Rainer Crime Concern is a national charity for under-supported young people with over 600 staff enabling over 3500 young people everyday to help them change their lives for the better.

In 2006 they became the first national voluntary organisation to adopt the Hear by Right standards and they embarked on a three-year programme to get young people involved in the design, delivery and evaluation of the services they use. I met with Beck Dabscheck to find out how the process has gone so far.

‘It is a big and daunting idea, how do you involve young people? Well how longs a piece of string. What does it mean? What’s the right thing to do? There is no right thing to do. We’re talking about change, Hear by Right is a driver for the change process based around an accepted model.’

They are now embarking on the third phases, which is about consolidation and revisiting initial map and plans and seeing how to improve them. This all feeds into their quarterly internal self-assessment process where one of the key indicators is results for young people.

‘Staff said it was a very inspiring process. Seeing young people rise to the challenge, having conversations they wouldn’t normally have, building objectives that they hadn’t had that they find very exciting. You see how rewarding it is for people.’

The feedback and response from young people have been very encouraging. Karrol, from Rainer City Training in Portsmouth felt her involvement in the evaluation of her service was very worthwhile,

‘I started to feel proud, like I could make a difference and I liked the fact that I’d been listened to.’

‘In the end it was simple,’ says Beck, putting the past two years leading the Hear by Right process in perspective, ‘If young people have had input into it and it reflected the needs of the service then great.’

Explore Rainer Crime Concern's journey here.

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Written by Alex Farrow, Participation Consultant at The National Youth Agency.