Human and Machine: A Journey - Part 13

Engaging Youth in Welfare Innovation

Throughout our exploration of modern welfare systems, we've examined the complex interplay between human judgment and systematic approaches. In Part 12, we discussed how equality serves as a transformative force that can help transcend the apparent dichotomy between human and machine elements. Now we turn to a crucial application of these principles: engaging youth in welfare innovation—a domain where the tension between systematic structures and human creativity becomes particularly visible.

Youth engagement represents a perfect microcosm of our ongoing exploration. When welfare systems attempt to incorporate young people's voices, they confront fundamental questions about expertise, power, and the purpose of welfare services. The challenge isn't simply about listening to youth but about reconfiguring how knowledge is created, valued, and applied in ways that transform rather than merely improve existing systems.

Children as Democracy's Future

This focus on youth connects directly to what Jan Eliasson emphasized in his keynote¹ at the Social Services Conference I mentioned in Part 7. He powerfully reminded us that children are the ones who will carry the democratic baton forward. As he put it: It is the children who will run with the democratic relay baton. They need to be given their tasks.

This perspective fundamentally shifts how we think about youth engagement in welfare services. It's not simply about improving services for young people—it's about preparing the next generation to participate in and ultimately lead our democratic institutions. When we actively engage youth in welfare innovation, we're simultaneously developing services and nurturing future democratic participants.

This connects to our ongoing theme: we are humans building and developing the machine that is our democracy and society. This knowledge—that democracy and systems are human creations—is essential to pass on to younger generations. By involving youth meaningfully in system development, we make visible how social structures are created and maintained by human choice and action, not immutable forces beyond our control.

Beyond Tokenism: Three Levels of Youth Engagement

When examining youth engagement through our human-machine lens, we can identify three distinct levels that parallel our earlier discussions of knowledge and equality:

Consultative Engagement (Machine-Dominant) represents the most formalized approach. Here, existing systems consult youth through structured methods—surveys, focus groups, and advisory panels with predetermined formats. While this approach ensures systematic inclusion of youth perspectives, it often maintains existing power structures and primarily serves to refine rather than transform services.

Collaborative Engagement (Integration) moves toward more meaningful partnership. Here, youth work alongside professionals in co-creating solutions, with shared decision-making power in defined areas. This approach navigates between systematic structures and youth autonomy, creating spaces where young people's lived experience and professionals' systematic knowledge can productively interact.

Transformative Engagement (Human-Centered) represents the most profound level, where youth actively lead innovation processes with appropriate adult support. Here, the starting point isn't existing systems but young people's lived experiences, priorities, and creative vision. This doesn't mean abandoning systematic approaches but rather reconfiguring them to serve youth-defined purposes.

Knowledge Translation in Youth Innovation

Youth engagement highlights the knowledge translation challenges we've explored throughout this series. Young people bring crucial experiential knowledge that often exists outside professional and academic frameworks, requiring thoughtful translation between different knowledge worlds.

Consider our hourglass model of knowledge flow from Part 3. Traditional knowledge hierarchies position young people at the bottom as passive recipients of services designed by experts at the top. Meaningful youth engagement inverts this flow, positioning young people's lived experience as a crucial knowledge source that flows upward to inform system design.

This inversion challenges established notions of expertise. As one youth advocate explained: Professionals often ask us to prove our expertise through their standards. But our expertise comes from living the experience every day—it's valid on its own terms, not because it fits into academic frameworks.

This echoes Eliasson's emphasis on the importance of fact-based knowledge in democracy. In a world where misinformation threatens to undermine public discourse, we must recognize multiple forms of valid knowledge—including the experiential knowledge youth bring to welfare innovation.

Digital Spaces as Innovation Catalysts

The digital realm offers particularly rich possibilities for youth engagement in welfare innovation. Digital environments can bridge between human and machine approaches, creating spaces where young people's creativity can flourish while maintaining necessary structure and support.

The digital environment creates possibilities for more equal power relations. As one youth innovator noted: Online, we're not immediately judged by our age or experience. Our ideas can stand on their own merits. This shift in power dynamics allows for more authentic collaboration, where young people's digital fluency becomes a valuable expertise alongside professionals' systematic knowledge.

