UN calls for urgent action on participation

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	The participation landscape can change on a daily basis - new funding, new initiatives and announcements. Participation Works is your specialist news provider for the world of children and young peoples participation. You can view our news on this website. Subscribe to our RSS feed in a reader Or Subscribe to Latest News from Participation Works by Email What is RSS? Do you know of a story we should be covering? E-mail claire@participationworks.org.uk.

UN calls for urgent action on participation

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has called for significant action on children’s participation rights.

In its verdict on implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in the UK over the past five years, the Committee of international experts called for urgent legal and policy reforms. In some of its strongest criticisms to date it expressed concern about the “general climate of intolerance and negative public attitudes towards children”.

The heavy hitting report includes over 120 recommendations for action needed to improve children’s lives, many of which made specific reference to children’s participation rights.

The Committee believed “that there has been little progress to enshrine article 12 in education law and policy” and that therefore “participation of children in all aspects of schooling is inadequate”.

The committee placed a particular emphasis on the rights of disabled children in take part in decision making highlighting that “insufficient action has been taken to ensure the rights enshrined in article 12 to children with disabilities”.

The committee called for the Government to strengthen children’s participation in all matters of school, classroom and learning which affect them and ensure that children can appeal against their exclusion from school and as well as the right to appeal to the special educational need tribunals.

Other recommendations from the committee made to the government to:

promote, facilitate and implement, in legislation as well as in practice, within the family, schools, and the community as well as in institutions and in administrative and judicial proceedings, the principle of respect for the views of the child;
encourage the active and systematic involvement of children’s groups in promoting and implementing children’s rights;
support forums for children’s participation, such as the UK Youth Parliament, Funky Dragon in Wales and the Scottish Youth Parliament;
collaborate with civil society organizations to increase opportunities for children’s meaningful participation, including in the media.

Whilst welcoming new laws to listen to the views of young children when planning early years services, it also repeated its concern that parents can remove children from sex education without agreement of the child. It also repeated its call for a system to acknowledge publicly the views expressed by children and the impact they have on developing programmes and policies and how they were taken into consideration.

Carolyne Willow, National Co-ordinator of the Children’s Rights Alliance for England, said: “We now call for the Government to take immediate action to remedy breaches in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and we want the Convention brought into UK law as a matter of urgency. Given the severity and breadth of the criticisms made by the UN Committee, Ed Balls must now make a statement to the House as soon as possible after parliament resumes next week.”

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Children's Rights Alliance for England

Posted on Friday, October 03, 2008 (Archive on Friday, October 10, 2008)
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Participation Works for the Statutory Sector

Participation Works is the key hub for voluntary and community organisations wanting to build their capacity to involve young people in decision making and influencing change in their organisations.

But Participation Works is not only providing support for the voluntary and community sector. Across our online gateway you will find a wealth of resources, news stories and training and development opportunities for statutory sector organisations.

This short tour will give you an overview of some of the things you will find.

Click next to proceed through the tour. You can exit the tour at any time.

About Participation - the rooms

The 'About Participation' section of the gateway is made up of thematic 'rooms' - each packed with useful information and links to resources on that theme.

To make it easy for you to locate resources which were developed in the statutory sector, or which apply across the statutory sector (for example, government policies) we have used this icon:

Resources which may have been developed in the voluntary sector, or which may be particularly relevant to both the statutory and voluntary sector are marked with this icon:

Putting Participation Into Context: Rights

Young people have right to be involved in decisions that affect them. In the rights section you can find out about these rights, and what they mean for government and statutory sector organisations.

Putting Participation Into Context: Policy

International agreement, UK law and government policy places requirements on statutory sector bodies to involve young people in decision making. In the policy section you can explore the legislative and policy foundations for youth participation.

Getting Started: Training Resources

Whether you are just getting started with young people’s participation, or you have established participation work that you want to build upon – good quality training and training resources can play an important role.

The training room includes details of training packages that are available and links to training providers and consultants who can support practical skills building and organisational change for the participation of children and young people.

Getting Started: Training

Participation Works also provides a wide range of training courses directly and through our partner organisations.

Training is free to voluntary sector organisations, and is available to statutory sector organisations for £85 per session.

Hear by Right workshops support organisations to explore the current level of young people’s participation in their work, and to create a sustainable plan for improving youth participation. Hear by Right also explores the importance of participation leading to real change for young people, and includes a focus on practical methods for recording and measuring change.

Ready Steady Change uses an interactive set of training tools to build participants skills and knowledge in increasing children and young people’s participation in decision-making. It approaches participation from a children’s rights framework.

Building a Culture of Participation explores how an organisation’s culture can be established and embedded to support children and young people’s active and meaningful participation within the organisational infrastructure.

Safeguarding in Youth Participation is a one day course that aims to provide delegates with a better insight into safeguarding issues when working with children and young people and on ways to improve and provide a safe environment for children and young people.

You can find a list of upcoming course dates and can book online through the training page.

Getting Into The Details: Resources

Participation Works have produced a wide range of practical How To Guides on participation, as well as a series of publications on young people’s rights and the state of youth participation in the UK.

All these guides are available as free downloads.

Getting Into The Details: Rooms

Participation Works thematic ‘rooms’ of content cover many of the practical issues that children’s trusts, local authorities, government departments and agencies and other statutory sector bodies will come across in building the participation of children and young people in their work.

The standards room focuses on how standards can be used to drive organisational change for young people’s participation.

The measuring change room provides practical tools for seeing what has changed as a result of young people’s involvement.

Participation online explores a range of practical methods for engaging with children and young people through the internet and multi-media methods.

Getting Into The Details: Resources Hub

The Participation Works resource hub is packed full of information and resources from Participation Works partners about how to involve children and young people.

You can search for case studies of participation projects, stories of change, examples of policy and practice, training resources and more.

Keeping Up To Date: News

The Participation Works news service includes regular updates on participation policy and practice.

You can subscribe to received news updates by e-mail and you can browse the extensive news archive to find out about the background of local and national government participation initiatives and action.

Get Networked: PWNE

The Participation Works Network for England is the place where you can find and network with other professionals working on the participation of children and young people.

Once your registration has been approved you can let others know about what you are doing through your profile, and you can search for others with interests similar to your in the Full Member Directory.

The PWNE also has regional networks which run events and convene meetings for local knowledge sharing and learning.

Get More Support: Enquiry Line

Participation Works run a telephone enquiry line set up specially to help sign post you to the information you need.

You can give the enquiry line a call to talk through your needs and to help identify the resources, training and support most relevant to you.