Getting the measure of children and young people’s participation: An exploration of practice in Wales

The Children and Young People’s Participation Consortium was set up in 2003 to coordinate the strategic development of children and young people’s participation in Wales. One of its first challenges was to establish ‘easy to use’ mechanisms to improve the quality of participatory practice across Wales and to collate evidence of the benefits and impacts of children and young people’s participation. This chapter reviews the ongoing process of establishing a set of national standards for children and young people’s participation in Wales and developing a framework (and accompanying tools) for assessing and measuring the impact of participation on children or young people themselves, on institutions, on related policies and services and on communities.