Do I have to cite the interview
Problems and Purpose
Young people are systematically under-represented in the design of the health and social care services they themselves use. The ‘Shaping Tomorrow’ manifesto opens with the claim that young people feel ‘unempowered, unheard and forgotten’ and that they want and deserve to be involved in decisions that directly affect their health and futures [1].
Three structural problems framed the project. First, many health and social care services rely on young people to actively seek them out, which itself creates a barrier to access [2]. Second, young people have limited opportunities to influence decisions in their school or home environments, often because their age is treated as a reason to discount their lived experience [3]. Third, the young researchers’ own peer research surfaced specific gaps: the prevalence of vaping,[4] inadequate mental health support both in and out of school,[5] and insufficient reproductive and sexual education within the PSHE curriculum [6].
The Youth Jury was designed to serve four purposes. The first and primary goal was to increase young people’s involvement in, and influence over, health and social care policy and practice across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, and nationally [7]. A second, capacity-building goal was to equip 15 young people, through the Young Researcher Training Programme (YRTP), with the research skills and confidence required to produce credible, evidence-based recommendations [8]. A third was to engage decision-makers and practitioners from the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Integrated Care Board (ICB) and Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) directly in the deliberation, on the rationale that collaborating with young people removes the ‘guesswork’ from policymaking and aligns implementation with actual needs [9]. The final purpose was to deliver actionable solutions: 12 priority recommendations co-designed for ICP implementation [10].
Background History and Context
Three converging contexts created the conditions in which the Youth Jury became both necessary and possible: a national crisis in youth health, a structural exclusion of young people from health policymaking, and a specific regional commitment by the local NHS partnership.
A worsening youth health crisis. By the time the project was commissioned, the scale of unmet need among UK young people had become difficult to ignore. NHS Digital’s 2023 follow-up to the Mental Health of Children and Young People in England survey reported that one in five children and young people aged 8–25 had a probable mental disorder, with the prevalence among 17–19 year olds rising from 1 in 10 in 2017 to nearly 1 in 4 in 2023[11]. In parallel, the Care Quality Commission found that demand for children and young people’s mental health services continued to grow faster than supply, with referrals rising and a substantial proportion of young people waiting months or years for support [12]. Youth vaping had emerged as a second public health priority: ASH data indicated that around 18% of UK 11- to 17-year-olds had tried vaping by 2023, and academic research linked vaping to nicotine dependence, poorer mental health and broader inequalities for children and young people [13]. These were precisely the issues the Southampton cohort would later identify in their own peer research.
Structural exclusion of young people from health decision-making. Despite this scale of need, young people remained systematically under-represented in the design of the services intended for them. A 2024 review in Research Involvement and Engagement observed that ‘young people’s voices are often undervalued and underrepresented in health inequalities research and policy,’ and that youth engagement in research too often begins after research questions and protocols are already set, rather than involving young people from the outset [14]. A 2023 scoping review of deliberative priority-setting methods reached a similar conclusion: international organisations have called for greater youth involvement in healthcare and health policy development, but effective methods for facilitating meaningful engagement remain underdeveloped [15]. Existing UK channels of youth councils, consultations, and parliamentary engagement events tended to operate at the consultative end of the participation spectrum, rarely extending to the point of co-design or implementation.
A regional institutional opening. The local context turned this national problem into a tractable local opportunity. Following the Health and Care Act 2022, Integrated Care Systems were formalised as statutory bodies responsible for planning services, improving health and reducing inequalities across geographical areas [16]. The Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICP, covering a population of over 1.9 million people across diverse urban, rural and coastal communities, has designated children and young people as one of its five priorities for the 2023–2028 Integrated Care Strategy, with explicit commitments to working with communities to understand local needs and reduce inequalities [17]. This institutional commitment created a receptive policy environment: an ICB and ICP that had publicly tied their strategy to youth health outcomes had a structural reason to engage with a credible, evidence-based youth manifesto, and a corresponding reputational cost if they did not.
