Northern Ireland's Children's Commissioner:

Making a difference

THE official logo says it all. A small black and white dog chasing after a bone. Northern Ireland's Commissioner for Children and Young People has spent over two years snapping at the heels of Government and other organisations as part of his battle to improve children's rights.

The NICCY offices in Belfast's Great Victoria Street are open plan and child-friendly. Bookcases full of toys and books stand close to the comfy waiting area near to the main reception and give it a homely feel.

I meet Nigel Williams on a crisp winter's afternoon and, although obviously more comfortable discussing his public work as children's watchdog, he also agrees to talk about his ongoing battle with cancer during our interview.

With 25 staff and an annual budget of £1.9m, the NICCY team has a broad remit to "promote and safeguard the rights and best interests of children and young people to help them challenge and change the world in which they live."

Young people work alongside the staff on 15 priority areas which include bullying, special educational needs, child protection and poverty.

Issues highlighted publicly by the Commissioner in the last three months alone include the effect of the asylum process on children, the need to improve children's services, protecting children from street violence and concern about services for children with disabilities.

The father-of-four believes strongly in involving young people in his work and they can even find out what he gets up to every day by reading the innovative online "blog" diary he recently started on the NICCY website (www.niccy.org).

"The website is a significant and important way of interacting with children but there is no substitute for face-to-face contact with children and young people," Mr Williams (50) says.

"We have a team of participation officers who are with children day and daily and I have also set myself a personal target of two or three separate meetings a week with children and young people.

"I am very keen to get the message across to children that I am their commissioner and that any child can contact me about an issue that concerns them.

"We have a whole team dedicated to individual issues raised by children and adults."

When he took up the post in October 2003, one of the first things the Commissioner did was set up a youth panel to "act as advisors and keep us real".

"The panel members get involved in every aspect of our work - including sitting on interview panels as part of our recruitment process," he explains.

"This is not just window dressing. They get the same training as adults, are full members of the panel and their vote counts in the same way."

Panel members have also accompanied the Commissioner to meetings with government ministers. At one meeting a young wheelchair user was able to challenge a minister about arrangements for young people with a disability when they leave school.

"It is much harder for an adult to brush the views of a young person aside," Mr Williams says.

The young people also get involved in research work by being on steering groups. One study currently taking place is looking at care for people with Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism.

"It is not research for its own sake. We do it to gather evidence so that we can build the case for change," he explains.

"For example, our work on speech and language therapy showed for the first time that there really is a postcode lottery and that there is a very long wait in some areas."

The children's watchdog's powers mean he can go as far as a full blown public inquiry if an issue warrants it.

"It is great to have that power in our back pocket," he says. "As a result we find that most people co-operate and provide us with any information we need."

Getting the Northern Ireland Assembly up and running again has the potential to make a very significant difference to young people here.

"I do believe that the direct rule ministers are doing the best that they can but the reality is that they have a huge range of topics to cover," the Commissioner says.

"They are also representing constituencies so are being pulled in two or three different directions which makes it very hard for them to give the degree of focus we need on children's issues. If the Assembly was running, issues would be under the spotlight more and people would also be held more to account."

This summer a new Children's Minister was appointed for Northern Ireland. However, Mr Williams says that he and the Minister, Lord Rooker, both have very different roles to play.

"The Minister's job is to ensure that all the services for children that the government should be providing are delivered. My job is to be an independent check on that system," he explains.

"I am not resource driven. My advice to Ministers is about what children need and what is best for them. It is not about money. I am the independent voice for children to ensure that their voice is heard and their needs are met."

A major strand of NICCY's work involves individual case work taken on by the Legal and Complaints team and this has made a difference to the lives of hundreds of children every year.

"It is hard not to be touched when a child or a parent thanks you and says you have made a difference," the Commissioner says.

As for the lows of the job?

"The low points would be frustration when public authorities don't seem to be getting the message, like when we have written to them for the third or fourth time asking for something. However, we do not back off in these situations."

Mr Williams admits to being "very concerned" about the financial crisis in Northern Ireland's education system. Two of the five education boards are currently paying off multi-million pound debts and the other three are struggling to remain within budget as result of a funding shortfall from Government.

Despite initial claims that frontline services would not be affected, school crossing patrols have been axed, classroom assistants' hours cut and teachers have been made redundant as part of controversial cost-cutting measures.

"There are real issues of concern here which need to be addressed," he says.

"It is the interests of children and the impact all of this is having on them that really matters."

Before becoming Commissioner, Mr Williams was director of Childnet International, a London-based organisation set up to promote safe use of the Internet by young people. Next month he is to be honoured for his work in this area with a Namur Award, which will be presented in Belgium.

Safe use of the Internet by young people is still of "enormous relevance" to child protection in Northern Ireland, he says.

Last year, Mr Williams was diagnosed with small cell cancer, just six months after being appointed the watchdog for children.

"I thought I had a bad back but it turned out that it was cancer," he explains.

"I had to have emergency treatment at that time because the cancer had shut down one of my kidneys."

Mr Williams, who lives near Glenarm, had a few months off work last year and then missed just a few days during each cycle of his second set of chemotherapy this summer.

He admits he is "living with uncertainty".

"As all cancer sufferers will identify with, we are battling away and hoping for the best," he says.

He said that his "Three Fs" have kept him going - his family, his faith and his friends.

"I count among my friends the amazing staff at NICCY who have made it possible for me to keep going and my family has also been amazing," he says.

"My oldest daughter is a doctor, as is her husband, so she was able to interpret what the medical people were talking about!"

On a lighter note, he says that there was no better tonic than visits to young people which could include facing a room of 20 rowdy teenagers wanting to challenge him on things.

And he laughs as he recalled a lighter moment when a little boy came up to him during a time when he had lost all his hair as a result of the chemotherapy to say dramatically: "You have NO hair at ALL. Why do you have no hair?"

During another school visit a pupil approached him to say quietly: "My brother has cancer... it hasn't gone away yet."

He explains: "I do not run around the place advertising that I have cancer but if the need arises or if it is appropriate I talk about it."

The Commissioner is truly passionate about his work.

He adds: "It is such a wonderful job to have and has the mix of all the things I love doing. The opportunity to work with children and young people is just so energising and refreshing.

"This is a job that I can be passionate about because there is the opportunity to make a difference.

"Everything we do, from our individual case work to our service review, is based around the rights of children. We aim to make sure that their rights are respected by everybody."

Kathryn Torney
4 January 2006

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/features/story.jsp?story=674697