On Day 3 of the ISPCAN Congress in Melbourne in August 2026, young people and Children's Commissioners came together to ask: how can children and young people decide what protection and safeguarding looks like through policy?
Their message was clear: "Decisions shouldn't be made about young people. They should be made with young people." And then the line I have not stopped thinking about: "Show us where our input actually changed something."
The ask was simple: involve us from the beginning, be honest about what we can influence and show us what changed because we spoke. Importantly, the conversation ended with concrete commitments from Children's Commissioners to act: embedding lived experience in decision-making, building trust and strengthening accountability.
During the same eight days in Australia, the ISPCAN Child Safeguarding Working Group, now in its second year, brought different perspectives around the same table. This included Emma Hakansson, Lead – Lived Experience Engagement and Advocacy, and Conor Pall, Lead of Youth Engagement and Advocacy, Therapeutic Services, at Australian Childhood Foundation, alongside Lauren Barons, Assistant Secretary, and Hannah Donovan, Assistant Director, Strategic Policy and Oversight, from the National Office for Child Safety in the Australian Attorney-General's Department.
For me, having lived experience and youth engagement alongside government, policy and safeguarding practice was important. It reflected exactly what we kept talking about throughout those eight days: we need different voices around the same table, but bringing people together is only the beginning. Listening matters. What happens because we listened matters even more.
I came home with one question every organisation working with children should be asking itself: What changed because we listened?
What does it mean to centre lived experience in child safeguarding?
Centring lived experience in child safeguarding means that children, young people and adult survivors of abuse help shape the policies, systems and practices meant to protect children, and that organisations can show what changed as a result. Hearing their stories is not enough. Their experience must be able to change decisions.
That is where many organisations fall short. Not because they do not care, but because listening can feel like the achievement. It is only the starting point.
Lived experience must influence decisions, not simply be heard
Listening to survivors is essential, but participation needs to be meaningful. Lived experience should help us question our assumptions, identify gaps and shape the policies, systems and practices we put in place.
For children, this is not simply a matter of good practice. It is a right. Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child requires that children's views are given "due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child". In General Comment No. 12 (2009), the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child urged governments to avoid "tokenistic approaches, which limit children's expression of views, or which allow children to be heard, but fail to give their views due weight".
In 1992, Roger Hart wrote that children "are undoubtedly the most photographed and the least listened to members of society". His ladder of participation put manipulation, decoration and tokenism on its bottom rungs and called them what they are: non-participation.
The Lundy model makes the same point. Children need Space, Voice and an Audience, but the fourth element, Influence, is what turns a conversation into participation. I have written about applying it to children and AI, but the principle holds in every setting. And influence means there must be something that can actually change.
Before you invite anyone to share their experience, ask three things:
- What decision is still open? If everything has already been decided, you are asking people to validate your work, not shape it.
- Who will hear it? The people with the power to change policy, budgets and practice need to hear it.
- What is out of scope? Say so honestly at the start. Young people in Melbourne asked for exactly this.
Meaningful participation does not mean promising that every recommendation will be accepted. It means being honest about where people have influence, taking their contribution seriously and explaining what happened as a result.
Listening must be followed by reflection, change and action
This was perhaps one of my strongest reflections from Australia. We cannot ask survivors to share deeply personal experiences, thank them for their courage and then continue doing exactly what we were doing before.
If we invite people to share their lived experience, there is a responsibility to reflect on what we heard, communicate what we learned, take action where change is needed and share progress. Otherwise, we risk making participation feel extractive and potentially causing further harm or disappointment to the very people we asked to help us do better.
General Comment No. 12 is explicit: participation must be "accountable", with "a commitment to follow-up and evaluation", and children "are also entitled to be provided with clear feedback on how their participation has influenced any outcomes".
Closing the loop means:
- Record what was said, in people's own words where they agree to it.
- Decide what you will do with each point: change something, test it further or not act, with a reason.
- Report back in a form that suits the people who contributed. For children, that means a child-friendly version, not the board paper.
- Return later to show progress.
"You said, we did" is a good start. But "You said, we could not, and here is why" is just as important. Meaningful participation does not mean pretending that every suggestion can be implemented. It means showing that every contribution was taken seriously.
Safeguarding the people who share their experience
Participation must never cause further harm to the people we ask to help us. General Comment No. 12 says children must be told "they can cease involvement at any stage", and that adults "must take every precaution to minimize the risk" of any negative consequence of participating. Those principles apply equally when we work with adult survivors.
- Consent must continue. People should be able to withdraw at any point, with their contribution where possible.
- People should have control over their story. Agree how it will be quoted, attributed or anonymised.
- Ask about systems, not details. We rarely need someone to retell what happened to them in order to learn from their experience. Ask what helped, what did not and where the system failed.
- Provide support before, during and after. This should include a clear route if someone discloses a current risk.
- Recognise expertise. Survivors' time and knowledge have value. Their contribution should usually be paid for, just as we would recognise the contribution of any other expert.
And we should remember that lived experience is not only an adult category. Children and young people are experts on their own lives now. They do not have to become adults before their experience becomes valuable.
In Australia, National Principle 2 for Child Safe Organisations, endorsed by the Council of Australian Governments in February 2019, sets this as a benchmark: "Children and young people are informed about their rights, participate in decisions affecting them and are taken seriously."
