About children's rights and participation

The Participation leads in each team will stand up for children and young people to make services as good as they should be for the young people using them. Obviously, a large part of this is listening to young people and to make sure you are involved, consulted, and listened to when decisions are being made that affect your lives.

Children's rights are supported by making sure young people are aware of your rights and entitlements. 

Young people should know:

• what to expect from a service
• how to challenge it
• what to do if they are unhappy with decisions
• what to do if they are happy with how the decisions were made.  

Mostly, what young people can expect is laid out in law. Some decisions about how that happens locally is decided by us. 

The Participation leads in each team will help you to understand this information, support you to make informed decisions, and encourage you to be actively involved in the very decisions that affect your lives.

Participation, or getting involved, can happen in a lot of ways, you can find more detailed information about the ways you can get involved on ways to get involved. 

It is your right to be involved in decisions that affect your lives and the law says that services must involve young people when they are making important decisions. This is because it is understood that you will know best what your experience is like and how that may be able to be improved.

Often people can be unhappy with a situation or a service but not do anything about it! Have a look at the following pages and think to yourself whether you could get involved and make things better, if not for yourself then for the service users that follow.

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