Child-Friendly Medway
Task
TONIC was asked by Medway Council to capture the voice of 0-25 years old to better understand what matters to children and young people across Medway. The project aimed to provide a process of meaningful engagement with a diverse and representative sample of young people to answer three core research questions:
What does it feel like to grow up and live in Medway?
What barriers and worries do children and young people face in Medway?
What are their hopes and dreams for the future?
Our Approach
TONIC adopted a mixed-methods approach combining a broad reach online survey with follow-up focus group and specialist workshops. The survey combined qualitative and quantitative data and the focus group collected qualitative data using a range of age-appropriate techniques to elicit children’s views and to enable reflection. Data was combined and triangulated using a thematic analysis approach which generated overarching themes across both data streams. A narrative summary of themes is provided with supporting evidence from the survey using descriptive statistics drawing on frequency counts and proportions.
Outcome
2,845 children and young people completed the survey and 142 took part in targeted depth work across 15 focus groups. Depth work targeted priority groups to represent vulnerable and seldom-heard voices. The exceptionally high level of engagement exceeded expectations and generated a much larger dataset than anticipated. In the report TONIC presented headline findings focusing on major overarching themes. Sample size also allowed analysis of subgroups in the data based on age and gender.
Over the past two years since our research, Child-Friendly Medway has run or supported hundreds of events and activities. Our research helped enable the scheme to reach out and engage with different audiences across the area.