Participation and co-production best practice

Consent

It is important to get consent from parents and carers for their child to take part.

• Do not exclude children and young people from making decisions about consent
• Consent is needed for photographs to be taken and used 

Communication and publicity

• All publicity and materials should be in an accessible format. It might need to be in more than one format, for example, Easy Read
• Share information well in advance so children and young people have time to plan and prepare. Send out meeting agendas a couple of days before 

Things to consider

• Find out what devices people are using. Offer help if needed to join the meeting
• Ask if anyone has accessibility needs
• Show people how to use the accessibility tools. For example, chat and live captions
• Show people how to put their hand up, go on mute, turn their camera on and off
• Ask everyone to be muted unless they are speaking
• Ask everyone to speak one at a time
• Ask everyone to talk slowly
• It can be hard to speak in large meetings, so have a system where everyone has a chance to speak
• Be accepting that some people will not want to be on camera, but do not forget they are there. For example, regularly check the chat