Hi im rachelle and i am from coventry, in 2010 two people from user voice paula and warren came down to coventry and asked a group of people qestions about crime and how we could reduce it and lots more questions, at the end me and a friend of mine were selected by the rest of the group to be apart of user voice and come down to london, to be apart of policy discussion forum at Portcullis House, of course we said yes we were excited.
So the day come when we were of to go to london, there were 30 young people involved all togther from all round newcastle,london,birmingham and so on so it was a range of diffrent areas, i was nervous as i didnt no anyone but i really should not have been , we got there a day before the discussion so we could get to no everyone, i really should not have been nervous because the young people were amazing they made me feel so welcome it was just so welcoming and nice to be around.
we all got to no each other for the day, we all went out and had something to eat, it was just lovely, we went on the london eye and had a good look around london, it was just amazing the view the people it was just so understanding, when we got back to the hotel we all were talking for a while but got our head down about 11 ish as we had the policy discussion the next morning, i got up showered and eat and was all ready to go for our duscussion.
There were 30 young people and and 25 policy makers, including MPs and representatives from the MoJ, NOMS, the London Probation Service, the Youth Justice Board and private contractors currently managing prisons, we done a open space method and it worked really well.
everyone wrote down on a poste stick the questions they wanted to ask and say it throught a mic so every body could hear, once everybody had asked there question, they put the post stick into groups and put them around the room into little groups, everyone had the chance to finally get people to understand there opinions and how they could do certain things to improve crime and it worked really well.
more people should listen to us, this exsperince was awsome and i am so pleased i could be apart of it, it really was a pleasure and i am really impressed with what user voice are doing so thankyou.