The Queensland Family and Child Commission (QFCC) has released a new guide to help the community include the views and perspectives of children and young people in decision-making processes better.
Entitled Child Youth Participation Framework, the new guide aims to bridge the gap that can occur when children’s and young people’s voices are left out of the conversation about decisions that affect their lives.
According to the Commission, the framework outlines how the QFCC upholds children’s and young people’s rights to participate in decision-making by finding genuine opportunities to hear from them, involve them in the organisations’ work, and amplify their voices to the community.
“We want all young Queenslanders to be connected with their communities and to be respectfully included in and influence the decisions being made about them,” the Commission said.
“To act in their best interests, we apply an approach that affirms child rights, and involve youth participation in all our activities” it said.
“This framework outlines how we give children and young people genuine opportunities to participate in decision making, to give full effect to the realisation of their rights.”
It said that organisations across the community were now being encouraged to consider how they can use the Framework to improve child and youth participation in their decision-making processes and foster productive working relationships with young people.
QFCC Commissioners Luke Twyford and Natalie Lewis said that for years, the Commission had been actively seeking opportunities to work with children and young people on the issues that affect them.
“We have listened to them, involved them in our work, and co-designed projects and approaches with them,” the pair said.
“We have a Youth Advisory Council that advises us, and we have done our best to make sure the voices of children and young people are heard, loud and clear and acted on.
“Until now, we haven’t had a clear structure that pulls all of this together.”
Mr Twyford and Ms Lewis said the new guide does just that.
“It explains our reasons; the details of our approach; and the connection to legislation, principles and plans,” they said.
“It will be of great benefit to the QFCC, but we also hope it will help other organisations, providing them with guidance and direction on how to keep children and young people at the centre of all they do.”
The Commission’s 24-page Child and Youth Participation Framework can be accessed at this PS News link.
