NICCY: Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People

Our Work 08-11

NICCY's priorities help guide, or tell us, what we are doing for children and young people.
They are the areas that we will be working on in the next three years. The priorities were decided after we asked a lot of people what they thought we should be doing
We've already started work on most of them!

LAST year I asked you to help me choose the work we are doing to meet our priorities over coming months and years.
I am delighted that so many of you took the time and the effort to respond.

A total of 1,453 children and young people had their say in helping me decide my work. Parents, carers and those who work with children and young people also gave me their views. More than 420 offered their opinions.

What I asked you within each category was to tell me which was your preference in five areas of work.

In each priority we then totalled up your preferences, which guided how we developed our business plan and set our corporate plan for the next three years.

I also received detailed responses from organisations such as voluntary and community groups.

Using this information we decided what work we will be doing under each priority. In some, your preferences told us clearly how we will tackle the work in each priority.

In others we had to consider carefully what we are going to do. One of my concerns was not to duplicate the work of other organisations. For example in the priority area called ‘protection’ you told me that your preference was ‘abuse’. When my team and I looked at this it was clear that there were a lot of other organisations already doing work in this area. While we will support their work when the opportunity arises, we at NICCY will work on other areas you voted for.

When we are doing individual pieces of work under each category I hope that will also benefit other parts of my work. For example, I will be launching a campaign next year for young people to tell me about what is good and bad about play and leisure where they live. This will be part of the play priority, but as the young people will be ‘having a say’ it will also add value to that priority.

Over the coming pages I hope you will see how I listened to you and how we here at NICCY used your responses to shape what we are doing for children and young people in Northern Ireland to promote and safeguard their rights and best interests.

Once again thank you for taking the time to respond and tell me your views and opinions.

How we decided our priority areas

Staff at NICCY, together with members of our Youth Panel embarked on a massive piece of work last year to try to assess the state of childrens rights in Northern Ireland.

Together with a piece of work looking at Government policies and recent changes in law, we conducted what is called a Child Rights Review. This was published early in 2009.

The draft findings of this review were combined with other information we received.

This included the type of complaints and casework children, young people and their carers told us about. We also looked at what was being raised in public through the media and politicians.

We used this information to decide the priorities and the list of potential areas to work under each priority.

This is what I asked you to tell me about last year, and your responses have now shaped our work.

Doing the work

To make sure we do the work we have outlined on these pages, we have set up project teams for each priority area. Each team is made up of members of NICCY staff and young people from our Youth Panel.

As well as the planned work I will also be promoting and safeguarding the rights and best interests of children and young people. For example when I am asked to make a speech, or when we are asked to comment in the media to.

We also asked Queen's University, Belfast to carry out some research for us. You can read and download it from here
To help us make sure we do the work in our priorities we have a Corporate Plan. Click here to read and download
We have asked all candidates in the 2007 NI Assembly elections to make four promises to children and young people in an election manifesto - read it

NICCY: Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People

Poll

Do you think NICCY's priorities are important for you?

Our Work 08-11

How we decided our priority areas

Doing the work