It was at this intersection of acute need, methodological gap and institutional opening that the initiative was set in motion by the MOTH (Motivating and Sustaining Engagement of Young People in Improving their Health and that of their Communities) team, whose stated goal was to identify the best methods for giving young people a meaningful voice in health policy[18]. To learn how to support young people as policy advocates, the organising team first worked with Bite Back 2030, the largest youth-led non-governmental organisation in the UK, drawing on its youth board, leadership and operations teams to inform the framework of the training programme [19].
The MOTH team then collaborated with LifeLab and the Pathways to Health team to develop the Young Researcher Training Programme. LifeLab, a purpose-built educational facility in Southampton that has worked with over 16,000 young people since its inception, hosted the training [20]. The YRTP aimed to equip participants with research skills capable of legitimising their policy recommendations, while also raising aspirations and improving wellbeing [21].
From the outset, the organising team worked closely with the Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICB and ICP. Because the ICB is responsible for allocating NHS resources and setting the regional strategic plan, the relationship was deliberately constructed so that the young people’s research could translate directly into actionable policy rather than sitting in a report [22].
To facilitate the final deliberation, the project partnered with the UKRI Rebooting Democracy project, based in the Centre for Democratic Futures, which specialises in engaging marginalised groups in political decision-making [23]. The Rebooting Democracy team designed a bespoke adaptation of a Youth Jury, a formal, structured space in which the young people could cross-examine experts and finalise the recommendations for their manifesto.
Organizing, Supporting, and Funding Entities
Organising entities. Five organisations co-led the initiative. The MOTH team set the project in motion [24]. LifeLab hosted the YRTP at its purpose-built facility and co-developed the programme with MOTH [25]. Pathways to Health co-developed the YRTP alongside MOTH and Life Lab[26]. The UKRI Rebooting Democracy team, based in the Centre for Democratic Futures, designed and delivered the bespoke Youth Jury [27]. The University of Southampton partnered in delivery and, in April 2024, formally employed the 15 young people as researchers [28].
Supporting entities. The Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICB and ICP supported the project from the outset. Representatives from both bodies attended the Youth Jury as expert witnesses and subsequently endorsed the recommendations into joint committee action plans [29]. Bite Back 2030 informed the design of the training programme by sharing the experience of its youth board, leaders and operations team [30]. Public Policy Southampton and the youth charity No Limits are listed as official partners in the manifesto [31].
Funding entities. The project was jointly supported and funded by four research and health programmes: the UKRI Rebooting Democracy project, the ARC Wessex MOTH project, the NIHR EACH-B (Engaging Adolescents in Changing Behaviour) programme, and the UKRI Pathways to Health through Cultures of Neighbourhoods project [32].
Participant Recruitment and Selection
The project targeted a narrow demographic by design. Candidates had to be aged 16–17 and had to live, study, or work in Southampton [33]. Selection was deliberately rigorous, in part to legitimise the cohort’s later policy claims. Prospective participants completed a formal application, took part in a discussion-group activity, and sat an online interview [34]. Fifteen young people were chosen to form the 2024 cohort and, in April 2024, were formally employed as researchers by the University of Southampton [35]. The use of paid employment, rather than informal ‘youth voice’ volunteering, is itself a notable design choice: it materially recognises the participants’ labour and expertise and signals that their work is treated as research rather than consultation.
Methods and Tools Used
The research phase drew on both qualitative and quantitative approaches across a 12-week training programme[36]. Participants used interviews, focus groups, surveys and questionnaires to gather peer evidence, and applied formal data analysis methods to interpret the results[37].
The 3-day Youth Jury itself relied on group work, structured deliberation and debate to identify policy ideas and prioritise them[38]. A bespoke board game called Lemonade was used to break the ice between young people and adult professionals and to surface conversations about aspirations, life paths and inequalities [39].
