Community Newspaper Column July 2001 Advancing Children’s Advocacy

Roger McClay Commissioner for Children

Later in August staff of the Office of the Commissioner for Children will be on the West Coast of the South Island for the first of our provincial visits to advance children’s advocacy. We will be taking to the regions an initiative to provide training in child advocacy and natural justice. The initiative follows an analysis of the needs expressed by individuals and groups who already work with and for children and young people in local communities.

Many have expressed a desire to get assistance to enable them to work in a more children’s rights focussed manner.

We have been developing training packages which we will be taking to about 10 regions over the next 12 months.

The packages consist of:

– training for individual advocacy
– natural justice training for the education sector
– participation training for a variety of organisations working with children.

It will be good to get the rights of children message out directly to the regions. It is our job to advance children’s advocacy.

Ends

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