Style of leadership and accountability

Who are services for young people accountable to? To parents and practitioners? Directly to young people? Read on to explore accountability issues in RightSpace.

Leadership turned upside down

Leading and managing work with young people is being turned on its head. The position of the service user, however young they may be, is moving from object to subject, consumer to co-creator, empty vessel to expert by experience, receiver of services to being involved by right in their design, delivery and evaluation. These are transformative times. What impact is this having and should it have on the style of leadership and the accountability of managers to children and young people themselves? There are signs across local authorities and the voluntary sector that it isn’t all just about new structures, such as youth forums and advisory boards, or news systems like dedicated budgets, or monitoring and recording of participation activity. This section looks to learn from your experience. The video clip from Nottingham gives an encouraging example of this wider cultural change.  

Stubborn challenges

But there still seem to be some big challenges:

• Transactional or transformative participation: do we still tend to see active involvement as “come and join me in my organisation on my terms about things that will help our service”? Or is there evidence of participation as shifting to being about transforming relationships, understanding and collaborative working?
• Representational or participative democracy: are our main methods and approaches encouraging exclusivity and feeding into the few chosen being told they represent the many, rather than supporting grass roots engagement and empowerment?

A style of leadership that understands young people as having lives and interests reaching far beyond the bounds of a particular organisation is crucial to the full realisation of a society in which young people are equal citizens now, activists in vibrant, forward-moving communities, exercising their right to participate, including their right as citizens to dissent.