Putting Youth in Charge: Exploring a Multi-Year Interagency Community Engagement Experiential Programme for Youth with Disabilities and Their Families

ABSTRACT

This paper outlines a qualitative exploration of the experiences of Youth in Charge (YiC), a 3-year pilot programme. YiC was designed to promote early, immersive community participation for students with physical disabilities, and was co-developed/co-hosted by three agencies (hospital, community rehabilitation, school board). To better understand the experiences of the youth, parents, and staff involved in this broad intervention, observation of 10 programme sessions and annual semi-structured interviews with youth (n = 5), parents (n = 4) and staff (n = 6) were undertaken. Qualitative results comprise six themes based in the two major thematic areas of participation-related experiences and programme considerations. Results indicate the need for community-based experiences, measured risk-taking, long-term engagement, parental involvement, and greater interagency collaboration and integration.

KEYWORDS:

• Collaboration
• community participation
• disabilities
• high school
• social relationships/communication

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the study’s participants for their time and insights that contributed to the current research. We would like to acknowledge the institutions that were bold enough to live their interagency values and collaborate in order to bring the YiC programme to fruition. We are grateful to Kim Hesketh for her leadership in the YiC project and contributions to the data analysis.

Disclosure statement

Some of the manuscript’s authors were also research participants, and did not have access to any primary, potentially identifiable data. The authors report no other conflicts of interest.

Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article.

Notes

^a Youth facilitators are young individuals with lived experience of disability. They are paid staff members who have been trained to harness their expertise on disability experiences to contribute as active clinical team members.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital Foundation’s Transitions Strategy.