A Vision for all our Children - A Workshop for Children and Young People's Committees and Child Care Partnerships on the Children's Strategy

I would like to welcome and thank everyone for coming here today to what promises to be a very rewarding workshop for everyone.

As you will be aware, on 29 January 2001 the First Minister and Deputy First Minister announced the intention of the Executive to appoint a Commissioner for Children and Young People as part of the wider children's strategy. Since then, officials have been working very hard to bring forward this initiative and it is hoped that legislation on the Commissioner for Children and Young People and Young People will go before the Assembly in the near future with the view to appointing a Commissioner in the Autumn.

But there remains a lot of work to be done. As well as having the responsibility for establishing a Commissioner for Children and Young People for Northern Ireland we are also committed to the development of a comprehensive children's strategy.

The establishment of a Commissioner for Children and Young People and Young People is one of the most important actions of the Assembly to date – it represents a significant milestone on the road from conflict to a shared society where the rights of all are guaranteed. It shows that we as politicians recognise that children and young people are important, and that childhood in itself is important.

We believe that Northern Ireland needs a Commissioner for Children and Young People and Young People; someone to act as a champion for all children and young people; a strong independent voice to speak up for their rights and needs. Children and young people need someone who can advise the authorities and challenge them when necessary – a watchdog and an engine for change; someone outside of government to assist in the joining up of policy across existing government departments and statutory agencies.

We are sure that the consultation on the children's strategy will invite as much interest as the consultation on the Commissioner for Children and Young People and Young People. We were delighted with the huge number of responses received, the majority of which were positive. We received over 300 written responses and many of these were from children. We also received a wide range of responses from children's organisations and groups, parents and schools and we had over 60,000 hits on our “allchildrenni” website to find out what a Children's Commissioner is all about, which was very encouraging. Such was the enthusiasm among the responses that many respondents commented not only on the role and remit of the Commissioner but also the children's strategy and that has provided us with valuable information for the next stage of our work.

This workshop today marks the start of informal consultation on the children's strategy. We look forward to hearing your thoughts and views on the subject.

The children's strategy will complement the Commissioner for Children and Young People and Young People by putting mechanisms in place to ensure that children's rights and needs are co-ordinated, monitored and promoted within Government. It will examine the scope for achieving a more joined up approach within the Executive to children's issues. When we started the consultation process on the establishment of the Commissioner for Children and Young People and Young People, we began by involving many of the key stakeholders and other interested parties in developing proposals, which helped to shape the more formal consultation at a later stage. Our plan is to follow a similar process for the development of proposals for the children's strategy. This time our target group of stakeholders is much larger.

The statutory sector is a major stakeholder in the children's strategy for Northern Ireland especially those who work with children's issues in the health and education boards. I believe most of you here today are members of groups who feed into the Children's Services Plan for each of the Health Boards. Pulling together resources and services available to children in this way is an excellent idea and I commend the work that you do.

We would like to find out more about the services available to children and where the gaps are in these services. We would like to know what your vision is for children and young people in Northern Ireland and what steps you think could make that vision a reality.

We envisage the children's strategy to reach into the parts of people's lives where they perceive there to be greatest need. This strategy must not be a paper strategy – this will be a strategy which improves the well being and the future of the children of Northern Ireland.

There is no doubt that Northern Ireland has embarked on a new era of recognition and protection of human rights for everyone, including our children. Northern Ireland children and young people under the age of 18 make up almost a third of our population and yet their rights and interests are not always given priority they deserve. We in the Executive are determined to change this. We must recognise children as citizens in their right and ensure that the conditions exist to enable them to enjoy a happy, safe and secure childhood. We must ensure they are able to live fulfilled lives and to develop and grow into secure, confident and resourceful people.

We believe by doing this, Northern Ireland can be a world leader in improving life for children and young people.

Thank you

We are very grateful to everyone who took the time to come here today. Thank you all for coming here today.

As Denis said we are at the beginning of informal consultation on a children strategy for Northern Ireland following a very successful consultation on a Commissioner for Children and Young People for Northern Ireland, which demonstrated overwhelming support for such a post.

This workshop is an opportunity for us to listen and to gather information on where you, the representatives of the statutory and voluntary sectors, and community services think the gaps are within children's services in Northern Ireland and it also gives us a better understanding of what services are already available. The information gathered will help us begin to develop a children's strategy.

