The Children Act 2004.
The Children Act emerged from the Every Child Matters document and provides a legislative spine for improving children's lives. The overall aim of the Act is to encourage and promote joint working and commissioning of services. A key theme throughout is the promotion of participation and consultation with children and young people to understand and tackle their needs.
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Education Act 2005
Since September 2005, Ofsted have introduced a new framework for inspecting schools. This requires schools to provide evidence of how they are supporting children and young people to achieve the five outcomes of “Every Child Matters”, and also how they are listening to and acting on the views of learners and parents/carers.
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Parental participation
Parents, carers and families play a vital part in the development and delivery of services. This will ensure that a service is developed reflecting local needs and hopes and supports families to access the service.
Parents and carers are the experts and their child’s primary educator. Positive relationships will enable workers to work in partnership and help children reach their full potential, making a positive contribution to society and strenghthening our communities.
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United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
This convention contains 52 standards that set out the Rights of a Child. A number of countries including England have signed up to the convention. Many countries use the standards wholly or in part to promote children’s involvement. The standards of most relevance to the participation of service users are:
Article 12: Children have the right to say what they think should happen, when adults are making decisions that affect them, and to have their opinions taken into account.
Article 13: Children have the right to get and to share information, as long as the information is not damaging to them or others.
Article 17: Children and young people have the right to receive, seek and give information.
Article 23: Disabled children and young people have the right to active participation in their community.
Article 2: Requires all of the rights in the convention on the Rights of the Child to be implemented for every child, without discrimination.
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Every Child Matters- Change for Children
Every Child Matters: Change for Children is a new guidance document that endeavours to support children aged 0-19 years. Five outcomes for measuring achievement have been established which all children services will be inspected on. These are:
- Be healthy
- Stay safe
- Enjoy and achieve
- Make a positive contribution
- Achieve economic well-being
This means that all children and young people’s services are required to work together to achieve these five outcomes for all children and young people. Services will be inspected through Joint Area Reviews and Annual Performance Assessments. As part of the inspection process, services will have to gather evidence that children and young people’s views have been taken into account in the development and delivery of their service. In addition, the inspection process will request that a mechanism is in place so that when the inspection takes place, the inspectors have the opportunity to speak to users of the service. These inspection frameworks mean that children, young people and families will have far more say and be actively consulted on issues and decisions that affect them.
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Local Area Agreements
Local Area Agreements (LAA’s) are a new way of working that seeks to build a more flexible and responsive relationship between central government and localities on the outcomes and priorities that need to be achieved at a local level. Local Strategic Partnerships (LSP’s) and other key partners lead the negotiations at a local level to enhance the delivery of effective joined up public services. Local Area Agreements prioritise their work around 4 key areas:
- Children and young people
- Safer and stronger communities
- Healthier communities and older people
- Enterprise and economic development
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Pupil participation in schools
In April 2004 the Department for Education and Skills issued statutory guidance to schools on pupil participation (‘Working Together’, Ref DfES/0134/2004). The guidance offers advice on how schools might:
- organise and offer children and young people opportunities to develop their skills as active citizens; and
- organise a variety of approaches to involve children and young people.
The guidance is a brief document set out in six sections:
- What do we mean by pupil participation?
- What are the benefits?
- Principles of children’s and young people’s participation
- Principles into practice
- Role of the governing body
- Effective participation – a checklist
The guidance supports personalised learning through opportunities that already exist in Citizenship education, Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) and in other wider school activities, for example Healthy Schools and the Connexions service. Ofsted also now gives pupils opportunities to give views about their education as part of the inspection process.
There is no single right way of involving children and young people in a school’s decision-making processes. However, the DfES guidance is extremely useful in setting out the key principles that are the necessary building blocks for involving children and young people.
The DfES guidance is supplemented by a National Healthy School Programme (NHSP) briefing ‘Promoting children and young people’s participation’. The NHSP encourages and supports schools to take a whole school approach to promoting physical and emotional health. One of the key criteria against which schools are assessed for healthy school status is the way in which they are ‘giving pupils a voice’. This places pupil participation at the heart of the NHSP and the briefing provides practical suggestions for facilitating it.
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Government projects
Sure Start, Children’s Centres, Children’s Fund and Connexions have championed parental participation nationally for families.
For information on how to get parents and carers engaged in:
- Local consultations
- Parents’ forums
- Parent representation on working groups
- Involvement in governance
- Volunteering
- Working for the service
click on the links below: |
 www.surestart.gov.uk
Children's Centres
www.connexions-covandwarks.org.uk
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