Involving children and young people - the Yorkshire Dreamscheme Partnership

Working with social landlords in the region, Leeds Tenants Federation has launched the Yorkshire Dreamscheme Partnership to encourage local community groups to involve young people.

The idea behind Dreamscheme - a national charity - is that young people are encouraged to work in the community, earning points which they can trade in for trips. The community work can be any project - an estate clean-up, an environmental project - and should involve them working closely with adults.

The Yorkshire Dreamscheme Partnership provides grants and support to groups wanting to run Dreamschemes. In addition, Leeds Tenants Federation is making grants available to encourage groups who want to provide activities for young people but may not be ready to run a Dreamscheme. These grants are available over summer 2008 and please see the link to the right for details.

At the same time we have revised our Child Protection policy to support local community groups to provide activities for children and young people and involve them more in local projects.

We will provide hands-on support to all groups wanting to involve more young people, including helping with insurance, child protection issues, parental consent, risk assessment and we'll help out with the finances too.

Our Youth Involvement Strategy sets out our stretching targets for involving younger residents in the movement and for championing the housing rights fo young people.