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Involvement

Introduction

Involvement is at the heart of the Well-being of Future Generations Act and is key to improving well-being across Wales.

People need to be involved in meaningful ways in the decisions that affect both themselves and generations yet to be born and public bodies must use involvement alongside the other four ways of working.

Improving how involvement is done is a key part of increasing the implementation and impact of the WFG Act, which is our top mission of Cymru Can.

How we do involvement

Wales’ well-being journey has involved thousands of people, from The Wales We Want, which led to the Well-being of Future Generations Act, to the creation of the Future Generations Commissioner in 2016 and the setting of their areas of focus.

Some of the involvement projects we have undertaken to date include:

 

Our Future Focus/Cymru Can

Involvement informed our strategy, Cymru Can, via an eight-month process that began with the appointment of Derek Walker as the new Future Generations Commissioner for Wales in March 2023.

Using the principles of public engagement, we held partnership events, collaborated with networks already in existence, formed an advisory group to review and be ‘critical friends’, set up a Community Partnership Scheme which supported local community organisations financially to plan and hold their own events with diverse audiences and ran an online survey in partnership with Miller Research to hear views from a wide range of stakeholders. Correspondence and requests we received during this period were also considered in Our Future Focus.

In taking forward Cymru Can we will:

  • Seek out and value independent expertise, lived experiences and diverse voices.
  • Understand our unique role in tackling complex issues.
  • Share learnings, amplify the messages of others and advocate together where necessary.
  • Listen to what people tell us about what’s working, what needs to change and where we’re best placed to help that happen.
  • Promote Wales’ place on the world stage.

For more information on Our Future Focus and how we involved people across Wales in creating Cymru Can – our work strategy and missions, read our Methodology Report.

 

Democracy Box partnership – co-creating resources for young people 

This partnership with Omidaze Productions and their projects including the Democracy Box, and The Talking Shop saw the co-production of a range of resources about the Well-being of Future Generations Act with young co-creators aged 16-26, including videos, songs, podcasts, spoken word and dance. You can access these products on the Democracy Box website. We also involved young people to develop a young person’s interpretation of our Future Generations Report 2020 and what they need for a future Wales.

 

Communities and Climate Change in a Future Wales

A partnership with Public Health Wales and Liverpool University to involve communities in research about climate change, via storytelling. You can read more about this work here.

 

In action

A Movement for Change.

Ways of working

Using involvement with the other four ways of working

Here is some of how our office integrates this practice with the other ways of working.

01

Collaboration

The challenges facing current and future generations are complex. Therefore, as a small organisation, we collaborate with others, to extend our reach as far as possible, and benefit from, and share the expertise outside of our immediate team.

02

Prevention

As a ‘guardian for the interests of future generations’, we must prevent problems arising for both current and future generations by tackling the root causes of the challenges ahead.

Involvement is key in identifying these challenges and in giving us a practical and fresh perspective to shaping services that we need now and in the future

03

Long term

We have taken a long-term approach to involvement. The conversation started in 2017 to set the commissioner’s areas of focus and will continue over the years to come. We recognise that what is important to people is not static and that true involvement requires ongoing conversation.

We conduct regular involvement activities on our specific workstreams and set up the second iteration of SenseMaker (the People’s Platform), allowing us to track shifts in opinion.

04

Integration

We include involvement in all areas of our work and encourage people to talk about what matters to them, so that we can gain a diverse range of perspectives to ensure that our support and challenge to public bodies is cross-sectoral and aims to improve wide well-being, maximising contribution towards all of the well-being goals.

05

Continuous learning

Good involvement is a journey that involves trying new things, being curious and open to learning, as well as to working to overcome individual and organisational barriers. These barriers may sometimes be structural (for example lack of resources) and sometimes cultural (for example lack of buy-in from leadership to do involvement well, or at an individual level lack of understanding of involvement techniques).

Inner development

We’ve been taking steps forward on our journey to understand and practice inner development as a means to getting better at involvement as well as the other four ways of working that make up the sustainable development principle.

 

How we support other do good involvement

We run training sessions on how to use the WFGA to improve well-being in your work.

You can also use our tool to help track your progress and use the ways of working every day.

 

For more information on our involvement work, please read our annual reports.

If you’re interested in any of our five mission areas, please get in touch to discuss how we might work together. You can email us at contactus@futuregenerations.wales