Jodie Griffiths-Cook

The theme of this year’s Children’s Week centres on Article 24 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, notably that ‘Children have the right to good quality health care, clean water, nutritious food and a clean environment so that they will stay healthy.’

A key focus of my work as the ACT Children and Young People Commissioner is seeking to ensure that Canberra is the best place it can be for our children and young people with health and wellbeing being an important part of this. Importantly, in bringing life to that goal, we need to understand what children and young people themselves say they need and not assume that we, as adults, have all the answers.

In my role, I continually emphasise the important protective factor that comes with engaging children and young people about issues impacting their lives. Issues involving their health and wellbeing are no exception to this.

While the ACT has many supportive services and initiatives for children and young people, and their families, and while most children and young people are doing well, there are still significant gaps. The recent Standing Committee Inquiry into Raising Children in the ACT highlighted numerous issues impacting the health and wellbeing of children and young people ranging from access to health care to poverty and cost of living pressures to environmental uncertainty. These are not dissimilar issues to those that we hear directly from children and young people and, in my submissions to the Inquiry, I commented on the important contribution that children and young people can make to informing what needs to change and how to go about it.

Of further note is that the ACT recently introduced the right to a healthy environment into the Human Rights Act 2004 (ACT), the first Australian jurisdiction to do so. I look forward to this coming into effect, anticipated to occur in 2025, and to exploring the ideas that children and young people have about what this looks like for them and for future generations.

There is much that we, as adults, can learn from children and young people in seeking to understand their experience of the world around them. Importantly, we must hold space for them and their views when making decisions about how best to improve their health and wellbeing. Because only children and young people know what it means to be a child or young person right here, right now!

As always, I would like to extend my support to the ACT Children’s Week Committee and look forward to being part of the Children’s Week 2024 celebrations.

Warm regards,

Jodie Griffiths-Cook

Public Advocate and Children and Young People Commissioner

ACT Human Rights Commission