Independent advocacy matters. Let me say that clearly before anything else, because what follows is not an argument against it. For a child in care, having someone whose only job is to stand in their corner, someone with no stake in the outcome and no other agenda, can be the difference between being spoken about and being genuinely heard. Advocacy has changed lives. It has held systems to account. It deserves to be protected and properly funded.
But advocacy alone was never going to be enough. And if we are honest about how children’s participation actually works in practice, we probably already know why.
Life is not lived in big moments
Independent advocacy tends to arrive at the big moments. A review meeting. A complaint. A placement move. A decision that feels too large for a child to face alone. These are exactly the moments when a strong, independent voice is most needed, and it is right that the law protects a child’s access to one.
The trouble is that a child’s life is not lived in big moments. It is lived in the ordinary Tuesday afternoons, the walk home, the thing they did not quite manage to say at the last meeting because there was a stranger in the room. Wishes and feelings do not politely wait for a scheduled review. A worry that seems small on Monday can grow into something much heavier by the time the next formal opportunity to speak comes around, which may be weeks or even months away.
Not every child reaches the threshold
There is also the question of who ever gets there. Advocacy is often triggered by a threshold: a formal process, a complaint, a review already in motion. Plenty of children never reach that threshold, either because no one told them the service existed, or because asking for an advocate feels like a big, official step that they are not sure they are allowed to take. Capacity is stretched everywhere. Even where the right to advocacy is clear, the reality for many children is that it feels like something that happens occasionally, to some children, at certain times, rather than a steady thread running through their care.
And then there is trust. A good advocate builds a relationship quickly, but they are, at first, another new adult in a life that may already contain far too many new adults. For some children, sitting down with someone they have only just met and being asked how they really feel is close to impossible. They express themselves in other ways, in their own time, in their own words, through something that feels less like an interview and more like a conversation on their terms.
Filling the space between the big moments
This is where everyday participation tools earn their place. Not as a replacement for advocacy, but as the thing that fills the long spaces in between. A tool a child can pick up when something is on their mind, without waiting to be asked, without a meeting in the diary, without needing to explain to a stranger why they feel the way they do. Something that lets a young person say what matters to them in a way that is genuinely their own, and that puts those words directly in front of the people making decisions about their life.
When participation is woven into ordinary practice rather than reserved for formal reviews, a few things change. Children start to expect that their voice will be actively sought, not simply tolerated. Practitioners get a fuller, more honest picture, gathered over time rather than captured in the pressured atmosphere of a single meeting. And the big moments, when they do come, are better informed, because the child’s views have not arrived cold.
The strongest systems hold both
The best approach is not to choose. Independent advocacy for the moments that call for an independent voice, and everyday participation for the steady, ongoing work of listening. One protects the child at the sharp edges of the system. The other makes sure that, on all the ordinary days in between, the child is still being heard.
Because participation was never meant to be an event. It is meant to be a habit.
Mind of My Own gives children and young people a way to share their wishes and feelings in their own words, whenever they need to, and helps practitioners capture the voice of the child as part of everyday practice rather than a once-a-review exercise. If you would like to see how it works alongside your existing advocacy provision, we would be glad to show you.