At NYAS, we hear every day from children and young people who want the same fundamental things: to be listened to, to be taken seriously, to understand their rights, and to have a meaningful say in decisions that affect their lives.
We hear from children who are unsure whether their views will make a difference. We hear from young people who feel decisions have been made about them rather than with them. We hear from children who are navigating complex systems, significant life changes and important decisions, often without feeling fully informed or involved.
We also hear about the difference it makes when someone takes the time to listen, helps them understand their options and rights, and supports them to ensure their voice is heard.
It is through this lens that the National Youth Advocacy Service (NYAS) welcomes the publication of the new National Standards for the Provision of Children’s and Young People’s Advocacy Services, alongside updated statutory guidance on advocacy for children and young people. These are the first significant revisions to the advocacy standards in over two decades and represent an important and overdue development for children's rights and access to independent advocacy.
For those of us who have spent our careers working alongside children and young people, the significance of these standards is not simply that a national framework has been updated. Rather, they reflect a growing recognition that children and young people should not be passive recipients of services or decisions made on their behalf. They should be active participants in decisions that affect their lives, equipped with the information, support and confidence needed to exercise their rights and influence the matters that are important to them.
At NYAS, we have long believed that every child and young person has the right to be heard, to participate in decisions affecting their life, and to access independent support when their rights, wishes, feelings or interests are at stake. Advocacy plays a vital role in making those rights a reality. It helps children and young people understand their rights, communicate their views, navigate complex processes and ensure their experiences are properly understood by the adults and systems around them.
One of the most welcome aspects of the new standards is the way they position advocacy. Rather than viewing advocacy primarily through the lens of complaints processes, the standards recognise advocacy as a fundamental safeguard that supports children and young people to understand and exercise their rights, communicate their views, influence decisions and seek support when they feel unheard or unsupported. For many children, this understanding of advocacy more accurately reflects the difference an advocate can make in their lives.
The strengthened emphasis on children's rights, participation, accessibility, inclusion and co-production is equally encouraging. These principles are woven throughout effective advocacy practice, but their more prominent place within the revised standards feels both timely and necessary. Children's rights are most meaningful when they are understood, promoted and embedded within everyday practice, and advocacy has a unique role to play in helping achieve this.
Importantly, the standards also recognise that ensuring children have access to advocacy is a shared responsibility. Too often, conversations about advocacy have focused primarily on the organisation delivering the service. The new standards acknowledge that meaningful access depends upon a much wider network of professionals and organisations. Local authorities, commissioners, corporate parents, social workers, independent reviewing officers and others working within children's services all have a role in ensuring that children understand their rights, know advocacy is available and are supported to access it when needed.
This recognition matters. For too long, access to advocacy has varied significantly between areas, and too many children and young people remain unaware of their entitlement to independent advocacy or are not routinely offered support at the moments when they may need it most. The standards provide an opportunity for reflection, not only for advocacy providers but for the wider systems around children and young people. They encourage all of us to consider how effectively we promote participation, rights and access to independent support, and how we can strengthen these in the future.
The opportunity presented by these standards is not just theoretical. Over the past 12 months, outcomes reported by young people receiving support from a NYAS Advocate demonstrate the difference that quality independent advocacy can make. Across NYAS advocacy services, the proportion of young people reporting that they understood their rights increased from 59% before advocacy, to 89% afterwards. Before advocacy, 66% of young people felt they had the opportunities to express their views, wishes and feelings – this increased to 94% after advocacy. These measures reflect much more than service activity. They indicate children and young people becoming better informed about their rights, more confident in expressing what matters to them, and better able to participate in decisions affecting their lives.
NYAS also welcomes the standards' emphasis on involving children and young people in the design, delivery and evaluation of advocacy services. Those who use services are often best placed to identify what works well, what creates barriers and where improvements are needed. Strengthening opportunities for participation in service development reflects a broader commitment to ensuring that children and young people are not only heard within individual advocacy relationships, but also have opportunities to influence the services intended to support them.
As with any significant policy development, publication of the standards is only the beginning. Their long-term value will not be determined by the words on the page, but by the extent to which they influence practice, culture and children's experiences. Ultimately, what matters is whether more children understand their rights, whether more children can access advocacy when they need it, whether more children are meaningfully involved in decisions affecting them, and whether more children feel confident that their voice will be listened to and taken seriously.
Over the coming months, NYAS will review the new standards in detail and consider their implications for practice, quality assurance, accessibility, participation and service development. We look forward to working alongside children and young people, commissioners, local authorities and colleagues across the sector as we collectively reflect on what these developments mean and how their ambitions can be translated into everyday practice.
For NYAS, the publication of these standards represents both recognition of the importance of independent advocacy and an opportunity to strengthen children's access to their rights. They provide renewed focus for conversations that many children, advocates and practitioners have been having for years about voice, participation, fairness and influence. Most importantly, they remind us that children's rights are realised not only through legislation, policy and guidance, but through everyday decisions, relationships and practice.
The publication of the new standards is therefore a welcome and positive development. More than that, it is an opportunity for all of us involved in supporting children and young people to reflect on our shared responsibility for ensuring that children's voices are heard, their rights are understood and upheld, and their participation is embedded within the decisions that shape their lives. In that respect, these standards are not simply about advocacy. They are about the kind of children's services system we want to build, and the place children's voices should hold within it.
