Participation and empowerment is one of DECYP’s strategic priorities and is about supporting our organisational belief that:
‘The rights of children and young people are upheld in all that we do, particularly the right to an education, to influence decisions that affect them, and to be safe from harm’.
DECYP has developed a Participation and Empowerment Strategy to help us do our part in upholding children’s rights.
We need to put children and young people’s rights at the centre of all the work we do and ensure that diverse voices are heard equally.
This is about children, young people, parents and carers having a greater say in the design of the department’s services and supports so that they better meet their needs.
This priority will help to bring DECYP’s Strategic Plan to life so that children are ‘known, heard and included’ and support us to work in ‘strong partnerships with children, young people, families and community.’
How will we achieve this?
The work ahead is about deeply listening to children, young people and the communities we serve, and connecting in ways that supports them to feel empowered.
During 2025, we will ‘walk our talk’ and do this work by partnering with children, young people, parents, carers and the DECYP workforce. This work is summarised below.
Internal to DECYP
Goal – Bring our DECYP belief to life in the work we do.
How – Build the child’s rights focus in DECYP through:
- Learning more about children and young people’s rights and making sure we uphold them in our work.
- Creating resources and providing support that guides everyone in DECYP to seek, listen and give influence to child, youth and community voices in a consistent and safe way.
- Sharing good examples of existing child-centred work being done in DECYP to include children, young people, parent and carer voices.
External to DECYP
Goal – Create the building blocks DECYP needs for the participation and empowerment work to further develop.
How – With external partnerships to co-create:
- A policy position and best practice guide to increase opportunities for children, young people and adults to share their views in a safe and ethical way.
- A model of advisory groups to inform decisions that DECYP leaders make. The groups will include children, young people, parents and carers.
Want to know more or get involved?
- Read the Youth Friendly Participation and Empowerment Strategy Action Plan – Year 1 (PDF, 2.3MB) or the text version for screen readers (DOCX, 152KB) – a one-page document for young people that summarises the approach, goals and actions for year 1.
- Read the Participation and Empowerment Strategy Action Plan – Year 1 (PDF, 4.2MB) – this document summarises the approach, goals and actions for year 1.
- Read the Developing the Participation and Empowerment Strategy (PDF, 2.2MB) – this is the full technical document that provides background for why DECYP has chosen this strategic priority.
- Contact the Child and Youth Empowerment team:
Sonya Pringle-Jones
Director Child and Youth Empowerment
sonya.pringle-jones@decyp.tas.gov.au
Sarah Marshall
Principal Policy and Project Officer, Child and Youth Empowerment
sarah.marshall1@decyp.tas.gov.au