Inside Inclusion: A diary of working toward inclusion

Today I had a wonderful session with the Children’s Voices Centre’s (CVC) World Health Organization (WHO) research team. We are working together with the WHO as part of the Disability Health Equity Network to bring children’s perspectives to the work of the WHO and health organisations and services across the globe.

In our meeting today we had a fabulous exploration of the ethics of working with children in the ways that we do and reflected on the wisdom of the children in our CVC Children’s Advisory Panel. Together, the children developed ground rules for how our meetings run. The children’s rules are:

• Come and go as you need (it is okay if you need a break or to run around)
• Listen to each other
• Don’t speak on top of each other, wait for a moment if you need to
• Give everyone a turn
• Let the chair lead the meeting
• There are no right or wrong answers
• This is an important opportunity to tell the world what matters to children
• Have fun!

The image above is a poster from one of the children, who is 9 years old, illustrating the rules that this child thinks are the most important!

Image description:

A white piece of paper coloured green in the background with pencil. The paper reads, in curly handwriting: In the children’s advisory group we

• listen
• there is no right or wrong answer
• have fun
• share your ideas.
  

At the bottom of the page is a drawing of a yellow smiley face and the logo for the Children’s Advisory Group designed by this child, which has a blue crown with a yellow star in the middle and streamers out the sides.