Children often speak clearly about what matters to them but adults don’t always listen. The Listen to Us project set out to change that pattern. The project placed children’s experiences, ideas, and concerns at the centre of conversations about safety, kindness, and life in their communities.
One framework helped guide this work was The Lundy Model of Participation. This model offers a practical way to turn the right of children to participate into real practice.
Developed by Professor Laura Lundy, the model explains how Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child works in everyday settings. Article 12 states that children have the right to express views on matters affecting them and for those views to receive due weight in decisions.
The Lundy model breaks this right into four connected elements. Space. Voice. Audience. Influence. Each part matters. If one element is missing, participation becomes symbolic rather than real.
The Listen to Us project applied these principles in our engagement with the children in the development of the podcast and later in the voice of the child seminar in May where the children will address politicians and policy makers. The children want action, not just another photoshoot!
Creating space for children
Participation starts with space. Children need safe and inclusive opportunities to share their views.
Listen to Us created these spaces through trauma informed conversations, workshops, podcasts, and creative activities. Children spoke about bullying, kindness, friendship, safety in their neighbourhoods, and how adults respond when something goes wrong.
These spaces mattered because children often hold strong views but lack opportunities to express them. The project treated children as thinkers and contributors rather than passive recipients of services.
Supporting children’s voice
Voice means more than speaking. Children need support to express their ideas in ways that work for them.
The Listen to Us project used storytelling, discussion, drawing, and podcast recording. These formats allowed children to explain experiences in their own language.
Children spoke about being followed, laughed at, or excluded. They spoke about the importance of kindness. They spoke about feeling safe and about the courage needed to ask for help.
The project did not script children’s contributions. Their words remained their own.
Ensuring an audience
Children’s views only matter if someone listens. The podcast was a way to capture their voices, words and ideas and allow them to echo out into the universe.
The Lundy model stresses the need for an audience with responsibility to respond. The Listen to Us podcasts brought children’s voices to teachers, youth workers, parents, and policy audiences.
Adults heard directly from children. Not through reports written about them. Through the children’s own words.
This step shifts the balance of power. Children become participants in conversation rather than passive spectators.
Turning voice into influence
The final part of the Lundy model focuses on influence. Children’s views must shape decisions and practice.
Listen to Us did this through a children’s manifesto and public conversations built around the themes children identified. Safety, kindness, inclusion, and emotional wellbeing.
The project encouraged adults working with children to reflect on what they heard and to respond in practice. Schools, youth services, and community organisations gained insight into how children experience everyday environments.
Influence does not mean children make every decision. Influence means their perspectives carry weight.
Why this approach matters
Too many initiatives speak about children without speaking with them. Participation becomes tokenistic. A consultation exercise rather than a meaningful dialogue.
The Lundy model provides a structure that prevents this drift. It reminds organisations that participation requires four conditions. Space to speak. Support to express views. People who listen. Decisions shaped by what children say.
Listen to Us demonstrates how this approach works in practice. Children’s voices reveal realities adults often overlook. They describe the emotional texture of everyday life. The small acts of kindness that matter. The moments of exclusion that hurt. The ways safety and belonging shape how children experience their world.
When adults listen carefully, new knowledge emerges.
Children do not simply describe problems. They also point toward solutions. They ask for respect. They ask for fairness. They ask for kindness.
Listening to those requests strengthens communities.
The lesson from the Listen to Us project remains simple but powerful. Children already have voices. The real challenge lies in building systems that hear them and act on what they say.
Reference: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01411920701657033
(AI was used to help write this article)