Child-Friendly Medway 2025
Task
Child-Friendly Medway was formed in April 2021 as a result of an inadequate Ofsted Inspection of Medway Children’s Services. The aim was to put children and young people at the heart of everything the Council does, and to help Medway become a place where all children and young people are involved in and benefit from the local decisions, services and spaces that shape their lives.
To support the launch of Child-Friendly Medway, Medway Council commissioned TONIC to undertake an engagement survey capturing the voice of children and young people aged 0-25 from across Medway. TONIC reached 2845 children and young people through the online survey and 142 across 15 targeted qualitative focus groups, ensuring seldom-heard voices were represented. Through their engagement, young people identified the priority areas they believed should be the focus in making Medway even more child-friendly. You can find out more about that project here: https://www.tonic.org.uk/child-friendly-medway-2021
In 2025, Medway Council commissioned TONIC to deliver Child-Friendly Medway’s Children and Young People Survey for a second time. This served as a 'temperature check' to monitor progress and understand the impact Child-Friendly Medway is having on local children, young people and their families. The project aimed to capture the voice of children and young people across Medway, compare findings against the 2021 survey, and answer four core research questions:
What does it feel like to grow up and live in Medway?
What are children and young people's hopes and dreams for the future?
What worries and barriers do children and young people face in Medway?
What do children and young people think about Child-Friendly Medway?
Our Approach
TONIC used an anonymous paper and online survey as the primary method of data collection. The survey was developed in collaboration with the Child-Friendly Medway team and built on themes from the 2021 survey, combining both open and closed questions to collect qualitative and quantitative data.
An alternative shorter 'pulse' survey was also developed to allow children and young people to share their views quickly. Whilst the 2021 survey, was conducted primarily online due to the Covid-19 pandemic, most 2025 responses were completed at Child-Friendly Medway events or within schools, facilitated by the Child-Friendly Medway team.
TONIC also developed a toolkit that could be used by the Child-Friendly Medway team to deliver a series of focus groups and workshops with children and young people. The toolkit included a focus group guide and practical activities, such as diamond nine, that the team could use to engage participants. The focus groups were designed to seek further detail on preliminary themes that emerged from the survey.
Outcome
There were 5,788 responses across all survey formats; after data cleaning, there was a total of 4,372 responses which were the focus for the analysis.
4,315 responses were from children and young people themselves
30 responses were from a parent/carer on behalf of a child under the age of 6
27 responses were from a parent/carer on behalf of a child with additional needs
Furthermore, total of 94 children and young people, aged 10-18, participated in the focus groups. Emerging themes were compared across survey responses and focus group findings and considered in the context of the 2021 findings.
Overall, the sentiment in the 2025 survey was notably more positive than in 2021. Children and young people reported improvements in feelings of safety, happiness and how much they enjoy living in Medway. Drawing on the survey and focus group findings, TONIC proposed a series of 8 recommendations to further strengthen the work Child-Friendly Medway are doing across Medway.