What makes a good life: Young parents

Methodology

Taken from What Makes a Good Life? Feb 2019

Scoping the project

The purpose of this project was two-fold:

1. To hear and share the views of a diverse group of children and young people on wellbeing.
2. To support children and young people’s views being heard in the development of the Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy.

In preparation for the project we asked the following questions:

• What are we trying to achieve?
• Who should we be hearing from?
• Have children and young people been asked these questions before?
• Who can best support them to share their views?
• Which engagement method will best support children and young people to share their views?
• How can we ensure their voices are heard and have influence?

Defining who we would engage with

The legislation underpinning the Strategy identifies four priority groups: children and young people living in poverty; children and young people in the care of, or at risk of entering the care of, Oranga Tamariki; children and young people with greater need; and all children and young people. Our engagement was designed to ensure we had broad coverage across all four groups.

The survey reached a diverse group of children and young people across New Zealand, with a mix of urban/rural, socio-economic status, ethnicity and age characteristics. We targeted our our face to face conversations to ensure we heard from those we knew would be more likely to be experiencing challenges in their lives. These included children and young people living in poverty, living in state care, with a disability, from rural and isolated areas, aged under three years, with refugee backgrounds, who identify as LGBTIQ+, who are recent migrants, or who have received a mental health diagnosis. The majority of children and young people we spoke to in focus groups and interviews were Māori.

Defining our areas of enquiry

We wanted to know, from a child’s perspective, what wellbeing means to them and what children and young people need to improve their wellbeing. In July 2018 we surveyed around 200 children and young people and spoke with two groups of children. We asked them to describe wellbeing in their own words. The word wellbeing did not resonate with these children and young people. They used the phrase ‘having a good life’ to reframe the conversation. As a result, we decided that ‘having a good life’ would form the basis of our enquiry, rather than specifically referring to wellbeing. Our key questions in relation to having a good life were:

1. What does a good life mean for children and young people in Aotearoa New Zealand?
2. What gets in the way of children and young people having a good life?
3. What helps children and young people to have a good life?

In most face to face discussions, additional prompting questions were asked, which encouraged children and young people to think about ‘You, People and Places’ – i.e. what having a good life means to them, what having a good life means for the people around them, and what having a good life means in relation to the places and communities they are a part of. Prompting questions also encouraged children and young people to elaborate on their answers if they were comfortable doing so, for example, asking “can you help me understand that better?” or “can you tell me more about that?”

Ethics and informed consent

Our proposed approach for focus groups and interviews was submitted to an ethics committee comprised of members of both the Office of the Children’s Commissioner and Oranga Tamariki, as well as independent members with expertise in child and youth engagement. Our team was able to test thinking and identify and mitigate any potential risks to children.

Some considerations in the ethical approval process included:

• Confirming that our informed assent and consent processes are appropriate for the children and young people taking part.
• Testing our engagement approaches.
• Agreeing on the appropriate gifts and koha for participants and community partners.
• Confirming appropriate data storage and data sharing processes.
• Confirming confidentiality processes, including if and when to break confidentiality.

We developed clear guidelines for facilitators around ascertaining informed consent and ensuring that children and young people understand what’s happening. For both the surveys and face to face engagements we sought ethical guidance from the project team. Further guidance on informed consent can be found on the Office of the Children’s Commissioner website. We designed an approach which would enable a broad range of children and young people to be heard

Online surveys

An online survey was developed for secondary students. Testing was then done on what changes would be needed for primary and intermediate students. As a result we changed the wording in one question about culture (younger children did not consistently understand that concept) and shortened the survey by removing one complex question regarding government priorities. This shorter survey was then also made publicly available on the DPMC website. The surveys were developed by staff from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner and Oranga Tamariki – these members of our project team had experience in constructing surveys that are appropriate for children and young people. We started by defining the key areas of enquiry and checking if questions were already asked in other surveys both nationally and internationally. Question types included closed questions with defined choices (age, ethnicity, etc.), open ended free-text questions, questions that asked participants to rank from a list and questions that required participants to indicate their level of agreement with statements. Where questions required participants to select a response, the order of the responses was randomised. All questions were pre-tested with a range of children and young people to ensure they were appropriate for the target age group.

The surveys were made available to children and young people through two main channels: the publicly accessible link on the DPMC website; and the Office of the Children’s Commissioner’s Mai World network – a network of schools whose students regularly complete similar surveys. School sites include alternative education providers.

Face to face engagement

The facilitation team for the focus groups and interviews comprised skilled engagement specialists from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner and Oranga Tamariki. Each facilitator took a positive child and youth development approach during face to face engagements, which meant focusing on the child or young person’s strengths and supporting them to share their views in a way that suited them best. Engagements were informed by Laura Lundy’s ‘Voice is Not Enough’ model of child participation.

