Meaningful participation can have a positive influence on the wellbeing of youth and enables policy to better connect with their lives and needs. An increasing number of municipalities would therefore like to implement youth participation for the development, execution and evaluation of policy. However in practice, this is rarely done, despite the many tools and approaches that have been developed in recent years. Why is this?

This Healthy Start report gives insight into individual and contextual factors that are connected to the implementation youth participation (ages 4-26) in policies of the municipality of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The research was done by Irene, Lysanne te Brinke, Betsie Loeffen, Susanna Osinga and Arwin van Buuren. It shoes that not one factor is decisive, but in fact many different factors interplay. To improve the implementation of youth participation, a coherent approach that tackles multiple factors is necessary.

Do you have any questions or would you like to collaborate? Please contact Irene Fierloos via fierloos@essb.eur.nl.

We thank all the policy makers at the municipality of Rotterdam who were willing to share their views with us, the collaboration with Yentl Lieuwma, Jose Soorsma, Saida Labraimi, the advisory group of Actieplan Vastpakken en niet loslaten, and the critical reflections of Josje van Nes and Stans Goudsmit of Ombudsman Rotterdam Rijnmond and Lizelot van den Berg and Aysel Kaya of Young010 and Lokaal Rotterdam.