Visit to the Young People’s Centre from Siân Berry, our Green Member of Parliament representing Brighton Pavilion.
This was a first for Impact Initiatives and the Children & Young People’s Service.
We had previously met with Siân Berry and discussed the different ways that M.P.’s might engage with young people in a ‘surgery’ setting. We agreed to promote and host a ‘meet up’ between young people drawn from across the groups that use the Young People’s Centre. Siân is the MP for the constituency in which the YPC is based.
On 28th February 10 young people aged between 14 and 19 years met with Siân Berry at the Young People’s Centre to discuss current issues and ways that M.P.’s might better engage with the views of young people. In all we engaged with 16 young people for the event. 10 attended in person and 6 gave their views and opinions as written questions. We promoted the event through Brighton & Hove Young Carers, C.A.M.H.S. (CAOT), Impact Children & Young People’s Service, Allsorts Youth Project, Trust for Developing Communities and Brighton Youth Council.
Overall the event was a great success and all young people who attended engaged well with the session and gave valuable and insightful feedback to Siân Berry and the team. We brought together young people from across several organisations and this was a great example of collaboration and partnership work.
Feedback from young people: ‘It was a lovely event!!… I think it was great we created an event like last Friday to meet our MP’.
Feedback from Siân Berry’s team: ‘Thank you so much for Friday – it felt really positive and Siân was really grateful to the group for sharing their views and experiences. As she said, those in power are not listening to younger people anywhere near enough. We had a spring in our step when we left!’
Next step is to work with Siân Berry and team to facilitate a regular 2/3 monthly meet up between Siân and young people. Thanks to Bryony Malley who volunteered to support the event and Yann Brown who handled the catering and ‘out of sight’ preparations.
Peter Trenholme
CYP Service Manager
February 2025