The strategy itself will aim high. It will recognise that our children deserve the best. It will set challenging long-term goals and pave the way for a programme for concerted co-ordinated action across government departments to achieve them.

The children's strategy will be a long-term strategy and it will be a mammoth task to complete and again we will be calling on the expertise of children's organisations throughout Northern Ireland to help us, and again help us to access the views of children and young people on this important issue.

We will also look extensively at those countries, worldwide, which have already developed national policies for children and young people and we will draw from their best points and learn from their experiences.

We are indeed fortunate to have, on our doorstep so to speak, an excellent example of a national children's strategy. The Republic of Ireland launched its strategy 'Our Children - Their Lives' in November 2000. It recognises that in making things better for children, their wishes and feelings should be considered and given due regard. It also recognises that the family is generally the best environment for raising children and that any intervention should be for the purpose of supporting and empowering families, thus enabling them to raise healthy children.

Further afield, Sweden is generally recognised as the current world-leader in policies for children and young people. It has had a Minister for Children since 1986 and in December 1999, launched its new national youth policy which is designed to monitor and improve the living conditions of young people. The overall vision for youth policy in Sweden appears to be ' Democracy, justice and a belief in the future'.

Moving around the globe again, South Africa provides an excellent comparator for Northern Ireland, in that it too, is a nation emerging from long years of conflict. I believe that Dr Pinkerton will refer to these very specific conditions in his talk later this morning. South Africa has published both a National Youth Policy and a National Action Programme for Children. South Africa envisions a future for all young men and women in South Africa which is free from racial and gender discrimination in promoting a democratic, united, peaceful and prosperous society. A society which will empower young men and women to actively participate to fulfil their hopes, dreams and ambitions.

I'm sure you will agree that there are very real similarities between South Africa and Northern Ireland and that we can learn much from the excellent work already done there.

I particularly like the proposed vision for the New Zealand strategy: ' New Zealand is a great place for children: we look after one another'.

Short, simple but encompassing all the aspirations that we would like to see in a children's strategy.

Whilst there is much to learnt from other countries, we are fully aware of the very special circumstances in which children and young people in Northern Ireland find themselves. And one of our very first realisations was that the children's strategy for Northern Ireland must be tailored to those circumstances. Each of you here today, has expertise in specific areas of knowledge and also of locality. Your expertise will be invaluable to us in the development of proposals for the strategy.

From the outset, we recognised that this was a task which we in Government could not take forward alone. We need to work in partnership with key organisations, the statutory and voluntary sectors and of course with children and young people themselves. When we began work on the proposals for establishing a Commissioner for Children and Young People and Young People , we established an inter-departmental group comprising senior officials in all eleven of the Northern Ireland departments and the NIO and Court Service.

We also set up an ad hoc Non Governmental Organisations' Forum to advise us and to share their expertise. The membership of the Forum was drawn from the core members of the ‘Putting Children's First' campaign which included the major children's organisations eg Barnados, NSPCC, Children's Law Centre, as well as Disability Action, the Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities and umbrella groups for the smaller children's organisations across the country.

The role of the Forum has been to represent the views of children's organisations throughout Northern Ireland, and provide a two-way conduit of information in relation to the development of proposals for the Children's Commissioner. It has also been an extremely important source of advice on appropriate mechanisms for consulting with children and young people themselves.

Working in partnership with both the inter-departmental group and the NGO Forum, has enabled us to produce a consultation paper setting out proposals for the Commissioner for Children and Young People.

We acknowledge that the expertise required to advise on the subject of the Commissioner for Children and Young People and the expertise required to advise us on the strategy is different, so we are going to ask the Forum to review its membership to include a wider group of children's professionals to help us develop a comprehensive strategy for the Children of Northern Ireland.

It is hoped that this workshop will be the first of many opportunities to consult on the way forward on children's issues. With your help and the help of many other groups who provide children and young people's services we will be able to produce an excellent children's strategy.

We in Government are committed to ensuring that Northern Ireland is at the leading edge of best practice in relation to both the Commissioner for Children and Young People and the children's strategy and we are most grateful for you coming here today to contribute to this process. I look forward to hearing your views on this very important initiative and I wish you a very enjoyable and productive day.

Thank you.