Centering Children’s Concerns and Voices in Policy

During the COVID-19 pandemic, threats to children’s well-being and health in Canada have been heightened, while children’s voices have not been granted sufficient attention. Research conducted by Children First Canada (CFC), a charitable organization that serves the over 8 million children living in Canada, over the past four years has continually highlighted the top ten threats to childhood in Raising Canada reports and provided calls to action to mitigate and respond to these concerns. In the Raising Canada 2021 report, cross-cutting themes present across the top threats were also described--one of which touched on the ways in which children and youth often lack sufficient prioritization and inclusion in public policies. Despite these findings, CFC has taken purposeful action to ensure children are granted spaces to participate and inform policy related discussions--internal to the organization or in public spheres. As such, in this paper we highlight these threats and the overarching theme on the lack of engagement with and prioritization of young people, we describe three key ways that CFC has actively included young people, and we describe why inclusion is important for social change. We also discuss what strategies for inclusion can look like in post-pandemic times, but emphasize the need to have inclusion of young people engrained in the fabric of a functioning society.