A Wales for All Children

The Commissioner’s Ambition, by Rocio Cifuentes

I want Wales to be a country where every child and young person understands their rights and are able to access support for those rights to be realised. A key purpose  of my organisation’s work is to support children and young people to know about and understand their rights and to support and advise public services on promoting and protecting children’s rights.  

In my three-year strategy, which was based on the views and experiences of over 8,000 children and young people from across Wales, we committed to exploring a unifying call, to bring together the range of existing children’s rights-focused initiatives and give greater prominence and priority to the needs and rights of children and young people. In the context of severe challenges being faced by children and young people in Wales, and to ensure a coordinated response to important anniversaries relating to children’s rights (2024 marked a century since the concept of universal children’s rights was born), we wanted to create something that would encapsulate Wales’ longstanding commitment to children’s human rights via a simple but compelling public information campaign: ‘A Wales for All Children / Cymru i Bob Plentyn’.  

We took this idea to the Welsh Government and our request was simple: let’s establish a communications plan and build a tone around children’s rights activities in Wales, to which partners could align. Not only would this help deliver some of the obligations under Article 42 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child but would also assist Welsh Government in delivering some of its own commitments outlined in its Children’s Rights Raising Awareness Plan. It would also allow us to start building consistent language around children’s human rights in Wales, and, critically, it will act as a unifying call to action to bring together the range of existing children’s rights-focused initiatives and give greater prominence and priority to the needs and rights of children and young people. 

We’ve outlined below the key aspects of the plan which we’ll deliver with Welsh Government. 

The Challenge

In Wales, there are legal obligations on various public bodies to protect, promote and consider children’s rights. They include a duty on: 

• Welsh Ministers to promote knowledge and understanding of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) amongst the public, including children: Section 5 of the Rights of Children and Young Persons (Wales) Measure 2011; 
• the Children’s Commissioner to safeguard and promote the rights and welfare of children in Wales and to make children aware of the role and the work of the office: Children’s Commissioner for Wales Act 2001 
• local authorities to make suitable arrangements to promote and facilitate participation by children in decisions of the authority which might affect them: Children and Families (Wales) Measure 2010 (Section 12) 

Despite this strong legislation, we believe there is a need to improve the visibility and understanding of children’s rights in Wales, so that: 

• children’s rights are more prominent in public sector communications work 
• children are aware of and take up opportunities to inform change, be listened to by decision makers, and play a meaningful part in change 
• decision makers assert and protect children’s rights 
• decision makers and duty bearers are accountable and responsive to children and young people 
• public bodies in Wales embed a children’s rights-based approach 

The Idea

We want to align communications activity related to children’s rights across the public sector, including Welsh Government, to ensure there’s consistency in the way we present children’s rights and to make sure there’s no duplication of efforts.  

With a creation of a joint communications strategy between Welsh Government and the Children’s Commissioner for Wales, we will offer (and support) other organisations the opportunity to integrate our Right Way principles (children’s rights-based approach), rights-based language, and Wales’s vision/priorities for children and young people into their communications activity. 

Within this strategy, the strapline of  ‘A Wales for All Children’ will be used to consolidate the vision and to show what actions public bodies are doing to support and uphold children’s rights in Wales.  

What we’ll be doing to implement the idea

1. Support public bodies to adopt a children’s rights approach, including publishing new resources on taking a children’s rights approach to tackling child poverty and another on children’s rights approach to budgeting 
2. Shine a light on good practice of implementing a children’s rights approach 
3. Promote children’s rights via our communications and participation work, including our Ambassadors scheme 
4. Ensure children and young people know that there’s a children’s commissioner there to protect and promote their rights 
5. Include messaging around ‘a Wales for all children’ in our communications work, including our media work and speeches 

How will we know it’s a success

1. We’ll measure the number of organisations adopting a children’s rights approach; we’ll seek to capture outcomes from the adoption and will measure the number and effectiveness of our support programme for public bodies. 
2. We’ll measure the impact of our engagement work, to make sure that more children and young people know about, understand and use their rights. 
3. We’ll measure every two years via Beaufort Omnibus survey the awareness levels that children and young people across Wales have of the Commissioner and her office.