Minister Moves Online To Seek Views Of Young People.

To help shape future policy on 13 to 19 year olds, the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) has launched an online campaign to seek the views of young people about their neighbourhoods and communities.

The campaign aims to attract young people to a blog and online discussion forum hosted by youth minister Parmjit Dhanda, while online polls and results will be published on a range of youth- orientated websites. The online campaign was discussed at a national Youth Summit, held on 25 June ( http://www.youthsummit.co.uk/ ), and will feed into future development of the Government's Youth Matters policy ( http://fastlink.headstar.com/youth1 ).

As well as learning more about issues that are important to young people, the campaign is an opportunity for the government to show young people that it values them, said Youth Minister Parmjit Dhanda in a prepared statement. "We don't just want to slap ASBOs on them - we want to give them a chance to release their potential and help them get involved in positive activities in their community. Overwhelmingly we find if you give young people the chance, they'll exceed your expectations," he said.

"It looks like a great step to try to use new technologies to reach out to young people," said Gez Smith, e-Democracy Consultant at Delib, an agency that develops products and strategies for consulting people online ( http://www.delib.co.uk/ ).
But it is important for the DfES campaign to avoid some common mistakes, said Smith. Chief among these is "thinking that just because it's on the web, young people will use it," said Smith. "What will they [DfES] be demonstrating will change as a result of this process and the feedback given? If nothing, then that's a real risk," he said.

The blog, hosted by Parmjit Dhanda, will be available through the Need2Know website ( http://www.need2know.co.uk/ ), while Dhanda's online discussion forum will be hosted by the Channel 4 Education website: http://www.4learning.co.uk/ .