Within the field of child welfare, an increasingly significant movement supports empowering children, youth and young adults in foster care to use their “voice” to ensure adults are truly listening to them. Their authentic engagement enables them to express their views and have their views taken into account in matters that affect them.
Youth and young adult “voice” has come to be understood as the ideas, opinions, experiences, attitudes, knowledge, actions, involvement and initiatives of young people and their meaningful inclusion in the creation and implementation of programs, policies and practice. It is commonly summed up with the powerful adage, “Nothing about us without us.”
Key components of “voice” are genuine partnerships between young people and adults, ample and meaningful opportunities for young people to plan and make decisions for themselves, opportunities for young people to help shape foster care policy and practice, and respect and support for young people as they engage in programs and activities that are relevant to their individual strengths, needs, interests and aspirations.