Youth workers are often approached to support the participation of young people who are deemed difficult to engage. They can act as mediators, helping organisations understand young people’s perspectives and needs. However, mismatches between professional and organisational understandings of participation need careful management to support meaningful youth participation. Recent research examining youth participation and the political dimensions of youth work offers insights into its processes and impact. Pugh (2025) highlights youth work’s experiential contributions to political socialisation through involvement, responsibility and conversation. Harsant’s (2025) research with local government youth participation workers examines their professional role and some of the challenges they experience, including support, facilitation, opening doors and advocacy, all familiar youth work roles.

Established youth participation frameworks have focused on the qualities of participation and levels of leadership (Hart, 1992) and outlined the organisational commitments needed to support youth participation (Shier, 2001). These models have been critiqued as overly hierarchical, even when this was not originally intended, leading to arguments for a more contextual understanding of participation that considers the ‘broader cultures, discourses, structures, emotions, material conditions’ (Cahill & Dadvand, 2018, p. 252). Taking a rights-based approach, the Lundy Model (Lundy, 2007) describes domains of space, voice, audience and influence, arguing that each area needs attention for participation to be meaningful. These frameworks advance understanding of the structures, conditions and organisational commitments that support participation. However, these frameworks pay less attention to the relational aspects of youth work practice, and how workers facilitate participation that emerges from young people’s everyday lives.

 

Participatory research with youth participation workers

My PhD research explored young people’s democratic learning and participation. With field work conducted between 2021 and 2023, it involved twenty-nine youth participation workers and youth workers from across England, and seventy-eight young people. Drawing on participatory action research, youth participation workers first identified areas of their practice to explore and refined the research questions. They selected themes emerging from the initial sessions for closer examination across a series of workshops. The workshops identified strengths, challenges, and ways to improve practice. Young people and participation workers contributed to analysing the data generated through these workshops, interpreting its meaning and sense-checking the findings. The workshops collected data and supported professional development by creating a space for workers to learn from each other’s practice. The participants identified three areas to explore, including the role of youth workers, what makes participation meaningful, and what makes it inclusive. The findings highlighted learning about conflict, relational practice, and the importance of belonging and identity. They examined challenges and barriers to supporting young people’s participation and its integrity. This article argues for greater focus on the relational aspects of youth participation, specifically the ways youth workers recognise, negotiate and connect young people’s everyday lives with organisational structures. It concludes that participation workers would benefit from expanding and diversifying their practice, better connecting the various spaces where young people already participate.

 

Relational Participation

Relational participation refers to the ways young people’s participation is enabled, sustained or constrained through their everyday relationships with youth workers, supporting adults and the wider social contexts in which it develops. The emphasis on relationships draws on literature that understands participation as situated social learning involving relational practices (Percy-Smith et al., 2021), emphasises the social, relational and democratic dimensions of youth work (Batsleer, 2013), and conceptualises youth work as a relational and spatial practice in which spaces are actively created and curated by young people and youth workers (de St Croix & Doherty, 2023). Relational participation is characterised by trust, dialogue and recognition and develops through shared experiences and everyday interactions. How youth workers respond to young people’s views and ideas, their consistency, honesty and authenticity, and their willingness to negotiate ideas all shape these relational conditions. Rather than focussing primarily on formal participation structures or methods, examining relational participation shifts attention to the processes through which participation develops and is sustained, and to the nuanced ways youth workers engage with young people to promote and enable their participation.

My research highlights how social interactions and conditions support participation work. One participant discussed how young people attending a homework club built relationships with workers that supported further participation:

So, you might have a 14-year-old feeling pretty low; families in problems at home, they come to the homework club first, and then they see someone who is 12. And then I’ll say to them: they’re struggling. Can you help them? And all of a sudden, they feel a bit better themselves; they’re not…the lowest person in the group; they’re helping somebody else. (Youth worker) 

This example demonstrates how young people can progress from being supported to supporting others as they become comfortable. The youth worker explained that the local youth forum meets in the same space after the homework club, and many members stay on and get involved. The homework club act as a gateway, where young people build relationships that support more formal participation.

Regular conversational engagement in informal settings can itself represent a form of participation. One detached youth worker described meeting with young people in a McDonald’s. The group varied each week. Some were highly engaged, while others were distracted or uncertain. Their conversations shifted between daily frustrations, school experiences and home life, as well as wider issues that affected their lives. The group told their worker that they ‘don’t sit (and talk like this) in the school surroundings. We sit (and talk like this) in youth work’ (youth worker). While there was no fixed agenda, the group raised issues, which were discussed, and views were formed, challenged and refined. This interaction demonstrates how youth workers support and create spaces for young people to learn, challenge and be challenged by each other.

Participation work can also involve negotiation and mediation between young people and the organisations they encounter. These efforts draw on the workers’ relationships with both young people and the organisations that employ them, for example when persuading young people to share their views on an organisational policy. When navigating tensions related to youth participation, workers employ their understanding and knowledge about the young people they support and rely upon their ability to influence others in their organisation. One worker described how a teacher felt that two young people should not take part because one “won’t talk” and the other had “a lot of things going on at home” (youth worker). The teacher was concerned the young people might struggle with the demands of the project. The participation worker challenged the teacher directly, emphasising their right to take part. The young people were eventually invited to join the project and showed a new level of confidence that surprised everyone. When asked, the worker recalled that “one of them nearly jumped out of the chair and said, ‘yes, please, I’d love to be involved’” (youth worker).

