Child Development Council, June 2021
The Child Development Council was established in 2018 and its mandate is to produce a whole-of-government (state and local government) Outcomes Framework for Children and Young People.
The Outcomes Framework for Children and Young People will be a way or means of telling how well our youngest South Australians are developing and progressing over time. The focus of the Outcomes Framework will be to track, monitor and report over time on the agreed outcomes for South Australia’s children and young people with indicators and measures that will allow longitudinal tracking and reporting.
The Charter for Children and Young People (Charter) is at the core of the framework and represents a shared commitment to 20 conditions to allow every child or young person to thrive.
The rights of children and young people are defined in the Act. The Charter is being developed in the context of the objectives of the Oversight and Advocacy Bodies Act and the 5 dimensions of the Outcomes Framework.
In developing the Outcomes Framework, the Child Development Council were required to consult with children and young people, their parents, families, carers and others.
Part of the consultation process was a Charter Summit, held in June 2019, which aimed to enable a substantial, representative group of children and young people, age 5 to 18 years old, to inform the writing of the Charter. The process was about enabling children and young people to identify what’s important to them in terms of health, safety, wellbeing, education, and citizenship.
Children and young people are the experts in their own lives and have a right to have a say about matter that impact on them. The Charter Summit was about them identifying what is important to them for a good life and although they were not writing the Charter, their views and contributions informed the writing of the Charter.