We are asking for volunteers from youth justice services who have existing participation forums to help us establish some child and young person advisory forums in our work.

At the end of last year, we worked with a small number of youth justice services which enabled us to engage with children on the development of our new approach to YJS inspections. This played an important role in the shaping of our work, and we now want to build such engagement into our day-to-day activities and incorporate the views of children in further elements of our work.

This would involve us co facilitating a focus group of children so that we can ask them about elements of our work. We would provide the materials and lead this. The first subject will be what a child friendly section on our website could look like. We anticipate meeting with the group on an ongoing basis every few months and this would be us travelling to a premises local to the YJS rather than asking children to travel.

Our proposed child and young advisory forums would involve us co-facilitating a focus group where we can ask them about elements of our work. We would provide the materials and lead this. We anticipate meeting with the group on an ongoing basis every few months and we would travel to a premises local to the YJS, rather than asking the children to travel.

The first subject will be what a child friendly section on our website could look like.

This is completely separate from our inspection activity and plays no part in shaping any views about individual services.

If this is something that you can help us with, please contact helen.mercer@hmiprobation.gov.uk (E-mail address) before Friday 18 October.