The Baptist Union of Great Britain : Children, Young People and Families Round Table

Children, Young People and Families Round Table – November 2022

At the start of our time together we reflected on ‘the parable of the mustard seed’ and how we all bring things of ourselves (which may be considered small), but that we may never know how they grow and develop and bring change in Jesus’ name. We acknowledged that as we gathered, we all brought all that we are and all those who we carry in our hearts and minds with us. We also allowed space to call out what we see in others, to encourage and affirm other members of the Round Table, to value who we are together and the strengths of us collectively. We went on to worship and praise and thank God that we are all qualified by God in Christ’s new covenant to be confident and bold in what we are called to (2 Corinthians 3).

The key focus over our time together was ‘The Good Childhood report 2022’. We created a wall with ‘bricks’ that demonstrated what we perceive is necessary to form a ‘good childhood’:

We considered the report in the light of Matthew 5: 1-12. Our theological reflections from this passage included the following:

Young people need to ‘be seen’
The orientation in the Beatitudes is towards those who don’t have power
Being vulnerable with one another is key
Setting culture is really important – for many things including how welcome people really feel
It is really challenging for our churches to orientate towards those who don’t have power
It’s a difficult passage that speaks about eternity and conversionism
Blessed …offering blessings
…being listened to (investing time in)
…being seen
…being incarnational
…waiting with
It’s vital to not view children and young people as ‘projects’
Being careful of labels
God is present with…all
‘Hopeful’; being hopeful is key; this passage reveals hope and promises hope as the blessing

We went on to focus on the seven key recommendations from the report, which are
shown below.

Recommendations from The Good Childhood Report 2022:

Decision makers cannot delay action on children’s declining well-being any longer. The Government must step up its attention on prevention and early intervention and take accountability for children’s enduring unhappiness with school and appearance. Co-design with children and young people must be at the centre of all our proposed reforms.

It is imperative that children’s subjective well- being is measured at least annually on a larger scale as it is for adults.
Children’s well-being support hubs should be available in every community in England and Wales.
Vital youth provision must be restored to bring young people and families together as part of healthy communities.
The Government must take action on children’s unhappiness with their appearance. This has been neglected for too long, failing generations of young people.
Radical reform of the education system is needed, as well as rebalancing the curriculum to value personal, social, and health education alongside Maths and English.
Family well-being needs to be a priority. The NHS and MHSTs should work with the voluntary and community sector to support parents and carers through a whole-family approach.
Children must be protected from the unrelenting cost of living crisis and deepening poverty by increasing child benefit and widening eligibility to free school meals.

We spent time considering what role Baptist churches could have in supporting and filling the gaps from these recommendations.  The church really is well-placed to continue to support children and young people, not least by being a safe place where they can be themselves and to have fun!  Here are some of the suggestions we came up with:

1) Children’s wellbeing
Wellbeing in churches?  How do people feel about their wellbeing?
Q&A survey with young people in church setting?
Are our churches stopping and listening to children & young people and their wellbeing (or the whole church) / subjective experiences?
Questionnaire – What do they do with that info?  Could we as CYF RT provide a framework about how to apply the results?

2) Wellbeing support hubs
Renew spaces
Identify and partner with wellbeing support hubs
Run youth wellbeing sessions – planned/suggested by the young people

3) Restore youth provision
Lobbying thing / engaging with government
Partnering with others in community to offer quality youth provision

4) Children’s unhappiness about their appearance
Social media, bullying, gender identity – how to navigate social media healthily – helping churches start this conversation, listening, walking with.
Identity – ministerial training and colleges?  What support/training can be given to ministerial students?
It can be helpful to be seen through a safeguarding lens.  (Is the church seen as a suitable/safe place to go to discuss appearance issues?)

5) Reform of the education system
Pray for schools and teachers.
Churches build relationships with schools (eg; governors).

