model-building. This was planned to become progressively self-funding over a period of three years. The Office for Youth instead wanted a research document on best practice youth participation to complement the new Taking young people seriously handbooks (Youth Affairs Council of Victoria (YACVic) 2004). After some negotiation, we agreed on a "youth charter guide" that could frame an internal development process at councils (albeit without any form of external facilitation), and an accompanying collation of "good practice examples" from rural, regional and metropolitan contexts.

The task of developing a relevant charter guide and associated examples of good practice is challenging, given the nature of local government's role with youth. Victoria's 79 municipalities are characterised by wide variation in demography and geography. Casey, for example, is a large, "interface" council with newer suburbs as well as many "greenfield" sites. The current rate of growth is around 6,000 people per year; these are mainly young families moving into housing estates. By contrast, Boroondara is a well-established, high socioeconomic-status, inner municipality with a concentration of elite private schools. Incidentally it also has pockets of low-income communities. Maribyrnong is another distinct case. This municipality is located in the Western Metropolitan Region and is characterised by a strong manufacturing base, a culturally diverse population, intensive public housing developments, many newly arrived migrants and relatively poor socioeconomic status. Other illustrations of the diversity of municipalities include Greater Bendigo and Moira. Bendigo, which is located within commuting distance from Melbourne, is a regional city and collection of smaller satellite towns. Moira is a rural municipality with four major towns and 18 smaller communities. The experiences of young people in these municipalities vary accordingly in relation to factors such as employment, infrastructure, income, diversity, environment, amenities, access to transport, local attitudes and community connectedness (Snelling 2003; Vinson & Jesuit Social Services 2004). The respective local councils also vary markedly in their responses towards young people: from those that have well-developed systems and cultures to support advocacy, development and inclusion, to others who feel this is beyond their mandate or resources. While some have very innovative and holistic approaches to young people, others are at the very early stages of considering youth--community needs and opportunities (Saggers et al. 2004).

The legislative base is another important element in contextualising the role of local government in relation to youth. The local government privileges political participation and self-determination, such that "[t]he primary objective of a council is to endeavour to achieve the best outcomes for the local community ...". They do this through promoting and improving:

* ... the social, economic and environmental viability and sustainability of the municipal district;

* ... the overall quality of life of people in the local community;

* acting as a representative government by taking into account the diverse needs of the local community in decision making;

* advocating the interests of the local community to other communities and governments; and

* fostering community cohesion and encouraging active participation in civic life (Victorian Local Government Act 1989).

In practice, local government's role is extremely diverse--they provide up to 90 different services including the functional areas of health, community, planning, building, waste management, conservation, recreation, libraries, arts, culture, roads and emergency management. While each of these activities inevitably affects young people, local government's role in relation to youth is very ambiguous--there is no legislated requirement for any direct services to young people and councils receive little money for youth work from state or federal governments. In practice, local governments find themselves in a heavily contested arena, having to negotiate their role in youth work and youth services with major, better-funded state and federal government programs in education, health, income support, justice, and with other players in the NGO and private sectors, including, for example, churches and voluntary organisations.

I must raise one final important consideration in understanding local government's response to youth, that is, the role and positioning of youth work and youth workers in general. Because youth work derives from a welfare tradition, it is strongly associated with personal crisis and problems (Jeffs & Smith 1988). As is the case with many programs that undertake community development from within a human services context, there is a constant dialectical tension between preventative / developmental approaches and more immediate responses to crisis needs. Council's attempts at resolving this tension are very contingent as they react to contradictory forces: on the one hand, the media and ratepayers often construct "youth-as-problems" or "youth-as-victims", while on the other hand, auditing regimes such as Best Value, a performance framework introduced by the UK Government in 1999 (Audit Commission 2001), require citizen engagement and self-determination.

The engagement of young people is thus an evolving art that is realised to different levels and with wide variations across Victoria. How then was the charter guide intended to support this engagement?

The charter guide

The project adopted a philosophy that innovation is dependent on council stakeholders undertaking a period of investigation, reflection and decision-making. The charter guide is non-prescriptive--consisting of three parts titled: 'Statewide framework', 'Working locally', and 'Making your charter work'.

The 'Statewide framework' identifies fundamental aspects of participation and decision-making that could apply to all councils (Nabben 2004a, p.3), while recognising that participation is a highly contested term, itself dependent on a number of foundational assumptions about young people, the nature of democratic society and the process of co-creating a society.

