Topic: Young People's Participation

OCO Beyond Limits Accessible Event Guide

Who we are The Ombudsman for Children’s Office (OCO) is a human rights institution that promotes the rights and welfare of young people under 18 years of age living in Ireland. The OCO also investigates complaints about services provided to children by public organisations. The service is free and independent.

Introduction

The Ombudsman for Children’s Office hosted Beyond Limits, an event for children with disabilities, in 2019 and 2022. Beyond Limits is a family event made up of talks, entertainment and activities that include disabled children in the line-up and that they can take part in. Beyond Limits was designed to be fully accessible and inclusive. This means that all children should be able to attend and take part.

Over 2,000 people have attended Beyond Limits events. In 2019 Beyond Limits took place in Croke Park and in 2022 there were events in both Sligo and Limerick. In 2022 a Beyond Limits Youth Advisory Panel (YAP) was established to help plan and organise the events. The YAP was made up of eight amazing young people of all abilities from different parts of the country.

Beyond Limits is a special space where disabled children and their families do not feel different. They do not have to do the same preparation to attend, they do not need to worry about whether the supports they need will be available and they do not need to consider if children will disrupt what is going on.

In organising three Beyond Limits events we discovered that there is no centralised resource available (that we could find) to help organise a fully accessible and inclusive event. In order to make Beyond Limits happen we consulted with a range of organisations and we had the input of our YAP who experience barriers to participation and attendance every day.

Making an event accessible and inclusive should not be an added extra. This Accessible and Inclusive Event Guide has been created to bring together all of our learnings and to help other organisations and businesses to do better for disabled children and adults. 

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Children and Young People’s Participation in Child Protection: Outcomes of Transformative Participation in International Contexts

This article draws on case studies from Brazil, Denmark, Israel, Norway, and Nicaragua to analyse the outcomes of transformative participation in child welfare. Transformative participation occurs when children make meaningful choices, develop a sense of agency, possess the resources to exercise agency, and can make a real difference in their lives, their communities, and child welfare. Caring and inclusive attitudes, relationships, and practice approaches characterise transformative participatory professional practices. We demonstrate that transformative methods can create conditions so children feel recognised and empowered and empower themselves. They encourage children to collectively engage in actions to change cultural norms and develop new child welfare practice approaches and policies. We show how local-level practitioners in public and nongovernmental child welfare organisations can play a crucial role in fostering children’s transformative participation.

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