Expert interrogation structured the relationship between participants and policymakers: ICB and ICP members served as expert witnesses, and the young researchers cross-examined them to refine ideas into actionable, feasible policies. The session culminated in a formal ‘Jury’ in which the youth advocated for implementation [40].
Structured decision-making narrowed an initial list of 56 recommendations to 30, then to 16, and finally to 12, through phased group review, clarification and merging [41].
Creative communication and advocacy tools carried the work outward: in the three months following the Youth Jury, participants produced a written manifesto, films, and zines, and worked with Theatre for Life on presentation skills [42]. Posters had been used earlier to communicate independent research findings to the jury [43].
What Went On: Process, Interaction, and Participation
Independent research (12 weeks). The 15 young researchers formulated their own research questions and acted as primary data collectors, engaging directly with peers through interviews, focus groups, surveys and questionnaires [44].
Youth Jury: Day 1 (16 July 2024): deliberation and narrowing. Facilitators guided participants through the categorisation of their research findings and the systematic narrowing of 56 recommendations to 30, and then to 16 priorities [45].
Youth Jury: Day 2 (17 July 2024): expert interaction. Members of the ICB and ICP attended as experts. Participants and professionals played Lemonade to open conversations about life paths and inequalities, then moved to formal expert interrogation in which the young people pressed practitioners on feasibility and refined their policies into actionable steps. The day closed with a formal Jury session in which the youth advocated for their ideas [46].
Youth Jury: Day 3 (18 July 2024): final decision-making. The cohort reflected on the previous day’s interrogation, merged overlapping recommendations, clarified arguments, and finalised the list of 12 recommendations along with an overarching vision [47].
Creative finalisation (three months). Participants produced the written manifesto, filmed videos, designed zines and worked with Theatre for Life on presentation skills[48].
Assembly and action planning (13 November 2024). The young researchers led an assembly in which they presented their manifesto to 70 representatives, commissioners and health service deliverers from the ICP. Round-table discussions translated the recommendations into concrete implementation plans [49].
Influence, Outcomes, and Effects
The Youth Jury produced direct, traceable institutional commitments rather than advisory output alone. The ICB and ICP formally endorsed the twelve recommendations and incorporated them into joint committee action plans [50]. The health board subsequently produced an official Action Plan with named leads assigned to each policy area [51]. The ICP Joint Committee further committed to holding an annual youth assembly, with the next event scheduled for November 2025, embedding the Youth Jury as a recurring feature of regional health governance rather than a one-off engagement exercise [52].
For the participants, the manifesto reports significant capacity-building outcomes: increased confidence, strengthened public-speaking skills, and shifts in career aspirations [53]. The young researchers themselves articulated, in Recommendation 9, that future Youth Panels should ‘cover multiple public sectors such as healthcare, education, and politics, ’ an explicit ambition for the model to expand beyond health [54].
Analysis and Lessons Learned
The effectiveness of the ‘Shaping Tomorrow’ Youth Jury rested on several design choices. First, organisers prioritised structured capacity-building before formal engagement, recognising that young people unfamiliar with policy environments would not be able to contribute on an equal footing with adult professionals without sustained preparation. The 12-week Young Researcher Training Programme equipped the cohort with research methods, public-speaking confidence and substantive knowledge of the Hampshire and Isle of Wight policy landscape [55]. Equally important was the decision to employ the young people as formal university researchers from April 2024, which removed the economic barrier to participation and signalled that their contributions were valued as professional work rather than as tokenistic consultation [56].
Participant feedback and the structure of the Action Plan suggest several areas for development in future iterations. The cohort was small (15 young people) and recruited regionally, which limits the demographic representativeness of the recommendations and raises the question of how a similar process could be scaled to capture greater diversity across the Hampshire and Isle of Wight population. There is also a clear gap between the cohort’s substantial agenda-setting and option-selection power and the more diffuse process of long-term implementation, which depends on multiple institutional leads across the ICB and ICP and their willingness to translate endorsement into resourced delivery. The commitment to an annual youth assembly from November 2025 offers a mechanism for ongoing accountability, but its effectiveness will depend on whether the model can survive changes in commissioner personnel and political cycles [57].
