Australia’s National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds is calling for the government to adopt a new national framework to help improve laws and policy decisions when it comes to the wellbeing of children.
“Australia needs to make child wellbeing a bipartisan national priority and ensure that the unique needs and voices of children and young people are heard,” Commissioner Hollonds said.
The government doesn’t currently have a national framework for assessing children’s rights, but Hollonds says that adopting one will “prevent long-term human and economic problems that arise from the neglect of child health, development, learning, safety and wellbeing”.
The tool that Hollonds proposes is the Child Rights Impact Assessment (CRIA) tool, which was developed by the Australian Human Rights Commission with support from UNICEF Australia. It’s an 18-question checklist that can be used to measure the anticipated impact of a new law or policy, and whether it supports the best interests of children and their families in Australia.
Joining the call with Hollonds, Nicole Breeze, UNICEF Australia’s Chief Advocate for Children said that, “A national CRIA would allow us to respond consistently across the country, in areas like education, public health, youth justice or emergencies such as a global pandemic or a disaster.”
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Breeze said that there was a lack of attention paid “to the unique needs of children” among policymakers’ focus on supporting families through wage protection and social protection.
“There’s an opportunity to provide better support for children,” says Breeze about the CRIA tool, and that, “while not mandatory, the Australian Human Rights Commission and UNICEF Australia are encouraging state, territory, and federal legislators and policymakers to use the CRIA tool as a checklist when designing new laws and policies that relate to children.”
The toolkit report Safeguarding Children: Using a child rights impact assessment to improve our laws and policies includes a case study in which the effects of policies and school closures on children during the Covid-19 pandemic are retrospectively assessed using the tool. This includes an evaluation on impacts on different groups such as Aboriginal and Torres Islander children, and children with disability.
Emphasising the need to better address the needs of children, Hollonds said adoption of the CRIA tool “will help decision-makers to assess and monitor policies and laws from the perspective of children and young people, who are typically ‘invisible’ and not heard.