Facilitators were encouraged to use a range of engagement techniques, and to incorporate their own style and expertise where appropriate. Focus groups and interviews included verbal discussion, drawing, performing arts and activity-based engagements. Facilitators were encouraged to be adaptable and facilitate engagements that enabled genuine and meaningful interaction and discussion between them and the participants. This approach enabled many more children and young people to have their views heard than a more rigid approach would have allowed.

As the final activity in all face to face engagement, an A5-size postcard was handed out by the facilitator. These postcards were addressed to the Prime Minister and prompted the young people to share their thoughts with the message, “I think the one thing that children and young people need to have good lives now and in the future is…” This provided an opportunity for those we engaged with to share any final messages they weren’t able to tell us, or expand on any thoughts they had already shared. The cards were printed in both English and te reo Māori. This question was also asked in the surveys.

Working in partnership

We utilised the Office of the Children’s Commissioner’s existing relationships with community organisations to reach the cohorts of children and young people we wanted to talk with. We were supported by many organisations, including iwi social services, alternative education providers, health clinics, youth centres and learning support units.

In total we worked with 60 community organisations. We also worked with seven Oranga Tamariki sites across the country to enable us to talk with children and young people in state care. Practitioners at the sites played a similar role to the community providers, supporting us throughout the engagements. Staff from both Oranga Tamariki and the community organisations also helped facilitate some of the sessions with children, with guidance from our team.

We also created a Child and Youth Engagement toolkit, which was designed to enable community organisations throughout the country to organise their own focus groups with children and young people. The toolkit described our approach and provided resources for others to use. It included the recording templates used in the focus groups we organised, so that focus groups run using the toolkit could still be analysed along with the rest of the data.

The community organisations and the Oranga Tamariki sites we worked with played a crucial role in supporting us to obtain consent from children, young people and their caregivers, providing venues, supporting the children and young people to attend the sessions and, where required, providing any follow up care required for the children and young people. They were also essential in helping to put participants at ease.

These were the trusted adults for the children and young people we met with, and their support of the project was an important part of helping children and young people feel comfortable enough to share their views with us. We have reported back to all community partners and Oranga Tamariki sites. The Office of the Children’s Commissioner maintains ongoing relationships with the community partners.

Survey analysis

Basic descriptive analysis and cross-tabulation was carried out on the survey data. There were two open-ended questions that required a different approach. We used Text Ferret software to analyse these questions. We also analysed the postcards completed at the end of the face to face interviews and focus groups in this way. The Text Ferret software identifies keywords of interest and uses statistical techniques (principal component analysis, clustering) to divide responses into like groups. The final themes are based on these groups, with some human  judgment applied.

A further thorough statistical analysis on this data set is being planned.

Recording what we heard

A consistent recording process throughout the project was essential to effectively and accurately record what we heard from children and young people. We designed a recording template to ensure children’s voices were captured accurately and recorded in a uniform way. The facilitators were required to fill out the recording template either during, or directly after, each engagement, which required data input such as:

• The details of the child or young person(s) involved in the session.
• Verbatim quotes under each area of enquiry.
• Insights from the facilitator during the engagement, and how they drew those insights.

All information was recorded and stored securely and was not shared beyond the project team. All quotes were referenced in a way that ensured anonymity for the children and young people. Although the process was time-intensive for facilitators, it was necessary to ensure the original meaning of what the children and young people said was preserved.

Analysing what we heard

The outputs from focus groups and interviews were considered as part of a two-day analysis hui. This involved 20 people in total: the core project team, the additional facilitators from across the country and a small number of extra people who had not been involved in the project until that point. Those who had facilitated engagements were asked to think about both what was written in the recording templates and what stuck out for them as facilitators. Those who had not previously been involved were there to provide a critical and objective perspective on the information and discussions.

The focus of the workshop was to manually code the recording templates, identify key themes and come to a consensus on what the overarching themes were for the focus groups and interviews. Subsequent meetings took place after the workshop with the core project team, to further refine the key insights. However, the two-day analysis hui was essential in accurately capturing and articulating what we heard from children and young people, particularly given the large number of engagements.

The insights identified did not quantify how many children and young people were experiencing the challenges described. Instead they provided an in-depth understanding of how children and young people experience those challenges and what impact that has.

Communicating what we heard

A great engagement process will have little impact if the information is not able to be utilised to influence decision-makers.

Key insights from the focus groups and interviews formed the basis of an interim report provided to the Prime Minister, Minister for Children and DPMC in December 2018: ‘What makes a good life? Children and young people’s views on wellbeing’. While an initial analysis of the survey results was included in the interim report, the primary focus of that report was the face to face engagements.

This second report includes both survey and face to face findings. Ensuring that the voices of the children and young people we spoke with could be shared publicly was an important part of the initial agreement with DPMC to undertake this project. A media plan was developed jointly between the Office of the Children’s Commissioner and Oranga Tamariki to ensure that the messages from children and young people could be shared with a wide audience and communicated in a way that would have the greatest impact possible.