Turning the words of legislation into action for children and young people

Jonathan Traynor of the Office of the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People (NICCY) details the hopes and activities of the new children's watchdog.

In October 2003, the Office and First Minister and Deputy First Minister announced with due fanfare that Nigel Williams had taken up post as Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People. Since then, Nigel Williams has been leading the development of a team that has been delivering on the promises implicit in the legislation that created his post (Commissioner for Children and Young People (Northern Ireland) Order 2003).

But amidst dealing with the complaints from children and young people about the decisions that affect their lives, commissioning landmark research, launching unique and forward-thinking participation projects including communicating with children and young people and key stakeholders, the Commissioner and his team have developed a range of priorities that will spearhead NICCY’s work over the next three years.

‘Our fifteen priorities are a clear path for us to deliver on the promise made in the NICCY mission statement – a statement that I believe encapsulates the vision that many, many people had when first thinking about establishing a commissioner,’ said Mr Williams.

That mission statement – promoting and safeguarding the rights and best interests of children and young people to help them challenge and change the world in which they live – runs through the core of NICCY’s work. And children’s rights are where the NICCY team started from, when in the first few days Mr Williams commissioned a far-ranging piece of research into how children’s rights in Northern Ireland compare with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).

‘At the heart of the legislation that established the post I now hold is the UNCRC, so logic dictated that I needed a baseline to start with,’ he said. ‘The Queen’s University Belfast team which carried out the research produced a report in October 2004 that came with almost 50 recommendations.

Time, resources and our own experiences meant we couldn’t deal with all of these recommendations in our first year, so my senior management team and I worked with our Youth Panel and our staff to develop a draft set of priorities and draft corporate plan, which we then asked everyone about.’

Marlene Kinghan, Head of Communications and Participation with NICCY, said the effort to raise awareness poses a real challenge for everyone as we had to reach such a vast audience. Over the course of four months, a concerted communications campaign that included a landmark launch, coverage in almost all of Northern Ireland’s media, advertising, meetings, presentations, a special website and many other tactics asked Northern Ireland to 'shout' about the draft priorities.

‘When a controversial issue is out for consultation, such as water charging or post-primary education, there tends to be a lot of people willing to chip in with their views,’ she said. ‘When it’s a less controversial area there tends to be less interest. And when it is about the direction of a relatively new organisation no-one can really tell how many people will bother.

We were surprised and delighted that almost 1,700 people took the time and effort to respond. From very young children, through to pensioners, from primary school children to the top organisations in children’s rights – we received responses from throughout Northern Ireland.’

Barney McNeany, Chief Operating Officer explains: ‘The responses have been used by NICCY over the past four months to finalise the priorities and corporate plan. But rather than it being just a paper exercise, our team has been at pains to produce action. In an ambitious business plan for 2005/2006, NICCY has strived to develop a clear path.

For us, it’s not about drafting endless documents and making the right noises, it’s about seeing what we can do within our resources to change thinking, influence policy and address the areas that our respondents told us needed to be urgently examined. That’s why our business plan has clear goals, clear action and, hopefully, a clear impact.’

And as part of that clarity, all NICCY’s major reports, including the priorities, corporate plan, and business plan are on the much visited website, www.niccy.org.

But while the planning was taking place, the day-to-day work of NICCY was continuing apace.

Teresa Devlin, Head of Research and Service Review has, like many others in the Senior Management Team, been taking work forward that was advanced before the priorities were published.

‘From the early days of NICCY, there were areas of work that it was clear we would have to tackle,’ she said. ‘One of these was to review vetting – the process of checking whether adults were suitable to work with children, young people and vulnerable adults.

Now after more than a year of detailed work we are presenting that report and our recommendations to the Secretary of State, hopefully with a path to producing clear, simple guidelines for those who need to vet employees and volunteers.’

The report is just one of the areas that the entire NICCY team has worked at closely to begin the process of promoting and safeguarding children’s rights. Often the genesis of work lies with young people themselves.

From early days, one of the areas that children and young people – or their parents or carers – complained to NICCY about was the lack of some health and social services.

’One particular area we received complaints about was speech and language therapy,’ said Linda Kerr, Head of Legal Services and Complaints. ‘As a result of this and other contact from parents and carers, our research and service review team carried out research that included contact with the people who originally made the complaints.

A report was completed that was published and made public on our website and through the media and communicated to key influencers such as politicians.’

As a result of this report, NICCY is holding a series of meetings with health and social services providers from across Northern Ireland to see how services can be improved.

‘From the start, children and young people have been coming to us with complaints about the services they receive or the way they are treated,’ said Ms Kerr. ‘To date, we have had more than 300 such complaints. We’ve not been able to resolve them all, but we’re very pleased that most have been able to be resolved informally.

But we are equally conscious that many will need us to support their complaint in other ways through the powers that our legislation grants us.’

In all this work, it is clear that NICCY is not a corporate monolith operating in isolation. From the very start, children and young people have been central to its operation.

The voices of children and young people have been heard since NICCY started and specific resources have been allocated to make sure their involvement is real

The Commissioner said: ‘NICCY works with a Youth Panel that is actively involved in many parts of our work, and we are now developing and enhancing that to make sure that children and young people can have an increasing say. In fact they are deciding how that is done, and what is practical for them.’

The NICCY Youth Panel now has 42 members, but that isn’t the end of the involvement of young people.

‘We make sure that children and young people themselves are a growing and more important part of our work,’ said Nigel Williams.

‘From hearing their complaints, through to helping our research, through training on the UNCRC, children and young people are part of what we do. From participating in interviews, through to meetings in schools, youth clubs and many other environments we have daily contact with many young people.

In coming months, we will have four participation officers working in local areas to make sure that NICCY isn’t a remote office in Belfast, but a real presence with real goals for children and young people. Those goals are now a very real part of the action in our business plan that once completed will help me, as commissioner, meet children and young people in three years time and tell them honestly that NICCY has made a difference.’

You can find out more about the work of NICCY at www.niccy.org.