Last weekend we ran the first weekend of the Citizens' Assembly for Northern Ireland. It focuses on the issue of social care provision and we were really pleased to see fantastic engagement from the 77 participants.
The second stage of the assembly will take place on 17 and 18 of November. It will see the Assembly Members deliberating and making recommendations on the pressing issue of social care provision in Northern Ireland.
If it's anything like this first stage then there's plenty of reasons to be excited about the final outputs.
Host our youth mental health programme in your area
After a second hugely successful year of engaging young people as Citizen Researchers to improve local authority youth mental health services, MH:2K is looking for new partners. Click here to find out more and if you think your local area would be interested in running MH:2K, then please get in touch.
Joint Committee Chairs praise the Citizens' Assembly on Social Care
The chairs of the committees on Health and Housing, Communities and Local Government, Sarah Wollaston MP and Clive Betts MP, recently published a blog for the Hansard Society outlining how useful the Citizens' Assembly was in reaching consensus on social care. Take a look.
In case you missed it
Recently our Head of Democratic Innovation, Kaela Scott, ran training sessions in Belfast on how to deliver deliberative public engagement. We saw a great turnout from civil society and senior government officials. We look forward to seeing it put to practice!
Get involved
If you want to learn more about Kaela's work, you can join her in Liverpool for a workshop on designing and facilitation of Citizens' Assemblies, part of the Citizens' Assemblies for the Renewal of Europe conference on 5 December 2018.