Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) says children and young people have a right to have a say on all issues that affect them and for their views to be taken seriously. To ascertain the extent to which current state government policy processes directly involve South Australian young people, we undertook a desk top review of all publicly available documentation produced by State government departments and agencies. This involved review of 170 discrete State government plans, frameworks, strategies, and policy agendas identifying just three agencies that had directly referred to young people as stakeholders in their public facing information. This strongly suggests that young people are not systemically considered as a source of relevant input or feedback in strategic engagement or policy making.
This brief provides further exploration of the lack of engagement with young people in decision making.