6) Family well-being
Churches take greater lead in parenting workshops/supports – linking up with organisations / partnerships that do this – eg; Safe Families, TLG, Care for the Family

7) Protect children from cost of living crisis
Campaigning, but also standing in the gap eg; TLG Make Lunch / government funding for pupil premium / warm spaces etc

The above explorations raised some questions that we as a group will continue to ponder and encourage others to as well:

What makes a good adulthood?
What makes a good church community?
What makes a truly intergenerational community?
What helps with healthy formation for life?
How much does our ‘class’ affect our view of what a ‘good childhood’ is?
How are we ‘good news’ in our communities?
Could we ‘stand-in place of’ the seven recommendations with various expressions of church?

The headline finding that more children are unhappy in school than ever before suggests that churches need to realise the value of their children, youth and family leaders being in school. Why? Because the place where we can potentially have the biggest impact and influence is in school.

Our hope as Baptists Together Children, Youth and Families Round Table is that by discussing The Good Childhood Report together and bringing it the attention of Baptist church’s around our union, we will be more aware of the needs of children and young people and prayerfully consider what we can do to help bring change and offer vital support in Jesus’ name.

Working Groups:
We split into four working groups on our second day to further develop some of our thinking, plans and possible strategy for the following areas of work:

Belonging and participation of children and young people throughout Baptist Together. This group continued to explore how leaders can be better equipped to ensure that children and young people are fully included in all aspects of Baptist life; nationally, regionally and in churches. They came up with several ideas for progressing training and resources. A working party from the CYF Round Table will continue this conversation.
Youth aspect of the Baptist Assembly. This group reviewed the 2022 Youth programme from the Baptist Assembly and then further developed ideas for 2023. This included feedback taken from the young people and the importance of developing relationships and of being heard within the denomination. A team has been established to further develop, plan, recruit leaders and deliver the programme for the 2023 Assembly.
Next strategic steps for the CYF Round Table. This group were encouraged to review how many of the original aims set out in the CYF Round Table’s terms of reference have now been realised and so began to think about the next strategic steps and priority areas for the group. They made some initial suggestions and the core team will be working on potential new terms and developing a working document for all members of the Round Table to feed into ahead of our next meeting in March 2023.
Following on from day one - how do we help Baptists Together engage with the Good Childhood report? This group talked further about how the CYF Round Table could encourage churches to read at least the recommendations from The Good Childhood Report and prayerfully consider how it might inform our practice with children, young people and families. There were suggestions about using social media to stimulate ideas and discussion and also about raising the profile of the importance of wellbeing within our settings.

We also heard feedback from representatives in the following areas:

National Youth Interdenominational Round Table. A first gathering has been held and there is a positive sense that this could be useful as a sharing and relational network to learn from one another

EBF (European Baptist Federation)Met in Latvia.  Really positive time together.  Evaluated what want to achieve through EBF CYF and definite sense of advantages of meeting together, sharing, supporting and connecting.  Some countries have a strong desire to connect young people across countries and there is an opportunity for churches to engage with this.  Next year, there is a large meeting planned in Norway for young people and churches are being encouraged to take their young people from across Europe to this event; SENT 2023 Mission Summit and/or the Baptist World Alliance (BWA) 2023 Annual Gathering  https://www.ebf.org/sent2023

IBTS training on Trauma and Stories. A group of Baptist representatives from five different regions have completed ‘Youth and Children’s Leadership Training’ on trauma-informed practice and stories during 2022.  They are now meeting together virtually to explore how to share their learning more widely and to offer training.

Satellites https://www.youthscape.co.uk/satellites seems to have captured the imagination of Baptist youth groups with their attendance disproportionally high. The feedback has also been overwhelmingly positive and going forward we are keen to build on this in conjunction with Isabella Senior.  Some questions to consider are:
- Is there a way we can encourage youth groups to join up, but also to connect with the churches were there are only 1 or 2 young people?
- Is there a role that associations can play in encouraging and even facilitating this?
- Are there other opportunities that this connection might lend itself to?