Participation work can also involve negotiating the complexities of social relationships that prevent and promote young people’s involvement. One school recognised that some young people avoided the existing youth council because of their relationship with the young people already involved. So, they set up a second, less formal group with similar levels of support. When asked how the two groups worked together, the teacher replied: “Well, they don’t because they hate each other.” (teacher). By offering dual participation opportunities, the school enabled more young people to participate, regardless of social barriers.

By linking separate groups, participation workers recognise the supportive benefits of young people’s existing social relationships, while creating the potential for them to connect with others and extend their networks. One participation worker described a youth alliance model, where representatives from a variety of youth organisations “come together and learn about each other and get their …views heard” (participation worker). This approach presents opportunities for geographically and socially diverse groups of young people to influence local decision-making. It recognises that young people might not want to join one main organisation but may participate through a range of membership groups. Young people from a youth council felt this approach made participation more accessible, expressing that they would feel “comfortable expressing your views and what you think” (youth council member).

These examples outline some of the relational considerations that youth workers make when supporting young people’s participation. They present conditions that enable participation, such as building trust and familiarity through conversation, consistency, and shared experience over time. They demonstrate how participation can happen in both formal and informal settings, with workers taking care to create spaces that support young people to engage. Participation workers attend to various relational aspects of participation, negotiating with organisational expectations and understanding the social dynamics of groups that both promote and prevent young people’s involvement. The last example highlights an approach that connects young people from various groups, while respecting the social and relational processes that support their participation.

 

Implications for youth participation

Much democratic participation takes place outside organisational settings. Organisations may seek young people’s views, but young people also independently act on issues they care about in their communities. More broadly, a great deal of democratic participation is informal and relational. It happens in conversations and small interactions between people and groups. Formal democratic processes exist to manage the complexity of associated living at scale (Dewey, 1916/2018); however, they often struggle to recognise and respond to informal participation. Organisations that involve people in decision-making, whether political or otherwise, usually aim to improve their services for the people they serve. However, when their approaches seem mechanistic and lack flexibility, they can be alienating.

Tensions between everyday participation and organisational expectations were reflected in my research, which discussed various conflicts and tensions that appear in and around participation work. These conflicts involved young people, workers and organisations, as well as parents and the wider community. These tensions related to differences in political opinions but were also linked to different understandings of participation itself, its aims and agendas, who should participate and how. The participation workers in my study often found themselves at the nexus of these conflicts, balancing organisational needs and those of young people and their community. Such conflicts are challenging for participation workers, presenting as complexities in their relationships with young people and their employers.

My research also highlights the role of identity and belonging in meaningful participation. It demonstrates how feeling welcome and understood often underpins young people’s decisions to engage and their experiences of participation. Identity and belonging are relational considerations that involve decisions about who participates and how well they are understood. Some evidence suggests that individual participation groups struggle to represent the diversity of identities and perspectives among young people (Wyness, 2009). Many of my participants shared concerns about the diversity of young people joining youth forums, suggesting groups can be diverse in some ways but less so in others. Workers identified family support and educational experience and achievement as among the factors influencing who participates. Research on homophily suggests social networks tend to form around shared characteristics, experiences and identities (McPherson et al., 2001). While not necessarily intentionally exclusionary, these processes may limit the range of young people who are likely to connect with any particular group.

Therefore, organisations that seek to facilitate meaningful and inclusive youth participation would benefit from offering a range of approaches and opening multiple spaces that support belonging and respond to varying needs. By extending opportunities beyond forums and youth councils they can better support the relational conditions that enable youth participation. Forums and youth councils provide powerful learning opportunities for young people and ways for them to make a direct difference. However, participation can be more inclusive and responsive when these sit alongside a wider range of approaches and where young people can share their views and influence decision-making as part of their everyday engagement with workers, managers and organisations.

Relational youth work approaches start with young people’s interests, needs and wishes and are developed collaboratively over time. Workers adapt their approaches to groups, responding to their shared identities and experiences. They create the conditions for participation by building trust and confidence and allowing young people to set the agenda.

Connecting both formal and informal groups can expand young people’s networks and support their learning and collaboration without requiring members to give up the conditions that sustain their involvement. For participation workers, this means moving beyond recruiting young people to join single groups or forums to recognising and supporting participation in different settings. By creating a range of opportunities and connecting the various spaces where participation occurs, they can connect young people with decision-makers and structures where they can make a difference, as well as with other young people who might support them.

Participation workers act as mediators between young people’s everyday experiences and the formal structures of organisations. They help young people influence change while enabling organisations to better understand the complexity of young people’s lives and the diversity of their experiences. Relational participation provides a way to understand how youth workers recognise, support, and connect participation that develops from young people’s everyday experiences, supporting them to work towards change and enabling them to inform and shape organisations and structures that intend to support them.