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Caroline Boswell: Making Our Cities Better for All Children and Young People
The Society for Children and Youth of BC was proud to host a presentation by Caroline Boswell on November 30, 2006. Caroline is head of the Children and Young People's Unit in the Mayor of London's Office of the Greater London Authority in the UK. Caroline was the lead in developing the Mayor's (Ken Livingstone) strategy for a child-friendly London: 'Making London Better for All Children and Young People'.
Caroline spoke over a delicious lunch to a crowd of social planners, child and youth advocates, and front-line workers at the Holiday Inn in North Vancouver. Her presentation focused on providing a framework and strategy to enhance children’s opportunities and experiences through social planning and environmental manipulation.
She emphasized the importance of:
• Increased activity and access to urban life through free transportation • Play • Integration of services • The power of political will (success of London’s framework is based on promotion of • strategy by the mayor and deputy mayor) • The need for children’s voice • The use of various consultative strategies and different modalities for collecting data • Biannual reporting on the state of the child in London. To view Caroline’s powerpoint presentation(16.7 mb ppt), click here.
Caroline’s presentation was followed by a presentation by Cherie Enns, professor at the University College of the Fraser Valley.
Bob Yates from Yates, Thorn and Associates Consulting Services spoke about 2 main projects; SCY’s Mobilizing for Safer Communities and the new corporate framework for youth engagement at the City of Vancouver. SCY’s Mobilizing for Safer Communities project has constructed a toolkit which allows communities to identify indicators for child and youth friendliness and address assets and gaps in planning for enhanced child and youth friendliness. Each toolkit will be customized for each community and SCY will work with them to help them achieve their goals for increased child and youth friendliness in their community.
It was a wonderful day filled with fascinating information and engaging dialogue. Many thanks to those who could attend.
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