Members of the panel are highly experienced youth workers and academics and will include:

Dr Howard Williamson CVO CBE FRSA FHEA is Professor of European Youth Policy at the University of South Wales and a JNC qualified youth worker. He is also an adviser to the Council of Europe on youth policy and youth work, and a visiting scholar at numerous universities including in Australia at Victoria University. In parallel, he has been a practising youth worker for over 50 years. Howard is a highly regarded and widely published international expert on youth policy and a leading authority on youth and community work around the world.

Dr Harry Shier is an expert on child rights and participation, having spent a life time as a practitioner and adviser. He was the UK national representative and branch Chair of the International Association for the Child’s Right to Play, and was a member of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child International Expert Group, advising on the final draft of General Comment No 12 on the child’s right to be heard. His PhD in child rights is from Queens University, Belfast, and he has been a visiting scholar at Macquarie University and Western Sydney University, Australia.

Dr Robyn Broadbent is Professor of Youth Work and a qualified youth worker. She has been a long-term executive member of the Youth Workers Association and worked for many years as a local council youth worker in the western suburbs of Melbourne. She has taught youth work for over 25 years and is currently the coordinator of the youth and community work degrees at Victoria University.

Dr Trudi Cooper is Associate Professor of Youth Work at Edith Cowan University. She is a qualified youth worker in the UK and member of the Western Australian Association of Youth Workers. She began her career in youth work first as a young volunteer, then a play worker, before becoming a full-time paid youth worker and youth work educator with the Lancashire County Council, in the UK. She describes herself as ‘an informal educator caught in a formal education system’.

Katherine Ellis is the CEO of the Youth Affairs Council Victoria and a former Director of the Commonwealth Youth Program for the Commonwealth of Nations, where she led the creation of the Global Youth Development Index. She was previously the CEO of the Reach Foundation, which has a strong youth participation model, and is a trained youth worker.

Roger Holdsworth is well known in Australia as an expert in the field of youth research and particularly in youth participation, having edited the youth participation in education practice journal Connect for over 40 years. Roger was a leader in alternative, democratic and community-based schooling and is the former founding coordinator of Lynall Hall Community School. He is an Honorary Associate in the Youth Research Centre at The University of Melbourne. Roger has described himself as a ‘practitioner trapped in academia’.

Dr Tim Corney is an Associate Professor at Victoria University, and leads the youth and community research group. He is also a Senior Fellow in the Youth Research Centre at The University of Melbourne and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Tallinn, Estonia. He trained as a youth and community worker before moving into academia, and had a long background in managing youth services and in face-to-face youth and community work with young people. Tim has been an advisor to governments and international organisations on youth affairs and currently advises the Commonwealth Secretariat youth development programme.

This book employs, and indeed exemplifies, critical dialogue as both an elucidatory method and an activity that is inherently valuable and conducive to human flourishing. Seven eminent contributors engage in a vibrant exchange of opinions, ideas and insights drawing on their long careers and diverse practical experiences of youth work and youth participation, spanning inter-sectoral, international and intercultural contexts.

Full justice is done to the multifaceted and contested nature of participation as a concept and its complex relationship with related ideas like empowerment, engagement, citizenship and agency, but with participation as a right providing a unifying theme and principle. All told this is an exceptionally rich resource and stimulus for youth work students, practitioners, educators and policy makers. I’ll be making abundant use of it myself.

Professor Maurice Devlin

Jean Monnet Chair & Director of the Centre for Youth Research, National University of Ireland, Maynooth.

This book on ‘Youth Participation’, provides a comprehensive overview of an important topic for those involved in the provision of services to young people. Youth participation is a core practice of Youth Work, but it has been a misunderstood concept. This publication provides detailed critique and analysis of the different models of youth participation and their application in the design and decision making of youth services and programs. I found it an incredibly useful and thought provoking read and would recommend the book to youth workers, students and managers of youth services alike.

Carmel Guerra OAM

CEO, Centre for Multi-cultural Youth. Chair, Multi-cultural Youth Affairs Network, Australia.

This publication presents a concise, accessible and engaging conversation about the right of young people to participate in decisions that affect them, and the role of youth workers in assisting young people to develop their own sense that what they think matters. The contributors are deeply experienced youth work, academic and policy experts, always worth listening to. An essential read for those involved with young people in policy or service delivery roles.

Dr Howard Sercombe

Honorary Professor, School of Education, University of Glasgow

This is a welcome and thought-provoking series of conversations about the role of youth work in catalysing the participation of young people in decisions that affect their lives. It embraces and models ‘critical dialogue’ as a basis for meaningful youth work, and youth participation. It explores the role of youth workers as facilitators of youth voice, assisting young people to navigate hostile environments that wish to silence or demonise their dissent. It is good to see these conversations in the youth work sector as it highlights the potential of youth workers to assist in establishing mechanisms for genuine youth participation, including through legislation and policy. This discussion is set firmly within the ethos of youth and community work, that is, as one contributor states “not to explain and instruct, but to motivate and inspire”, as this dialogue does. Congratulations to all involved.

Dharshini Seneviratne

Adviser, Adolescent Development and Participation, UNICEF.