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Voice of the child

Introduction and context

These tools have been designed and adapted by Cheshire West and Chester and are available for any services, schools or organisations who work with children and families in Lancashire. All professionals need to be familiar with the tools provided and know when and how to use them.

The principle of good practice is to ensure that children and young people’s views are heard and recognised. If you become concerned about a child or young person it may be useful to use some of the tools available in the multi-agency assessment toolkit.

This guidance has been developed to provide workers with the underpinning principles to effective communication with children and young people and links to a range of tools and methods that may support them to capture the voice of the child within their practice.

The voice of child is of paramount importance in testing out whether the apparent outcomes of interventions are having the desired impact for the child/ren. Seeking the views of the child will ensure that there is not over reliance on parental accounts which can therefore minimise the risk of disguised compliance.

Professionals need to ensure the voice of the child runs through everything we do and that the child perspective is clearly visible throughout any assessment that affects them and taken into account no matter what their age or ability to communicate directly.

This can be done by:

  • Direct engagement – talking to the child;

  • Observation, particularly for young or non-verbal children;

  • Discussion with parents, family members, carers or agencies (but don’t let this be your only perspective);

  • Analysis of information held to consider what the impact might be on the child (test this out with the child).

Considerations and first steps

The following considerations are positive qualities, principles or approaches that underpin effective communication and aid workers ensuring the voice of the child is captured.

  • Be flexible in your approach. No one method or tool will work for every child

  • Workers must ensure they make sufficient time to spend with each child or young person

  • Need to establish a working relationship with the young person and engage their interest. (Establish ground rules and boundaries)

  • Develop trust and a rapport through non-intrusive questions.

  • Give the young person a good introduction to your role and duties to them

  • Consider how you could make the child more comfortable

  • It is important to have a variety of tools available to help communicate with children and young people

  • Workers need to work at the child’s pace and tailor their communication style to the best way of communicating with the individual

  • Understand their diversity needs, plus their interests and activities. For example, use open-ended questions or T.E.D questions* to give them the opportunity to share

  • Activity based communication helps both children and young people feel more comfortable expressing their feelings, and helps build trust

This child centred approach is fundamental to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of every child. A child centred approach means keeping the child in focus when making decisions about their lives and working in partnership with them and their families.

*TED Questions begin with Tell, Explain or Describe. Examples of TED “questions” Tell me more about that. Explain the situation to me. Describe that to me.

Using the tools

Many workers use tools to enable them to seek the views of children or to aid participation, enabling children to draw or write their views more freely than in direct conversation.

Useful examples are available to assist workers but not intended to replace other good practice. Workers should plan ahead and adapt tools to suit particular children and young people or circumstances. There are no right answers to how to do this, just opportunities in the available tools and resources such as books, dolls and figures, drawing materials, and games.

A wide range of tools are available to encourage us all and help with our direct work. Please take care and exercise professional judgement as they do not fit all children or all circumstances. They are intended as a guide and can be adapted for individual use. There are many more available and in use. Please share what you use yourself among teams and services.

There are more formal tools used within organisations that form part of assessments or reviews such as those used with looked after children and young carers.

Example tools and approaches

Child and young person's RADARs

The Early Help Assessment and Plan features a family radar. The child and young person's RADARs are optional tools that can be used to help workers to understand the child's lived experience and capture their voice to add into the Early Help Assessment.

The RADAR cards have been developed to give workers options of possible questions or prompts to ask the family, child or young person to give that holistic picture of what is happening currently within the family or for the child or young person.

RADAR Charts (PDF 266.3KB)
RADAR A5 Cards family (PDF 82KB)
RADAR A5 Cards young person (PDF 99.9KB)
RADAR A5 Cards child (PDF 87.5KB)

Bold text (all ages)

One of the simplest methods of ensuring the voice of the child is clearly visible through any assessment is to highlight or use bold text to represent the child or young person’s views, thoughts and feelings within any assessment or report. 

Three houses / Three island exercise (6-11 age range)

Cheshire West and Chester - Three houses activity sheet

This takes the three assessment questions from the NSPCC signs of safety model – what are we worried about/what is working well/what needs to happen – and puts them in the three houses / islands drawn to engage children in filling in their worries/good things/dreams.  

My views (6-17 age range)

Cheshire West and Chester - my views activity sheet

This updated form can be used by workers to record a child or young person’s thoughts and feelings gathered through other methods or able to be used with older children and young people directly. This type of form has a number of direct questions that aim to identify the individual’s view of a current position and what they would like to see.

One page profiles (all ages)

A one page profile captures all the important information about a person on a single sheet of paper under three simple headings: what people appreciate about me, what’s important to me and how best to support me. One page profiles are deceptively simple, and in this simplicity is their strength. They help us to support people better by: helping us build better relationships  by truly understanding what really matters to the person in their life and the way they are supported to live it. Can be adapted to use with all ages and very useful when working with those with differences in their communication style.

You can find examples of one page profiles on Sheffkids and editable templates from Helen Sanderson Associates.