The most common supposition is that participation involves young people taking a part in relatively formal processes--usually adult-initiated and controlled meetings. Thus, "participation" is usually meant to apply to decision-making processes (YACVic 2004). While this form of participation is an important part of local government's brief (and one the charter hopes to influence), the project team gradually came to conceptualise "participation" as applying across the larger context of young people's lives within a whole community. Holdsworth (2003, p.9), for example, identified the following domains of participation:

* young people's own formal and informal groups and organisations

* formal decision-making processes

* action.

Young people, who live "in place" cannot, in fact, not-participate--they use shops and attend schools, they are workers and users of local facilities, they congregate or recreate in open spaces--if and where available. Young people are usually situated in family "units" that interact with the local milieu in many complex ways. Possible sites of participation, which include art, volunteering, sport, new media, employment and public space, contribute to a conceptual model of participation that is more interactive and ecological than linear. One representation of this interaction is Dahlgren and Whitehead's (1991) model of social determinants of health, which links individual factors with community networks, living conditions and macro-environmental factors (see Fig.1).

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Indeed, such a conceptual model is consistent with the diverse role and nature of local government. The charter guide was developed in recognition of this complex role:

   Councils impact on the lives of young people through a variety of
   ... roles, such as providing information, advocacy to other
   agencies, planning and direct delivery of some services (Nabben
   2004a, p.4).

The question in the design of the charter shifted to what local government could do to enable these various domains (Wierenga et al. 2003). Sometimes this role could be direct, for example a council actively including young people in a community consultation or festival. However, an indirect role is just as important; examples could include making low-cost venues available to young people, or improving employment opportunities. Further, there is a question of non-participation--many young people choose not to take part in committees or other adult-initiated activities or, more foundationally, to follow the expected "pathway" from school to work. While this non-participation is often labelled as lazy, deviant or self-destructive, there may be alternative explanations. For example, youth may be making a statement about the world as they see it or negotiating an alternative future. If "official" narratives are accepted--that society is fundamentally healthy and equitable--then the primary task for young people is to learn the rules and fit in to existing arrangements. However, if alternative narratives are accepted--that our lifestyles are dependent on the exploitation of less powerful groups, as manifested by a global capitalist system, then the challenge for all citizens is to address this injustice. The recent massive environmental crises have also revealed that our system is unsustainable--a fact that is not lost on young people.

Non-participation or alternative expressions of identity, for example not voting, expressions of youth culture (Bennett & Kahn-Harris 2004) or choosing not to partake in adult-organised committees, may thus be interpreted as forms of resistance. Critical theorists argue that only through "affirmative moments" and "plays of difference" can we enact ways of being that are not easily recodified into the dominant system:

   ... resistance itself as an activity is not simply saying "no". An
   activity must work itself out in practice, and practice necessarily
   involves commitments of affirmations. The critical aspect of the
   activity is what works to prevent the affirmative moment from being
   a moment simply of complicity or conformism (Hoy 2004, p.25).

The task for local governments to facilitate youth engagement thus relies on complex levels of analysis and reflexivity. Our hope in designing the charter guide and case examples was that they would focus the attention of decision-makers on their own structures by exposing them to the perceptions of young people, and that this process would eventuate in an understanding of the value of youth as co-participants in designing the future. Given these rather lofty ideals, we now consider the mechanics of the documents and the opportunities and dilemmas they precipitate.

The first section of the charter guide, the 'Statewide framework', identifies principles that might be broadly applied across all local government areas. For example, it urges councils to,

   ... acknowledge and celebrate the unique contributions that young
   people make to all aspects of community life. Young people's
   participation is enriching and important to Council planning and
   service delivery functions across economic, social, cultural and
   environmental dimensions (Nabben 2004a, p.3, emphasis added).

This part of the document also includes statements like "young people have a right to active citizenship through a visible and valued presence in their community". It highlights the importance of connections between young people and their neighbourhoods, as "young people's involvement is essential to a strong community".

The next section of the guide was developed from the contributions made by young people. Rather than only cite "experts" talking about young people (Smyth 1999), we wanted to "walk the talk" by enabling young people to speak for themselves.

The process we undertook to engage young people reveals some of the myriad tensions in participatory processes. In the early stages of the project, council youth workers from across Victoria invited young people to respond to pro-forma questions about how they see themselves and, in effect, how they wanted to be "seen" by those in power.

