1. Youth participation must have influence

• Keep youth’s participation integral to designing services that influence their lives.
• Ensure youth participation has meaningful impact on decisions, practices, or ways of working.

2. Participation must include those not currently well-served

• Actively involve youth who are not well served by existing services in shaping them.
• Address barriers to participation as part of the work, using them to change how services are designed.

3. Service designing must be adapted to youth knowledge

• Work with youth knowledge in the forms it takes, without extracting or flattening it.
• Adapt research, administrative, and service design practices so youth knowledge complements and challenges professional expertise.

4. Participation must be facilitated into decision-making

• Support youth perspectives to move into the networks, conversations and decision-making spaces where services are shaped.
• Take responsibility for changing facilitation and processes when youth perspectives do not influence outcomes.

5. Participation must open up alternatives

• Create space for youth to question assumptions and explore how services could be different.
• Support experimentation, including trying and failing, as part of learning how services can change.

6. Participation must be careful

• Take youth labour and risk into account when facilitating participatory processes.
• Ensure youth contributions are not used against them, make information use explicit, and provide access to support when needed.

7. Participation must be valuable for participants

• Ensure participation builds skills and experience, and document contributions in ways that matter for youth futures.