Last week I and two colleagues attended the second phase of the Liverpool Schools Parliament Consultation which took place in Liverpool Town Hall. The group was split into three rooms each holding thirty young people to allow the consultation to be more personal. We decided to asking the young people leading questions to generate conversation around the topics we were particularly interested in to get real responses and spark ideas. We felt that giving out a questionnaire or list of set yes or no questions would not only make them bored, but would not capture the true views and opinions of the young people.
Although we were hoping to split the group into three and each tackle a different subject we unable to do this so the three of us stood at the font and tried to keep a conversation flowing throughout the group.
Our main focus was around what online resource the young people wanted and felt would be useful, along with what makes them visit websites and the features, design and content they expect.
Out of the thirty young people in the room, none of them had ever visited the MFRS website, meaning that they were not even aware that there was a Youth section. When asked what else they knew about MFRS, apart from putting out fires, the only responses were fitting fire alarms and dealing with road and traffic accidents… and of course the usual rescuing cats out of tree’s line!
We then spoke about what websites the group use now, due to the wide age range the answers varied, most popular answers included Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Habbo Hotel, MiniClip, Wikipedia, Google and Bing. It was not surprising that the majority of their answers were social networking and free online gaming sites. Out of the thirty people only ten said they had a Facebook account, however this may be due to the age range of the group as others said they do use Habbo Hotel and Bebo, social networking sites aimed at younger children. All the CYP use MSN and some use MSN and Twitter. Interestingly, half of the group said they had covered e-safety in school but only some of them had changed their security settings after, others kept their profiles, including details and photographs, open not thinking they would be at risk. The top reason for using the internet was for chat and if they needed information the first place they would go is Wikipedia or a search engine such as Google or Bing.
Having got an idea of what resource the CYP are already using and how they spend their time on the internet we channelled in to what they believe we could do. We used A3 coloured screenshots to show them our website and the current ‘Youth’ page and also some examples of other websites aged at CYP including the BBC Bitesize and ThinkuKnow website. They liked the idea of the website being split up into age specific sections similar to the ThinkUKnow website for example Primary Schools (under 11’s), 11-15, and 16+. For the younger members of the group said that they are attracted to brighter colours and cartoons and characters. The older members said that they prefer more statistics and facts. The entire group however said that they would want interactive games linking to fire safety messages but that were fun.
It was suggested that unless there was a reason for them to visit the website they would not think to go, therefore it should be linked in with their curriculum, possibility PSHE lessons. This could cover fire safety messages and information of what the MFRS does. The most popular resources that the CYP suggested were virtual tours of Fire Stations and other areas of MFRS, detailed staff roles, careers information (not just fire-fighters), fire fighting games, statistics and case studies, live chat to staff, online application forms and information about activities open to them. They also talked about discussion boards where they could post up information or queries however when we spoke about this further they suggested that using Facebook for this would be better than trying to re-invent it. We should also make sure that pages are linked to other useful sites such as Connexions and schools and they are linked to us.
The consultation was invaluable and has given us a lot to think. It was excellent to see the CYP thinking out loud and watching how different ideas linked and led onto others. Although having a wide age range there meant it was hard to be specific about certain points it was extremely useful to see how the needs and opinions varied so much from those aged 11 to those aged 16.
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