Responses were compiled and brought to a statewide consultation, which was attended by young people brought by their local youth workers or, in some cases, human services directors. This consultation was timed to coincide with the bi-monthly MAV Human Services Directors' meeting, to enable senior managers and young people to build some shared understandings. While the young people were overwhelmingly enthusiastic, engaged and motivated, we also discovered inevitable limitations--with information flow, young people and workers being inadequately briefed, and the "tyranny of distance" in a statewide project. Some young consultees were very well prepared and predisposed; however, a minority were left unsure of their roles. The project faced many challenges in facilitating genuine engagement with such a diverse group meeting for a limited time and in an unfamiliar environment.

Statements from the consultations regarding "the way young people see themselves" were included in the charter guide, these included:

* Young people are diverse ...

* Young people have a fresh outlook ...

* Young people are entitled to ... the same human rights as other members of the community.

* Young people's participation requires a mutual and supportive relationship between young people and the community ...

* Young people ... can contribute to both local and global issues. (Nabben 2004a, p.4).

The strategies that young people identified as important for "meaningful involvement" included: the valuing opinions, the allowing of mistakes, timeliness, clarity of process, training, feedback and adequate resourcing. Finally, the consultees provided suggestions about central issues, and how council might respond, including: feeling part of the community, expecting to feel safe and welcome, wanting sustainability, meeting friends, a "progressive, innovative and open culture" and accessible youth-focused services.

Good-practice guide

A compilation of good-practice case studies titled Engaging young people: Local government in action (Nabben 2004b) was designed to accompany the charter guide. Undertaking and reporting this research also presented many opportunities and dilemmas. The environments for which it was intended influenced the design and layout of the document, the length of the case studies and the language that was used. The target audience of the publications were local government CEOs, senior managers, councillors and residents. As face-to-face consultation or follow-up support was not available, the main aim was to provide a level of detail sufficient to enable decision-makers to build on their strengths and challenge their value-assumptions in the spirit of "double loop learning" (Argyris & Schon 1978).

Engaging young people defined local government's activities according to the social model of health featured in the VicHealth document Leading the way--councils creating healthier communities (Dibley & Gordon 2002), which integrates four areas: social and cultural; the built environment; economic activity; and the natural environment. Municipal health planning is a legislated requirement in Victoria and this broadly accepted framework is a useful way to conceptualise the interrelated domains impacting on young people's engagement. However, this holistic approach makes it difficult to identify good practice initiatives. Many of these social health domains do not lend themselves to cause-and-effect activities, are not simple, targeted "programs", and are commonly managed by council staff other than youth workers. Doing justice in brief case studies to this complexity and diversity is a challenge.

Case studies were identified using a self-reporting sampling method. A pro-forma document was sent to councils across Victoria, which asked them to nominate and describe case examples. Several cases were subsequently selected to reflect the range of contexts and interests of young people: rural, urban, multicultural, arts, committee decision-making, youth summits and council-directed planning. The selected projects were highly nuanced and located in dynamic, multi-layered histories, cultures, personalities, politics and resources. Because of space limitations, they could only be presented as "snapshot" descriptions of their actual contexts, making it difficult to portray their full depth--which is perhaps necessary for actualising good practice. Projects can only operate at a level that is contingent in its own context. Thus, to aid readers' understanding of these projects, each case study concluded with a discussion of the core themes of cultures and systems, capacity building, integration and planning across each council. Also included was a discussion of "issues for further exploration". This discussion aimed to critically evaluate questions such as: sustainability, the clarity of limits to young people's powers, the extent of integration across council activities, and other aspects that might need further investigation.

Constructing youth

A major challenge to constructing youth participation is the overwhelming deficit perspective applied to young people, which is strongly influenced by media stereotyping of young people as either problems to be feared or as vulnerable victims in need of protection (Bessant 1997; Cohen 1972). The sensationalised overreporting of "youth-as-trouble" is associated with ever-increasing supervisory and regulatory regimes, which are enacted by all levels of government. These include curfews, move-on orders, recent Victorian graffiti legislation, harsh "participation reporting" "mutual obligation" requirements, and increases in school-retention age (Bessant 2004). The alternative stereotype of "youth-as-victim" is associated with supervision and risk management, as well as therapeutic, individualistic welfare-style interventions. I am not arguing that the latter interventions are wrong--for many young people they are an important residual safety net in an increasingly unequal society, and they necessarily help people through short-term crises; however, they leave little room for reflecting on young people's structural position or on the possibility of their positive engagement and inclusion (Ghil & Rhodes 2006).

