"A booklet and supporting poster have been developed aiming to support strategic leaders to enact the Practice Principle focussed on respecting the voice, experience and expertise of children and young people. The resources contain a series of key messages and a ‘call to action’, illustrating how to meaningfully include children and young people in strategic-level change. The key messages were developed through a review of existing literature, learning from the Tackling Child Exploitation programme, interviews with senior leaders responsible for youth voice work in their organisations and most importantly in consultation with children and young people. The final outputs were designed by a young creator.
Recognising the importance of youth participation involves listening to, responding to, learning from and acting on children and young people’s views and ideas. By doing this, strategic leaders can provide support and safeguarding services with the potential for meaningful, wide-reaching benefits for individuals, organisations and communities. A child-centred approach to participation provides opportunities for children and young people to exercise control and choice. This is a powerful and practical way of inverting the coercion and manipulation associated with child exploitation and some forms of extra-familial harm. 

We would like to share our huge gratitude to:

• The children and young people from Catch 22, Hampshire Youth Commission and the Safer Young Lives Research Centre’s Young Researchers Advisory Panel for their generous time and expertise that was given to contributing to multiple stages of the development of this resource.

• Natasha Poland for her dedication, professionalism and innovation to bring these key messages to life in the design of this booklet and the accompanying poster. 

• The members of staff from The Children’s Society, Barnardos, London’s Violence Reduction Unit, Hampshire Youth Commission, Coventry City Council Participation Team and Kent Youth Voice and Kent County Council who kindly took part in interviews to share their experiences of leading youth voice work in their organisations."