Call for written evidence

How to submit evidence

This year sees the start of Jersey’s examination under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). As part of this process, the Children’s Commissioner will be submitting a report to highlight key children’s rights issues in Jersey.

We warmly invite charities, academics and other organisations to send in written evidence to inform our submission to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. Based on the inputs they receive, the Committee will then come up with a List of Issues Prior to Reporting, meaning that they ask the State to report on a number of areas. The State then has to report back on these areas within around 12 months.

We are looking for submissions on areas such as health, disability, poverty, homelessness, housing, access to income support, education, safeguarding children, policing and children in conflict with the law, deprivation of liberty, food poverty, childhood obesity, right to play, access to sport and activities, respite, domestic abuse, complaints mechanisms, migrant children and asylum seekers and respect for the views of children.

We held a series of workshops (see below) and input from these will be informing our response, however submissions are welcomed from those who attended and those who were unable to participate.

We request that submissions:

outline up to five key children’s rights issues in each area of your expertise
Reference any data or reports that you may have, as well as quotes from children and young people where they have consented for this to be shared
Provide other concise information you believe will be helpful on trends you are seeing in your work affecting children’s rights (e.g. information on how the criminal justice system is working for children, or how children in care have their voices listened to).
Any assessment of where the GOJ has or hasn’t made progress under the UNCRC on those issues

Due to the word cap of the report, we would appreciate it if submissions do not exceed 500 words per issue.

We are welcoming submissions until Monday 12^th October 2020. Please send to Sarah at sarah@childcomjersey.org.je

Our workshops

As mentioned above, we held a number of workshops during September, in which people who work with children in Jersey-based non-governmental organisations were able to contribute their views on a range of relevant subject areas.

Below are the presentations that we gave to each of those groups.