More broadly, the ‘Shaping Tomorrow’ case supports findings in the democratic-innovation literature that structured deliberative processes can produce considered, evidence-based outputs when participants are given genuine resources, time and influence over agenda-setting and decision-making rather than being slotted into pre-determined consultative frames [58]. It also corroborates wider evidence that meaningful youth engagement in health policy requires moving beyond the consultative end of the participation spectrum, toward co-design and co-implementation [59]. The combination of formal employment, long-term training, peer-led research and direct institutional endorsement makes the case unusual in UK youth-participation practice and offers a template that other Integrated Care Systems could adapt.
QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS ON DEMOCRATIC GOODS
INCLUSIVENESS
Fairness of selection rules and procedures:
Smith argues that inclusiveness depends first on rules that establish political equality through presence: that is, who is actually allowed to participate [60]. The ‘Shaping Tomorrow’ Youth Jury did not employ random selection or stratified sampling; instead, it recruited 15 young people aged 16–17 from across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, with biographies showing a deliberate effort to include a diverse cross-section of lived experiences, including minority ethnic backgrounds, working-class students, and young people running youth-led projects of their own[61]. This selection process prioritised the inclusion of a single, traditionally marginalised demographic (young people) rather than mirroring the regional population in formal demographic terms. The approach reflects what Smith describes as constructing the demos to address the elite bias that often distorts participatory mechanisms [62]. It remains, however, a small cohort, and the absence of stratified sampling means some risk of reproducing intra-group inequalities.
Fairness in making contributions / Equality of voice:
Smith emphasises that mere presence is not enough: inclusiveness also requires equality of voice, since participants without political experience often self-censor in formal settings [63]. The ‘Shaping Tomorrow’ design addressed this through extensive capacity-building. The 12-week Young Researcher Training Programme provided the cohort with research methods, debating skills and a ‘solid understanding’ of how to apply them [64]. Participants like Willow, who had initially struggled with the scientific content, were reported to have developed ‘great confidence in public speaking’ and the ability to articulate their points clearly to policymakers [65]. On Day 2 of the Youth Jury, the board game Lemonade was used specifically to equalise the power dynamic between youth and adult professionals, opening conversations about life paths and inequalities before any formal deliberation began [66]. These measures actively reduced cognitive, linguistic and social barriers to participation.
Fairness in generating outputs:
Participants exercised substantial control over the substantive content of the manifesto. Recommendations were generated, debated, merged and refined by the cohort itself across three days of structured deliberation, narrowing 56 initial recommendations to 30, then to 16, and finally to 12[67]. Outputs were not pre-drafted by organisers and ratified by participants; they were the cohort’s own product, presented to 70 representatives at the November 2024 assembly under the cohort’s own framing [68]. Creative communication outputs, including the manifesto, films, and zines, were also produced by the participants themselves, with support from Theatre for Life on presentation skills [69].
Can the initiative overcome differential participation across social groups?:
The ‘Shaping Tomorrow’ Youth Jury did make explicit efforts to recruit beyond the typically engaged demographic of young people in formal youth councils. The biographies of the 15 participants indicate inclusion of working-class, minority-ethnic and previously non-engaged youth [61]. However, the small cohort size and regional focus mean that broader demographic asymmetries (for example, the comparative under-representation of rural island communities or of young people not in education, employment or training) cannot be fully resolved at this scale. The proposed annual youth assembly from 2025 is one mechanism that may help address this over time by widening the pool of participants [57].
