Knowledge & Resource Hub

The Children’s Commissioner’s Care Experienced Advisory Board have created a hierarchy of needs based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It is a visual guide to help professionals working with care experienced young people understand their needs and support them. The different levels of the pyramid consider the basic requirements that care experienced young people need […]

Thousands of children in the United Kingdom are currently deprived of their liberty. They are confined in young offender institutions, mental health wards, or secure children’s homes, but a growing proportion are being deprived of their liberty outside a secure setting, through the use of High Court deprivation of liberty orders. These orders, which are […]

As Children’s Commissioner one of my main ambitions is that every child has access to a brilliant education: one that helps them to achieve their goals, no matter how ambitious.  To make this possible they need access to a broad range of subjects, with a particular focus on the core subjects of English, maths and […]

There is a group of just over 400,000 children living in England who are defined as ’children in need’, because they have been identified as needing meaningful intervention from the state to support their development, prevent problems in their home lives from escalating or to help if they are disabled.   Around a quarter of these […]

As Children’s Commissioner, I have had the privilege to hear from many brilliant and inspiring care experienced young people about their lives now and hopes for the future. Care experienced young people are rightly ambitious for their futures and have told me what support they need to help them meet their own goals. To help […]

The online world has evolved significantly since I started as Children’s Commissioner in 2021. A technological revolution followed the COVID-19 pandemic – featuring the launch of new Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools into the public realm and the increasing presence of social media platforms in the lives of children. As we mark the first anniversary of […]

In 2024, we would never imagine that children in this country are being told they cannot access their education because there is no suitable school for them. We would not expect that some children are non-verbal and wearing nappies well into the primary school years, because they haven’t been able to get the help they […]

Every child has a fundamental right to an education, yet more than 100,000 children each year are being denied this basic right. These children, many of whom have slipped through the cracks of our education system, are not just numbers—they are young lives at risk of being forgotten. I am deeply concerned about this situation, […]

In light of the shocking case of Child Q, a 15-year-old Black girl who was strip searched while at school in Hackney nearly four years ago, I wanted to use my statutory powers as Children’s Commissioner to investigate the practice of strip searching children by the police. Child Q’s case was so extreme that I […]

As Children’s Commissioner, I advocate for all children in England. However, my role was born out of the acute need to hear the voices of the most at risk children. Child victims of crime are among the most vulnerable – too often excluded from a justice process designed with adults in mind, and overlooked when […]

As Children’s Commissioner, I have visited hundreds of children from across the country and spoken to them about their hopes, dreams, and aspirations. While many children talk to me about how to improve childhood, they also talk about their visions for the future. Through these conversations, I have seen the sheer scale of ambition this […]

In a world designed by – and mainly for – adults, children’s voices are very often not heard. It is for this reason that the role of the Children’s Commissioner was established in 2004 – to ensure children’s needs and best interests are advocated for at a national level. The Children Act 2004 gives the […]