Consulting children: gaps in practice

Children who depend on public support services are directly affected by the decisions those services make, yet they are also the group most likely to be inadequately consulted. This article examines the gap between legal duty and operational practice, why the most vulnerable children go unheard, and the question public bodies consistently handle badly: where do parents fit?

Why is consultation about services for children so inconsistent?

The UK has a clear rights-based framework for child participation. Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) establishes that children have the right to express their views in all matters affecting them and for those views to be given due weight according to their age and maturity. The Children Act 1989 reinforces that obligation in the UK. For NHS bodies, NHS England’s statutory guidance on involving people in their own health and care goes further still, requiring meaningful participation of children, young people, carers, and families in service design and commissioning.

The problem is not the absence of duties. It is the absence of any unified framework for what meeting those duties looks like in practice. Guidance does exist across health, social care, education, Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) provision, and youth justice. However, it is sector-specific, principles-based, and largely silent on evidential standards, measurable outcomes, or accountability. A public body can satisfy the letter of each duty and still run a consultation that is, in practice, inaccessible to the children it most needs to hear from.

Which children are most likely to be left out, and why?

There is a structural paradox that runs through consultation about children’s support services. The children with the greatest stake in the decisions being made are the ones conventional consultation processes are least equipped to reach. Looked-after children, disabled and neurodivergent children, non-verbal children, and children living through mental health crises or family breakdown are all groups that depend heavily on specialist services. They are also the groups for whom standard methods fail most completely.

Overreliance on written surveys, inaccessible formats, one-off engagement events, and facilitators without specialist child participation skills all compound the problem. So does a tendency to consult through institutionally convenient channels. Youth councils and young ambassador programmes have genuine value, but they reach children who are articulate, school-engaged, and connected. The Children’s Commissioner’s guidance on children’s participation in decision-making is explicit that participation must be designed to include those with the least voice, not those who are easiest to engage.

Scale is not a substitute for reach. The Children’s Commissioner’s Big Ambition showed what national-scale child engagement can look like. But a high participation count does not answer the questions that matter most: which children were included, who was not, and whether the process was adapted for those with complex communication needs or traumatic histories. Meaningful consultation with this group requires trauma-informed methods, trusted relationships built over time, and genuine feedback to participants about what their involvement changed. None of that is compatible with treating consultation as a procedural step to be completed.

Are parents and carers being treated as the stakeholders they are?

This is the question public bodies most consistently handle badly. The tendency to treat child voice and parental involvement as competing interests is both a practical failure and a misreading of the legal framework. Article 5 of the UNCRC recognises parental responsibility alongside children’s independent rights. NHS England’s guidance on involving children and young people explicitly supports involving family carers as part of the participation process. These are not competing obligations.

Parental concerns about being sidelined arise most sharply in SEND, mental health, safeguarding, and looked-after children services. The concern is rarely that parents are formally excluded. It is that systems designed to prioritise independent child voice can, in practice, treat parental knowledge as an obstacle rather than a resource. When a child is non-verbal, in acute crisis, or unable to engage through standard consultation formats, the ability to hear that child at all may depend entirely on the involvement of the adults who know them best.

Child voice and parental involvement are not in competition. Public bodies that design consultations as though they are produce processes that are weaker on both counts. Where parents and carers sit in the consultation design is not a detail to resolve later. It is one of the first questions that should be asked.

How tCI Can Help

Organisation Wide Learning Hub Access
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Training that works with your real projects, not hypothetical scenarios. Sector tailored sessions help teams apply good practice to live challenges: sharpening consultation documents, building defensible codebooks, strengthening equality analyses. Half day or full day workshops for health, local government, planning and public service teams.

Coaching for Complex or High Risk Consultations
Expert guidance when the stakes are highest. One to one and small group coaching for senior officers navigating legally exposed or politically contentious decisions. Strengthen your judgement on proportionality, evidence standards and challenge management. Essential for organisations that may face judicial review risk or major service changes.

Whether you’re preparing for a high stakes service change, building long term consultation capability, or need confidence that your evidence approach will stand up to scrutiny, we can help.

Contact tCI: hello@consultationinstitute.org