Conclusion:
The ‘Shaping Tomorrow’ Youth Jury demonstrated a deep, relational approach to inclusiveness within a deliberately defined demos (young people in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight). Through targeted recruitment, extensive capacity-building, ergonomic supports (formal employment, structured training time) and creative facilitation, the initiative addressed the major practical barriers that typically silence inexperienced participants. While the cohort is small and not formally representative of the regional population, the design shows a thoughtful and well-resourced attempt to extend genuine voice to a group routinely excluded from health policy decision-making.
CONSIDERED JUDGEMENT
Acquiring technical knowledge:
The 12-week Young Researcher Training Programme placed substantial emphasis on the acquisition of practical and technical knowledge before any deliberative session took place. Participants learned primary and secondary research methods, including interviews, focus groups and questionnaires, and were trained in the use of these methods through hands-on application [70]. Information sessions covered the Integrated Care Board, the Integrated Care Partnership and the wider public-policy landscape in Southampton, ensuring participants understood the institutional environment within which their recommendations would be received [71]. This was not an expert-led briefing model in which information flowed downward; participants themselves conducted peer research and presented findings, building knowledge through structured doing.
Appreciating other perspectives:
Smith, drawing on Hannah Arendt, describes considered judgement as the cultivation of an ‘enlarged mentality’, defined as the ability to imaginatively put oneself in the place of others [72]. The ‘Shaping Tomorrow’ design built this through two mechanisms. First, by acting as peer researchers, participants had to engage directly with the perspectives of other young people across the region, structurally requiring them to understand health concerns beyond their own private experience [73]. Second, the Day 2 Lemonade exercise placed young people and adult commissioners in shared experiential play, with both groups forced to reflect on the trade-offs the other faced [66]. This mutual perspective-taking shaped the subsequent direct cross-examination of ICB and ICP members, in which the cohort pressed practitioners on feasibility and refined their policies into actionable steps [66].
Developing an enlarged mentality:
The cohort’s final recommendations show evidence of this enlarged mentality at work. Where a less-considered process might have produced recommendations focused narrowly on the immediate concerns of the 15 participants, the manifesto explicitly addresses cultural and religious sensitivity, inclusive practices for neurodivergent young people, and gender-segregated approaches for specific health topics, needs of peer groups outside the cohort’s own demographic experience [74]. The narrowing process from 56 recommendations to 12 over three days also reflects sustained reflective work rather than the aggregation of raw preferences [67].
Institutional support for reflective preference formation:
The deliberative phase was structured to support reflective rather than impulsive judgement: an initial day of categorisation and narrowing, a second day of expert interrogation, and a third day of final consolidation, followed by a three-month creative finalisation phase before the November assembly [75]. This iterative format gave participants time to revise their views as evidence accumulated, rather than locking in early preferences.
Conclusion:
The ‘Shaping Tomorrow’ Youth Jury strongly supported a considered judgement by combining technical training with peer-led research, structured cross-examination of expert witnesses, and iterative narrowing of options across multiple days. Participants moved well beyond raw preferences, producing recommendations that incorporated technical feasibility, peer-research evidence, and sustained reflection on the needs of groups beyond their own. The design satisfies Smith’s criterion that democratic innovations should cultivate reflective, evidence-based judgment rather than simply aggregate untransformed preferences.
POPULAR CONTROL
Influence over stages of decision-making:
Smith’s policy-stage model locates popular control across four moments: problem definition, option analysis, option selection, and implementation [76]. The ‘Shaping Tomorrow’ Youth Jury demonstrates strong popular control at the first three stages and partial extension into the fourth, which is unusual for a UK deliberative innovation in this policy area [77].
Agenda-setting and framing:
The cohort exercised substantial agenda-setting power. Through peer research conducted during the 12-week training programme, the young people identified the priority health themes themselves, including vaping accessibility, mental health, extra-curricular wellness, sexual-health education, and others, rather than being given a pre-set list of issues to deliberate on [78]. This contrasts with consultations in which authorities define the question and participants are confined to ratifying it.