We need different voices around the same table
Bringing survivors and advocates, government representatives, practitioners and organisational leaders together reinforced how much stronger our thinking becomes when we stop working in silos. Different perspectives challenge us, and that is exactly what we need if we want systems to improve.
But a seat at the table matters most when it comes early. A survivor invited onto the final panel is a guest. A survivor who helped set the agenda is a partner. The same is true for children and young people. If we ask them what they think once a policy has already been written, the budget agreed and the decisions made, there is very little left for them to influence. Participation needs to happen early enough to change the outcome.
Australia also left me with reflections on culture, leadership and prevention, and on why safeguarding belongs in the boardroom, which I explore in my work on why corporates need child safeguarding.
How to show that listening had influence
If we say lived experience matters, we should be able to demonstrate where it made a difference. That does not have to be complicated.
- Keep a participation log. Record who contributed, what they said, which decision it informed and what changed.
- Build it into governance. When your safeguarding policy or framework is reviewed, the review should show which changes came from children, young people and survivors.
- Test it independently. A safeguarding audit can ask not only whether people were consulted, but what difference that consultation made.
- Report back. Tell people what happened because they contributed.
And perhaps most importantly: Ask the people themselves whether their input changed something. Their answer may tell us more about the quality of participation than our own process ever could. Building this into policies and review cycles is part of making lived experience part of the safeguarding system rather than a one-off consultation exercise.
From listening to prevention
At the closing ceremony in Melbourne, Pragathi Tummala, ISPCAN's Chief Executive Officer, made a powerful case for shifting from reactive responses and short-term projects to sustainable prevention infrastructure. Her message was clear: break down sector silos, invest upstream, centre lived experience and build prevention into national systems. Most importantly, success should go beyond survival. We should be asking whether children are truly thriving.
Lived experience is prevention evidence. The people who went through our systems can tell us where those systems missed the chance to act earlier. They can tell us:
- which warning signs were missed;
- which reporting route did not work;
- which adult did not listen;
- which policy looked good on paper but failed in practice;
- which intervention helped;
- and what might have made a difference earlier.
If we listen properly, lived experience does not only tell us what went wrong. It can help us understand how to prevent it happening again.
What have we changed?
Listening is not participation if nothing changes. Safeguarding is not something an organisation has. It is something an organisation demonstrates through its actions, every day and at every level. The same is true of participation.
It is easy to say that we listen to children and survivors. It is much harder to show where their voices changed a policy, a reporting route, a budget, a programme, a product or a decision. But that is the test.
So perhaps one of the most important questions we can keep asking ourselves is this: What have we changed because of what children, survivors and those with lived experience have told us? And if we cannot point to anything, we should ask ourselves whether we were really listening in the first place.
Frequently asked questions
What does "lived experience" mean in child safeguarding?
It means the knowledge held by people who have experienced abuse, harm or the systems meant to respond to it, including children, young people and adult survivors. Lived experience can help organisations understand where systems worked, where they failed and what might need to change.
What is the difference between consultation and meaningful participation?
Consultation asks for views. Meaningful participation gives those views a real chance to influence a decision and reports back on what happened. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child calls participation that hears children but gives their views no weight "tokenistic".
Does meaningful participation mean doing everything children or survivors ask for?
No. Meaningful participation does not mean that every suggestion must be implemented. It means being clear about what can and cannot be influenced, seriously considering what people tell you, explaining the decisions that follow and reporting back on what changed or why something could not change.
How should an organisation report back to children and survivors?
Tell them what you heard, what you changed, what you did not change and why, in a format that works for the people who contributed. And return later to show progress. A thank-you message alone does not close the loop.
Should survivors be paid for sharing their lived experience?
Their time and expertise should be recognised, and payment is usually the clearest way to do that. This should be agreed in advance, alongside consent, support, how their contribution will be used and their right to withdraw.
How can organisations involve survivors without asking them to retell traumatic experiences?
Focus on what the organisation needs to learn. You rarely need the details of what happened to understand where a system failed. Ask what helped, what did not, what barriers they experienced, what they would change and what could have been done earlier. Participation should generate learning without requiring people to repeatedly relive their trauma.
Is children's participation a legal requirement?
Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child gives every child capable of forming views the right to express those views in matters affecting them, with due weight given to those views in accordance with their age and maturity. In Australia, National Principle 2 for Child Safe Organisations makes participation a national benchmark.
Sources
- Melbourne 2026: ISPCAN International Congress, ISPCAN, main congress 24 to 26 August 2026.
- General Comment No. 12 (2009): The right of the child to be heard (CRC/C/GC/12), UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, 2009. See paragraphs 45, 132 and 134.
- Children's Participation: From Tokenism to Citizenship, Roger A. Hart, Innocenti Essays No. 4, UNICEF International Child Development Centre, 1992.
- The Lundy model of child participation, European Commission, summarising Laura Lundy, Voice is not enough, British Educational Research Journal 33(6), 2007.
- Empowering children to participate (National Principle 2), Commissioner for Children and Young People Western Australia.
- Statement on National Principles for Child Safe Organisations, Commission for Children and Young People Victoria, on the COAG endorsement of 19 February 2019.
- ISPCAN Team, ISPCAN.