Involving Children Good Practice

Participation at reviews should be in a way that is meaningful to the child and include appropriate systems or methods of communication.

Participation at reviews does not necessarily mean that all children should attend their review meeting. Some children and young people will be able to participate in their reviews and they should be supported to do so. For others, attending a review will be extremely stressful or meaningless to the child.

Participation should be seen as a concept which may include the physical attendance and involvement of the child or may include collecting the views of the child and feeding those into the review from the perspective of the child. There should be a range of ways in which young people might input their views into a review, for example, video; photographs; drawings etc

If papers are circulated before the meeting, then the views of the child need to be shared at the same time. If evidence is to be presented in video form, then this needs to be viewed either before the meeting or at the beginning of the meeting so that it can be taken into consideration. Children and young people need access to these papers in an appropriate format.

Children’s views should not be presented as an afterthought, when a decision has already been made. The review can be made more child-centred in some of the following ways:

Children can be involved in the preparation for the review by, for example, helping send out invitations (‘You are invited to attend my annual review meeting’)
The review should be welcoming to the child. The venue and time are arranged to fit the child’s needs. Timing and length of the meeting should be discussed and negotiated with the child.
Having an experienced or trained facilitator who is responsible for ensuring the review is conducted in a child centred manner may be important. The facilitator could ensure that the time and place are suitable; there is a warm welcome extended to the child/family; the child has his/her preferred method of communication available; would facilitate the actual meeting so that it does not slip into a more traditional way of doing things etc.
The adults need to acknowledge that the meeting is the child’s meeting.
Language should be simple and clear, without being patronising.
The child or young person should be introduced to all the people attending their review.
The child should be supported to participate. One idea is the use of a preparation sheet (for secondary pupils or KS2 pupils). This may include putting the pupil’s points of view on cue cards for them to use during the review as prompts.
The meeting should concentrate on identifying the needs of the child and ways of meeting those needs. Discussions over budgets and resources should take place elsewhere. Children’s views, in whatever form they are presented, need to be considered alongside those of all the adults and should feed into the decision making process.
Adults should be open to having their opinions altered by listening to children.

Kirklees

Successful annual reviews - DVD

email: helen.megahy@kirklees.gov.uk

North East Lincolnshire

ASD panel meetings with children & families

Open - Download

email: chris.trendall@nelincs.gov.uk

Regional research project

Preparing for a person centred transition review

Open - Download

email: alison.cowen@ntlworld.com

Rotherham