Influence on outputs and their political weight:
On option selection, the cohort retained full control: the 12 final recommendations were chosen by the participants through structured deliberation, not by organisers selecting from their suggestions [67]. At the November 2024 assembly, 70 representatives of the ICB and ICP formally agreed and endorsed the 12 recommendations [68]. This is a meaningful step beyond consultative deliberation: the outputs were not merely received and shelved; they were officially adopted by the regional health authorities responsible for the relevant policy areas.
Citizen involvement in implementation:
Popular control extended into the implementation phase through the ICP/ICB & Stakeholder Action Plan, which assigns named institutional leads (including the Women’s Health Programme Board and the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Beewell Steering Group) to specific recommendations [79]. An update on the Action Plan was scheduled for the next joint committee in May 2025,[57] and the ICP Joint Committee agreed to hold an annual youth assembly with the next scheduled for November 2025[57]. These mechanisms embed ongoing accountability and partially extend popular control into the implementation stage, though final statutory authority for delivery remains with the health bodies.
Capacity to share power in co-governance settings:
The initiative does not constitute formal co-governance in the strict sense, since final statutory power rests with the ICB, ICP and their delivery partners. However, the combination of cohort-set agenda, cohort-decided recommendations, formal institutional endorsement, named leads in the Action Plan, and the commitment to annual repetition together constitute a more developed form of citizen influence than is typical for one-off citizens’ juries. The structure approaches co-governance in practice, even if it stops short of binding decision-making authority for the cohort itself.
Conclusion:
The ‘Shaping Tomorrow’ Youth Jury achieved an unusually high degree of popular control for a UK deliberative innovation, particularly in a complex policy area dominated by professional commissioners. Participants set the agenda, generated and selected the recommendations, and saw their outputs formally endorsed and translated into a regional Action Plan with named institutional leads. While final statutory authority for implementation remains outside the cohort, the design embeds ongoing accountability through scheduled follow-up and an annual youth assembly. The case demonstrates that popular control can be extended meaningfully into option selection and implementation when authorities are willing to share both agenda space and institutional commitment.
TRANSPARENCY
Internal transparency (for participants):
Internal transparency in the ‘Shaping Tomorrow’ Youth Jury was strong. The 12-week Young Researcher Training Programme included explicit education on the Integrated Care Board, the Integrated Care Partnership and the wider public-policy landscape, ensuring participants understood the institutional environment in which their recommendations would land [71]. The direct Q&A sessions with policymakers during the jury clarified how strategic decisions are made, demystifying the bureaucratic structures of regional health governance [66]. By making the boundaries, capabilities and operational limits of the ICB and ICP transparent to participants from the outset, the organisers ensured the youth were not debating in a vacuum and reduced the risk of disillusionment arising from proposing unviable policies.
External transparency:
External transparency was a clear strength of the initiative. Rather than confining outputs to bureaucratic reports, the young researchers used multiple public-facing communication channels: a professionally published manifesto, academic posters summarising quantitative and qualitative data on issues like vaping, films, and zines produced in partnership with Theatre for Life [69]. The November 2024 public assembly itself functioned as a high-visibility event in which the cohort presented its findings to 70 regional representatives and a wider audience [68]. This multi-channel approach made the innovation highly visible and verifiable to the wider community, going well beyond the minimal external transparency typical of consultative health-policy processes.
Conclusion:
The ‘Shaping Tomorrow’ Youth Jury performs strongly on both dimensions of Smith’s transparency criterion. Participants entered the process with a clear and ongoing understanding of the institutional context and how their input would be used, and the cohort’s outputs were communicated to the wider public through a deliberately multi-channel strategy. Internal transparency was reinforced through structured education and direct interaction with policymakers, while external transparency was strengthened using creative media (manifesto, films, and zines) alongside the formal assembly. This combination represents one of the clearer strengths of the design and a useful template for similar UK youth-participation processes.
