A new framework would help to protect children’s interests in the policymaking process.
Typically, less than 10 percent of the U.S. federal government’s budget is spent on children, even though children constitute approximately 22 percent of the U.S. population. Although budget allocations are only one—albeit important—measure, children often find themselves overlooked across a broad array of policy domains and not just at the federal level. During the pandemic, children experienced significant adverse consequences, yet many state and local governments prioritized reopening restaurants, bars, and tattoo shops before they reopened schools.
Even when children’s needs are recognized, government agencies are often not structured to identify and account for the rights and healthy development of children. The results are telling; millions of children in the United States experience poverty, housing and food insecurity, violence and maltreatment, and barriers to health care and quality education. In a recent article, I proposed a new framework for reorienting agencies and institutions to better account for children’s interests—the VR3 model: Voice, Representation, Resources, and Remedies.
The model offers a set of tools that agencies and institutions can employ to elevate children’s voices, prioritize issues that affect child wellbeing, and secure children’s rights.
“Voice” requires institutions to provide opportunities for children and youth to participate directly in the design, implementation, and evaluation of policies and programs that affect their lives. This is important not only because children have a right to be heard, but also because their lived experience is a source of expertise. Only young people have experienced what it was like to go to school during a global pandemic, and they have unique insights into growing up in the era of social media. To implement the Voice component, institutions can draw upon various strategies, including establishing youth councils and supporting youth participatory action research.
“Representation” requires that governments create and maintain offices and positions with a mandate to represent the interests of children and youth. Because children themselves have limited power and voice in policymaking spaces and agency decision-making, representation is a critical component of ensuring that children’s interests are served. More practically, children spend most of their days in school and need someone watching out for their interests. Children’s commissioners, ombudspersons, and other similar offices play critical roles in numerous countries, as well as in selected U.S. states. They provide independent evaluations of policies and help ensure that children’s interests are adequately addressed.
“Resources” requires that governments make certain that children are fully accounted for in budgets processes and decision-making regarding resources. Ensuring the rights and wellbeing of children requires resources, yet children are often relegated to the margins in budgets, leaving children’s programs underfunded. Children’s budgets offer insight into how much of a government’s budget supports children’s programs, what types of programs are funded, and where gaps exist. As another example, child rights impact assessments serve to help identify the potential impact of new laws, policies, and programs on children, much in the way that environmental impact assessments have done for years on environmental isues.
Finally, “Remedies” acknowledges that, although the first three prongs help to account for children’s needs ex ante, there still is a need to ensure that governments provide ex post remedies for children whose rights are violated. The Remedies prong has several components: establishing and maintaining pathways for children to identify and report rights violations, building ongoing evaluation processes to alleviate the burden of reporting on children who have suffered trauma, ensuring access to judicial and non-judicial institutions and remedies, and enforcing remedies that a court or other governmental entity has ordered. Various measures can be employed to implement the Remedies component, including mandating regular evaluations of law, policies and programs; supporting access to justice initiatives; and strengthening enforcement mechanisms.
Although each component of the VR3 model provides benefits, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Ensuring meaningful child participation—Voice—not only empowers children but also improves the work of children’s commissioners, helps ensure that resources are directed to where they are most needed, and informs evaluations of laws, policies, and programs that can improve remedies. Representatives, meanwhile, can work to ensure that children’s voices are heard and listened to, advocate for greater resources for children’s programs, and conduct investigations that lead to earlier interventions and other remedies. Resources can bolster all aspects of work aimed at improving outcomes for children. Finally, effective remedies and access to justice not only can improve children’s lives, but children’s commissioners can use them to advocate for change, as such remedies can help identify and corral resources for programs that support children’s rights and healthy development. In short, all four of the VR3 components directly advance children’s wellbeing while enhancing the impact of the model’s other components.
Young people today are determined to improve their communities and build a just, sustainable world for all. They need, and deserve, institutions that support their healthy development and their interest in contributing to their communities. I submit that the VR3 model offers such a framework and can be implemented at the federal, state, or local level. The model provides a roadmap both for reorienting all of government and for targeted reform within specific agencies. The reality is that all sectors of society—including education, health care, transportation, urban planning, and more—affect children. Agencies across different sectors have unique structures and processes, and the VR3 model’s components can be adapted to work with the structures of a specific agency or level of government. However, although there may be significant differences between agencies and across jurisdictions, the need to make governments more responsive to and supportive of children and youth is the same.
Ultimately, if governments can create policies and institutional structures that establish pathways for children’s input, support positions that represent and serve children, allocate adequate resources for children’s programs, and provide remedies when children’s rights are violated, then our society can take a huge step toward securing opportunities for every child to develop to their full potential.
