The people using a service are often the people best placed to help improve it. Services are at their strongest when they are accessible, responsive at the point of need and designed around the real experiences of the learners they support.

As professionals, we also need to create opportunities to reflect, listen and learn from those experiences so that they can meaningfully shape the way support is designed and delivered.

We see many examples of good practice across education, including learner surveys, focus groups, student unions and student representation. These all play an important role in understanding learner experiences. But the question is, what more can be done to enable young people to actively shape, influence and co-design the services intended to support them? How can we create meaninful opportunities to influence the decisions? 

We believe their greatest value comes when learners become genuine partners in shaping the services designed to support them.

For those voices to truly influence change, young people need psychologically safe opportunities, trusting relationships and meaningful structures that enable them to contribute to decision-making and the development of solutions.

We are interested not only in what learners experience, but also why they experience services in the way they do, what helps them engage with support and what makes the greatest difference when support works well. ​
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