EFFICIENCY
Civic costs for citizens:
The civic cost to participants of the ‘Shaping Tomorrow’ Youth Jury was substantial: a 12-week training programme, a 3-day intensive jury, and subsequent months of finalising the manifesto [80]. In most participatory processes, a time burden of this scale would pose a serious opportunity cost for socio-economically disadvantaged participants and would risk reproducing the elite bias that Smith warns about. The ‘Shaping Tomorrow’ design addressed this through a vital institutional mechanism: the 15 young people were accepted onto the project in April 2024 and employed by the University of Southampton as formal researchers [56]. By financially remunerating participants as employees rather than treating them as volunteers, the initiative eliminated the economic barrier to participation and transformed an otherwise unacceptable civic burden into a viable employment and educational opportunity [56].
Administrative costs for public authorities:
The administrative and financial costs for the organising partners (UKRI Rebooting Democracy, NIHR EACH-B, the ARC Wessex MOTH project, the UKRI Pathways to Health programme, and the University of Southampton) were undoubtedly significant [81]. However, these costs are justifiable in cost-benefit terms. The authorities gained 12 rigorously researched, peer-evidenced policy recommendations tailored to a hard-to-reach demographic, alongside an Action Plan with named institutional leads [79]. In the longer term, preventing health crises through targeted, youth-endorsed public-health policies (vaping, mental health in schools, sexual-health education) is more efficient for the NHS and regional care boards than treating the delayed consequences of poor public health [82].
Comparing costs and benefits with alternative decision-making patterns:
No direct comparison was made within the project to centralised, non-deliberative alternatives. However, it is unlikely that a standard consultation or focus-group exercise would have produced the same depth of evidence base, the same level of cohort ownership, or the same institutional endorsement at scale. The annual repetition of the youth assembly from November 2025 onwards also amortises the high initial set-up cost across multiple cohorts, improving the long-term efficiency of the model [57].
Conclusion:
The ‘Shaping Tomorrow’ Youth Jury imposed a high civic time burden on its participants, but addressed this through formal employment, a design choice that meaningfully extends Smith’s efficiency criterion by treating participants as paid contributors rather than as unpaid volunteers. The administrative costs to the organising partners were substantial but appear justified by the quality of the outputs and their direct translation into a formal Action Plan. The institutionalisation of the model through an annual youth assembly further improves the efficiency of the design over time.
TRANSFERABILITY
Scale (local to global adaptability):
The ‘Shaping Tomorrow’ Youth Jury exhibits considerable transferability across scale. The participants themselves explicitly argue for scaling: ‘Programmes such as LifeLab have developed the skills of over 16,000 young people… LifeLab can expand and deepen their reach… LifeLab can be a model to other organisations.’[54] The combination of a long-term training programme, paid participant employment, structured deliberative phases and formal institutional endorsement is replicable in principle in other UK Integrated Care Systems and in other deliberative contexts beyond health policy. The cohort itself recommends transferring the design to other public-sector domains: ‘These new Youth Panels would cover multiple public sectors such as healthcare, education, and politics’ [54].
Political system adaptability:
The model is closely tied to the institutional features of the UK’s Integrated Care System framework established by the Health and Care Act 2022, which creates statutory bodies responsible for cross-sector health and social-care planning [83]. Transfer to other political systems would require adaptation to local institutional arrangements, but the underlying design (long-term capacity-building, paid participation, peer-led research, structured deliberation, formal endorsement) is in principle applicable in other liberal-democratic settings with capacity for cross-sector public-health governance.
Issue-type adaptability:
The case directly demonstrates issue-type adaptability. The young people’s 12 recommendations span vaping, mental health, sexual-health education, neurodiversity, gender-segregated health teaching, and cultural sensitivity in services, substantively distinct sub-domains that the same deliberative structure was able to address coherently [84]. This suggests the design is well-suited to multi-issue policy areas characterised by intersecting structural inequalities, not just narrowly defined single-issue questions.
