Involving children and young people in decision-making

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The past decade has seen an increasing recognition and acceptance of the right of children and young people to participate in developing social care. Social care organisations have begun to acknowledge that, when listened to, children and young people can play a vital role in the planning and delivery of services.
As a result of this, children's participation has become a key target for social care organisation in the statutory, voluntary and private sectors. At times, this can lead to the participation "box" being ticked by organisations because they can demonstrate that they have involved children and young people in an activity, rather than because they can provide evidence of change or improvement as a result of their participation.
Benefits of participation
The term "participation" incorporates children's involvement in every area of service development - from commenting on environmental factors like office space to contributing to their individual care plan.
For children and young people to become involved, practitioners need to be able to work in a way which enables participation and ultimately affects change or improvement within the organisation. Practitioners and their managers' awareness of the benefits of participation may assist in this process.
They are often motivated to work in social care because they want to improve children and young people's lives a participative approach may help them to achieve this aim by ensuring that their ways of working are based on what is important to children and young people. It may lead to improvements in skills, knowledge and job satisfaction.