Yet digital spaces also bring challenges that mirror our broader human-machine tensions. Without thoughtful design, digital platforms can reinforce rather than challenge existing power structures. Algorithmic systems can embed biases that exclude certain youth perspectives, and platform designs can constrain creativity in subtle ways. As we discussed in Part 6 on AI in social services, technology isn't neutral—it actively shapes how knowledge flows and whose voices are heard.

Configuring Systems for Youth Innovation

Eliasson reminds us that we must organize around problems rather than bureaucracy. This principle applies powerfully to youth engagement in welfare innovation. Rather than fitting youth into existing bureaucratic structures, we need to reconfigure our approach to center on the actual challenges young people face.

Several key principles emerge for configuring welfare systems to support meaningful youth engagement:

1. Create Purposeful Knowledge Translation

Successful youth engagement requires intentional bridges between different knowledge forms:

• Developing shared language that respects both youth and professional terminology

• Creating documentation approaches that capture narrative insights alongside structured data

• Building dialogue processes that allow different knowledge forms to productively interact

• Valuing both the systematic knowledge professionals bring and the experiential knowledge youth contribute

2. Balance Structure and Freedom

The most effective youth innovation happens within what we might call structured autonomy:

• Clear frameworks that provide necessary boundaries without constraining creativity

• Transparent decision-making processes that maintain youth leadership while ensuring accountability

• Support systems that offer guidance without controlling outcomes

• Timelines and milestones that maintain momentum while allowing for emergent development

3. Address Power Dynamics Explicitly

Meaningful youth engagement requires honest recognition of and response to power imbalances:

• Creating compensation models that value youth contributions as professional expertise

• Developing decision-making approaches that give youth genuine influence

• Building feedback mechanisms that hold systems accountable to youth priorities

• Ensuring accessibility in all aspects of the innovation process

Youth Engagement as Democratic Practice

When we engage youth in welfare innovation, we're not just designing better services—we're practicing democracy in its most fundamental form. This connects to Eliasson's observation that the quality of our domestic society increasingly determines how we act as international actors. How we include youth in our own institutional development reflects our deeper commitments to democratic participation and human dignity.

This is particularly crucial in our current moment of growing societal mistrust. Eliasson identified youth engagement as one of the key sources of hope amid these challenges. When young people actively participate in shaping the services designed for them, they develop not just better services but stronger democratic values and increased social trust.

As Eliasson emphasized, together is the world's most important word. Almost nothing we need to accomplish can be done alone—we need other actors involved. This principle applies powerfully to youth engagement in welfare innovation, where success depends on genuine collaboration across generations, disciplines, and perspectives.

Toward a New Integration

Youth engagement in welfare innovation perfectly illustrates the ongoing theme of our journey: the challenge isn't choosing between human and machine approaches but finding ways to integrate them that preserve the best of both. Young people need neither completely unstructured freedom nor rigid systematic frameworks, but thoughtfully designed spaces where creativity and structure enhance rather than oppose each other.

This integration becomes increasingly crucial as welfare services navigate growing complexity and rapid technological change. Youth bring crucial perspectives on how digital transformation affects their lives and communities—insights that systems desperately need to develop services that remain relevant and effective.

Looking forward, we might envision welfare systems where youth engagement isn't a special initiative but a fundamental operating principle—where service design, implementation, and evaluation all involve meaningful youth leadership. Such systems would maintain necessary systematic elements while continually evolving through the creative energy young people bring.

When we involve youth in building and refining our welfare systems, we make visible the human hands behind the machine. We remind ourselves and future generations that our democratic institutions and welfare systems aren't immutable structures but human creations that can—and must—be continuously reimagined and rebuilt to better serve their purpose.

As we move toward Part 14's exploration of reflection and learning systems, consider:

• How might youth perspectives transform your understanding of what constitutes "success" in welfare services?

• What spaces exist within your organization where youth knowledge and professional knowledge can productively interact?

• How do your documentation and decision-making systems either support or hinder meaningful youth participation?

• What would it look like to configure welfare systems around youth-defined priorities while maintaining necessary structure?

This is part 13 in our ongoing series exploring the intersection of human judgment and systematic knowledge in modern welfare systems. Join the conversation by sharing your thoughts and experiences in the comments below.

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1. Eliasson, J. (2024, Oct 4). Det nya globala landskapet [The New Global Landscape]. Keynote speech presented at Socialchefsdagarna 2024, Stockholm, Sweden.