Insights from policy transfer literature:
The ‘Shaping Tomorrow’ model has already taken initial steps toward transfer in time, with the ICP Joint Committee agreeing to hold an annual youth assembly with the next iteration scheduled for November 2025 [57]. This temporal transfer, from a one-off project to a recurring institution, is one of the clearest empirical markers of transferability identified in the democratic-innovation literature. Whether the model can be replicated in other Integrated Care Systems or other policy domains will depend on the willingness of those institutions to commit comparable resources to training and to paid participation.
Conclusion:
The ‘Shaping Tomorrow’ Youth Jury is highly transferable across scale, issue and time, with strong empirical evidence of the first concrete step in this transfer (the annual youth assembly from November 2025 onwards). The model’s key features (long-term training, paid participation, peer-led research, institutional endorsement) are not specific to the health-policy context and can be adapted to other public-sector domains. The principal constraint on transfer is the willingness of receiving institutions to commit comparable resources to participant employment and capacity-building, rather than treating these as optional or volunteer-based add-ons.
References
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[36]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), pp. 10–11.
[37]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), pp. 11–12.
[38]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), pp. 13–14.
[39]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), p. 15.
[40]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), p. 15.
[41]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), pp. 14, 16.
[42]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), p. 17.
[43]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), p. 12.
[44]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), pp. 10, 12.
[45]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), pp. 13–14.
[46]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), p. 15.
[47]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), p. 16.
[48]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), p. 17.
[49]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), p. 29.
[50]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), pp. 14, 29.
[51]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), p. 30.
[52]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), p. 32.
[53]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), pp. 5, 7.
[54]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), p. 27.
[55]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), pp. 3, 10–11.
[56]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), p. 10.
[57]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), p. 32.
[58]. Smith, G. (2009) Democratic Innovations: Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
[59]. Tinner, L. (2024) ‘Reflections on the benefits and challenges of using co-produced artistic workshops to engage with young people in community settings’, Research Involvement and Engagement, 10. See also Anonymous (2023) ‘How do we best engage young people in decision-making about their health? A scoping review of deliberative priority setting methods’, PMC
[60]. Smith, G. (2009), p. 21.
[61]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), pp. 4–7.
[62]. Smith, G. (2009), pp. 14–15.
[63]. Smith, G. (2009), pp. 21–22.
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[65]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), p. 5.
[66]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), p. 15.
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[76]. Smith, G. (2009), pp. 22–23.
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[79]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), pp. 30–31.
[80]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), pp. 11, 13, 17.
[81]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), p. 9.
[82]. Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024), pp. 20–25.
[83]. Health and Care Act 2022, c. 31. London: The Stationery Office.
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Bibliography
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Young Researcher Training Programme Cohort (2024) Shaping Tomorrow: A Call to Action. NxtGen Researchers’ Manifesto. Southampton: University of Southampton. Available at: https://issuu.com/university_of_southampton/docs/shaping_tomorrow-_a_call_to_action._nxtgen_researc
External Links
- Shaping Tomorrow: A Call to Action (full manifesto, ISSUU): https://issuu.com/university_of_southampton/docs/shaping_tomorrow-_a_call_to_action._nxtgen_researc
- UKRI Rebooting Democracy project: https://www.ukri.org/
- Hampshire and Isle of Wight Integrated Care Board: https://www.hantsiowhealthandcare.org.uk/
- LifeLab, University of Southampton: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/lifelab/
- Bite Back 2030: https://biteback2030.com/
Notes
This entry documents the 2024 cohort of the Young Researcher Training Programme. The annual youth assembly scheduled for November 2025 will, if delivered, mark the first iteration of this design as a recurring institution rather than a single project. The case is presented here as a deliberative mini-public (Youth Jury) producing a co-designed manifesto, rather than as participatory budgeting in the strict sense, since no fixed financial allocation is voted on by participants; the influence operates through endorsed policy recommendations and the ICP Action Plan.
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