Exercises – Challenges and Posibilities
Section A
Set the learning mind: appreciative sharing of learning
Purpose of exercise
The purpose of the following exercises is for participants to consider what is already going good in ensuring participation of young children. Reflecting on their own practice and searching for the feedback they already received from young children.
Instructions
Ask the following questions to think through how they ensure partnership with children:
- What does this mean for you? How would you describe this?
- What did you learn that works?
- What feedback you’ve remembered the most, have you ever received from a child/young person about this?
Divide people into groups of 2-3 (online: breakout rooms)
Invite participants to listen very curious to each other, and only asking questions to get more detail
Each participant gets 7 minutes and then switch role
Bring the group back together and ask for feedback.
Each participants give the following feedback:
Section B
Amplify and discover the practice of giving voice to children and young people and managing to sound their voice in the whole trajectory: getting concrete detail
Purpose of exercise
The purpose of this exercise is for participants to consider their current work with a child and think about what they are already are doing and analyse what’s making this good practices.
Instructions
The facilitator invites each participant to think of a child with whom they have had professional involvement.
The facilitator asks participants to reflect on the following questions:
- How and when do you involve children in the process? How do you give them a voice? How do you ensure that the content of your speech with children is also fed back to parents and network?
- What are you already doing? What motivates you to do that? What works in that? What do you see others doing in that?
- What tools do you use/ are helpful?
- What does this require of you/your team/ of the organization to be able to do this?
- If we were to ask children, young people and their parents and network what has worked, what has made a difference, what would they say now and in the longer term?
- If it is an online session, please use the Google app: Padlet, to report the most important discussions of the group
- Feedback in group:
- Greatest learning for yourself, for your team and for the organisation for the future?
Section C
Tackling challenges
Purpose of exercise
The purpose of this exercise is for the group to think about how and in what ways they, their teams and their organisations can turn obstacles into opportunities and break down the wall! Create vision and explore opportunities and stimulate them to come with solutions for the different levels practice, team- and organisational level.
Instructions
The facilitator invites people to think individually about obstacles and challenges and to define for themselves the biggest challenge that currently lay ahead of them.
If it is an online workshop, let them formulate there challenge in the chat
The facilitator invites people to get back into their groups of 3
Let them exchange per 3 and give them the task to question each other solution-focused about their challenge:
Invite them to vison what they would like to see in the future:
- What would your 10 be?
- Score and what’s already in it?
Let them help each other to come to the next concrete action, given the following questions:
- What would be helpful in that? Who (yourself/team/region/policy) can do what?
- What are the 3 resources within your reach to meet this challenge?
Let them conclude their thinking by mentioning which qualities they have heard from this conversation from their colleague
Call back the groups
Gather feedback or the most important lessons from each group, structured by the following questions:
- What have you heard that works and would you suggest doing to deal with these challenges?
- What recommendation do you think children parents and their network would like to give us?
- What do we need to do more/differently from the organization to support this?
Section D
Ending the session: move to action
The facilitator brings the group together and asks the group to reflect on:
- One new thing they have learned
- One new thing they will do differently in practice
- One new thing they will ask their team, organisation to consider in terms of policy/practice changes
Section E
Follow-up session
If you have a follow-up session you can start with a video:
And then ask everyone: If you are thinking of partnership with children/network or professional partners and your greatest strength in it, what would you like to share with us?
In pairs, let them exchange: they listen and only ask questions to explore more details about what the other has done, ‘What else? What else?…
Bring the group back together and ask for feedback: let them compliment their colleague
Dan Siegel, clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, suggests we create a new word, MWe (me+we), to represent that we are an individual self (me) linked and interconnected to everyone and everything else (we).