Children’s champion vows to improve life for Welsh youngsters

Wales will “put children first”, according to the children’s
commissioner for Wales.

Commissioner Peter Clarke told delegates about plans to involve
children in all aspects of life in Wales.

“Every school and every youth club will have a [children’s]
council,” said Clarke. Children will be involved at board level in
schools and will help with the staff recruitment, he added. All
local authorities will have to develop a “youth forum” which should
give children access to the chief executive and councillors, he
said.

Clarke warned that it was important that such developments did
not exclude the less articulate and that changing adult perceptions
was just as important as involving children at all levels of
decision-making.

“We haven’t got a lot of models we can use and we don’t have
much experience of involving children,” he added. “Children First
[the Welsh version of Quality Protects] is part of this broader
determination that we’re actually going to change things,” he
said.