A Manifesto for Younger People Participation Strategies

“I’ve always really appreciated the way my support worker really listens to what I have to say and what I want.  For a long time, I didn’t really feel that I could speak up, however with being able to be included in the discussion at home visits and by them asking more question directly to me, I knew that someone was listening to what I had to say.  I had a safe space to speak up.”  (Younger Person 15 years) 

If all younger people had a safe space to speak up, were truly listened to and then had something done about it, then the need for a younger people participation strategy might not be even thinkable, let alone raised as an issue.  Just as no one needs to write up a ‘breathing strategy’, when something just universally happens all around us, we don’t even tend to notice that it is happening, or at least, think about the ‘right’ for it to happen.   

But many younger people do not have that safe space. That’s what participation strategies are all about.  Making sure that all younger people receiving a service from whatever agency have safe spaces to speak up, are encouraged to speak up, are listened to, and then have something done about what they’ve said.   So that we don’t even think about it – it’s just a part of the way we live and act and breathe.   

We could say we want this to happen because it’s the law.  It’s in international, national and state law that younger people have a right to participation.  But we won’t say that.  Or not just that. We all recognise that right and it’s an important reason, but that’s not the main reason.  The main reason is because we want to walk beside, stand up with, and stand up for, those who have had not much of a say, who have tended to be pushed to the margins of society.  This includes children and younger people caught up in the juvenile justice and/or child protection system, those living in poverty, marginalised by class, living with disabilities, who identify as First Nations, as LGBTIQA+, or whose families come from dominated cultural backgrounds.  All children and younger people who have little say, little opportunity to say it and no one to listen if they did say it.  

If you were to ask why we want to do this the answer is because we believe that we are better off as a community and as a society if everyone is included and everyone has a say in the decisions that affect their lives.  That belief comes not just from our heads, but more deeply from our hearts and spiritual beliefs.  We believe that if the whole point of life is to love one another then that means compassion, treating everyone with dignity, doing what we say we’re going to do, and supporting each other to be our best selves.  When we do that, we get better ideas and a better, more meaningful and more caring world.   

We hope you join us in making younger people participation be like the air we breathe.