Throughout the nine regional events and the national event discussing Aiming High for Young People (2007) colleagues united in voicing their support for the increased participation of young people in the structures, delivery and evaluation of youth services. Empowerment was already seen as core to service delivery within Children’s Trusts arrangements through Every Child Matters and Youth Matters: Next Steps, but Aiming High has helped define the participation of young people within developing integrated services.

For the next in our series of 'round up' updated on themes arising from Aiming High for Young People we take at look at Integrated Capital Strategies.  

Now that the regional Aiming High for Young People events are past, we've restructured the content available on this shared learning website so that you can now navigate the wealth of shared content by theme. Use the links in the left-hand menu to find all the shared interviews, presentations, briefings and blog posts on the topics that interest you.

Keeping track of the fifty five DCSF commitments coming on stream to implement Aiming High for Young People can be complex. Alex Stutz and I set out to create a clear, slim, easy reference tool to help delegates at the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Youth Work Unit conference at the end of January. They thought it would be useful to disseminate widely so here is our table of commitments and funding.

Proposals around workforce development were a big part of Aiming High for Young People, and as part of our work on the ongoing inplementation of the Ten Year Strategy The National Youth Agency have launched an online consultation game to gather young people's views on training and development for leaders and managers of services for young people in England.

In Youth Workforce Dream Team young people get to choose their ideal team of leaders for a youth project, and to select the sort of training they think their team will need.

The team they create is entered into a league where others can vote it up or down depending on whether they think the leadership team is well equipped to manage a dynamic service for young people.

The choices that are made in the game, and the votes that are cast will feed into a research report that will influence the future of training and development opportunities for leaders and managers of services for young people.

Create a team now at http://tinyurl.com/243wr7

Last week Children’s Minister Beverley Hughes launched the “call for evidence” to gather information, advice and views on the current youth sector support arrangements that she announced at the national Aiming High event.

The Government’s ten year youth strategy ‘Aiming high’ set out how it will deliver significant improvements in the quality of services for all young people. In order to deliver these improvements, collaboration across the sector and strong national leadership are crucial.