Another, subtler, construction of youth is that their only value is in relation to what they will become. While they evolve through their status as semi-formed adults not able to "constructively" add to society through work, taxes, voting or influencing the political process, their value is limited to paying their dues as dutiful consumers in the "youth market" of goods.

   [T]he "future" for which youth are positioned from a categorical
   perspective is an a-historical, static notion of adulthood, based
   on a supposed dichotomy between the categories of adulthood and
   youth rather than on an understanding of the complex continuities
   through the life cycle. Conceptually, the positioning of youth in
   this way obscures the experiences of young people by relegating
   them to a less significant realm than those who have reached
   "adult" life. Young people are seen as "non-adults', a group who
   are in deficit. They are citizens of the future, rather than
   citizens of the present (Wyn 1995, p.52).

Constructing participation

Many of those who have worked in the area of participation, consultation and power-sharing have recognised the potential for practices to be tokenistic or, worse, exploitative and excluding of young people (Milburn 2000). According to Kothari and Cooke (2001, p.4):

   [p]articipatory developments' tyrannical potential is systemic, and
   not merely a matter of how the practitioner operates or of the
   specificity of the techniques and tools employed ... the discourse
   itself, and not just the practice, embodies the potential for an
   unjustified exercise of power.

Our good-practice guide included Arnstein's "ladder" (Fig. 2) as a key framework to encourage councils to conceptualise these levels of participation.

The bottom three levels of this ladder are described as "non participation" while the other five levels are "degrees of participation". While many advocates of participation assume that "higher" levels of the ladder are "better", in the youth engagement guide, we suggested that "power-holders" be reflexive with themselves and young people about the possibilities and limits of power-sharing:

   Participation will be most effective when the limits and
   opportunities of control are understood by everyone, especially
   those less powerful, (young people) so they can make informed
   choices about their participation and contribution. Projects
   without this can result in disillusionment, manipulation, control
   and exclusivity (Nabben 2004b, p.8).

Conclusion

The youth charter guide (Nabben 2004a) and the youth engagement guide (Nabben 2004b) provide both opportunities and dilemmas. They provide welcome support in an area that was until recently dominated by individual councils operating in isolation from centralised support. They begin to inform a philosophical and practical basis for youth engagement. Importantly, they do not impose a formula or simple recommendations on councils, but rather are intended as a catalyst for a reflexive learning process that is relevant to the culture and context of that organisation. However, the guides are relatively minor influences in these complex and power-laden environments. Even the process of developing the guides reveals the various compromises and adjustments that must be made within these environments. The discourses of youth, participation and local democracy are also highly contested. I have argued that working towards the ideals of youth engagement involves not only complex organisational change, but also exploration of foundational assumptions about how we construct social reality. Face-to-face consultation within individual councils--as suggested in the original project design--would increase the possibility of facilitating this kind of change.

Have the documents made an impact at the council level? This cannot be empirically answered at this stage; however, there is anecdotal evidence that they have been instrumental in change for some councils, while for others they remain simply documents. In its Future directions statement (Department for Victorian Communities 2006), the Victorian Office for Youth identified implementation of the local government youth charter as one of the priorities. While it is not yet clear what action will be taken, with luck it will assist in understanding and realising the unique role of local government in working with young people to respond to the significant challenges now facing US.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Acknowledgment is made of the contributions of Michelle Howard (Collaborations Inc.) and Richard Hill.

References

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--2004a, Connecting young people in local communities: A guide for the development of a local government youth charter, Municipal Association of Victoria & RMIT University, Vic., viewed 24 May 2007, <http://www.mav.asn.au/YouthCharter.pdf>.

--2004b, Engaging with young people: Local government in action, Municipal Association of Victoria & RMIT University, Vic, viewed 24 May 2007, <http://www.mav.asn.au>.

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Rob Nabben has a background in local government youth work, and is a former senior lecturer. He has been involved with the MAV in promoting local government's role with young people for 10 years. He is now working with Melbourne Citymission to further their goal of 'inclusive communities', and is closely involved in the Borderlands Cooperative.

FIGURE 2

Arnstein's ladder (Arnstein 1969; see also Hart 1992)

Young person initiated, shared decision-making with adults
Young person initiated and bed action

Adult initiated shared decision making

Young people informed and consulted about action

Young people informed and then assinged actions

Tokenism

Decoration

Manipulation