Vol. 566 No. 1
67 Mr. Boyle asked the Minister for Health and Children his views on the recently released guidelines from the End Child Poverty Coalition: Hearing Young Voices, Guidelines for Consulting Children and Young People in relation to developing public policy and services in Ireland; and the consideration he has given towards adopting such guidelines. [8198/03]
The Hearing Young Voices guidelines are an excellent and comprehensive set of guidelines. They will be useful for a wide range of statutory and non-statutory groups which are considering consulting with children and young people. I am fully supportive of these guidelines and I launched the research study Hearing Young Voices in September 2002 which formed the basis for these guidelines.
The Hearing Young Voices research was conducted and compiled by Karen McAuley of the Children's Rights Alliance and Marian Brattman of the National Youth Council of Ireland on behalf of the Open Your Eyes to Child Poverty initiative. Hearing Young Voices was funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and supported by the Combat Poverty Agency and the Irish Youth Foundation.
The Open Your Eyes to Child Poverty initiative was a coalition of seven organisations that came together and worked for three years, 2000-02, to promote greater awareness of child poverty and to effect change in public policy to eliminate child poverty. The organisations involved in this initiative were, Barnardo's, Children's Rights Alliance, National Youth Council of Ireland, Focus Ireland, People with Disabilities in Ireland, Pavee Point and The Society of St. Vincent de Paul.
On 4 February 2003, I launched the latest initiative of the above seven organisations, which is entitled the End Child Poverty Coalition. At this launch the Hearing Young Voices guidelines were also presented.
I am responsible for co-ordinating the implementation of the national children's strategy. The first goal of the strategy is that children will have a voice in matters which affect them and their views will be given due weight in accordance with their age and maturity. The strategy acknowledges that support and guidance must be provided to agencies involved in consulting with children, in order to fully implement the first goal. The National Children's Office, which was established in 2000, is the State agency charged with driving implementation of the strategy. My officials in the National Children's Office have been working in co-operation with various statutory and non-statutory organisations to provide this support and guidance.
Following a request for funding, to print additional copies of the guidelines, officials in the National Children's Office examined the Hearing Young Voices guidelines and met representatives of the End Child Poverty Coalition to discuss the issue. It was agreed that the Hearing Young Voices guidelines would be developed into a set of national guidelines for consulting with children and young people. The development and re-print of the guidelines is being carried out in co-operation with the End Child Poverty Coalition. The layout, design and reprint of the guidelines will be fully funded by the National Children's Office.
