The Children's Commissioner discusses the content of a piece of paper with a young person

Projects 2023/24

These projects will all be undertaken by our team during the next year.

Where do children live in Wales?

This work will focus on children and young people’s experiences of accommodation and housing and will include exploring the use of unregulated and unregistered accommodation.

Governance of child protection procedures

We need a stronger focus on governance and accountability within our child protection system. It’s not clear how regional safeguarding boards are held to account on implementing recommendations in child practice reviews, and it’s not clear how the learning from each child practice review is used nationally to make children safer. This work will seek to explore this issue further and to suggest improvements.

Racism and racist incidents in school

All children and young people have a right to non-discrimination, and to a full education. Despite this, racism has a huge impact on many children across Wales, including when they are in school.

We are currently researching the issue of racism and racist incidents in secondary schools. We hope that our work will help schools strengthen their responses to racism.

We aim to:

  • gather the views and experiences of school pupils about racism and racist incidents
  • hear the views of teachers and educators, and gather best practice examples about how they manage and respond to racism in school
  • explore the current regulatory framework for managing and responding to racism
  • make initial recommendations, informed by the views of pupils, educators and regulators on strengthening schools’ response to racism

If you would like to hear more about this project or share your thoughts with us, please get in touch.

Education in hospital settings

All children have a right to education. Children that need to stay in hospital or other healthcare settings should be supported to learn if they are well enough to do so. In Wales this is an entitlement in law. But we’re worried that in practice not all children are getting opportunities to learn when they are staying in hospital. This project will research whether children are able to access their right to education and the views of the child and their family about their experiences. We’re hoping to find and share good examples of how children are supported to develop their talents and skills. We will also highlight any gaps we find in provision and identify any hurdles faced by those tasked with delivering this legal entitlement. Our aim is to ensure that all children, wherever they are, can access their human right to an education.

Making our ambassadors schemes as effective as possible

We want to do all we can to help adults teach children and young people about their human rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).

But we know that translating children’s rights into meaningful educational experiences isn’t easy.

That’s where we come in.

We want to make sure that teachers and youth workers have everything they need to be able to confidently support children to do this, including resources, lesson plans, and guidance from our team of children’s rights experts.

This year we’ll be spending time listening to children, teachers, and youth workers, to make sure our children’s rights schemes are as effective as possible.