Home and Future: a youth participation collective, named and branded by the young people in it

The starting point

Participation teams across the South East’s local authorities were each doing their own thing: real effort, but fragmented, under-resourced, and with no shared network to learn from each other or pool what worked. Some leaders wanted young people in the room, but without a consistent approach, that risked becoming tokenistic rather than young people actually shaping decisions.

What we did

1. NetworkA regional networkParticipation workers and Youth Ambassadors from local authorities across the South East, brought together for the first time as one group rather than separate council teams
2. BrandA name and a visual identityThe Southeast Youth Participation Collective, with a colour system where each dot represents an individual young person, and a brandmark shaped like a compass across the region’s four sub-areas
3. GovernanceA full policy suiteSeven documents written for the Collective and Home and Future: a Safeguarding Policy, Code of Conduct, Conflict and Complaints procedure, Consultation and Decision-making protocol, Governance Agreement, Consultation request process, and Digital Communication policy
4. Shadow BoardA Shadow Board designOne Youth Ambassador from each local authority, with recruitment, payment, four tiers of decision-making and a 12-month implementation plan, handed to Home and Future to launch
5. TrainingSessions for the regionTraining delivered to the regional Children in Care Council and to Home and Future itself

Five sessions, January to May

Each month brought Youth Ambassadors and participation workers from across the region into the same room. The sessions built deliberately: from surfacing what wasn’t working, to the practical tools to plan a project, to actually making something.

1. JanuaryCo-designAn open, often challenging conversation about inconsistencies between counties and where young people’s voices were going unheard
2. FebruaryPlanning basicsSWOT analysis and SMART goals, turning ideas into projects with clear resourcing needs
3. MarchChoosing the projectsThe group voted to pursue two ideas: a webinar series led by Youth Ambassadors for professionals, and a milestone-based recognition programme modelled on the Duke of Edinburgh Award
4. AprilIdeationThe group narrowed to the webinar series, with Home and Future’s Helen Humphreys joining to align it with regional priorities
5. MaySkills and filmingA professional filmmaker worked with the Youth Ambassadors on storytelling and camera technique, and the group filmed content for the webinar series on the day

How we worked

The brand came from the young people, not for them. In the sessions, individuals were represented as dots, each with a slightly different form and its own colour, which is how the Collective still describes itself: individuals coming together as more than the sum of their parts. The Collective’s own language for its goals follows that same young-people-first approach: VOICE for what it’s working towards, UNITY for its values, GROWTH for how it will know it’s worked.

What changed

The project reached 80% of its agreed KPIs by handover.

What runs now

On 21 June 2025 the Collective’s design, structure and materials were formally handed over to Home and Future, with a plan for a care-experienced coordinator to hold the space for young people and a residential to launch the Shadow Board.