This is a big week if you are a little person!

Wednesday 20th November is the 30th Anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the rights of the child (UNCRC).

The question is: what rights do children have and what are we doing to help ensure that they DO have those rights?

Article six pf the UNCRC states that governments should “ensure to the maximum extent possible the… development of the child” What happens in the first 1000 days of a child’s life is fundamentally important to their life outcomes. As parents, we need to ask, are we as informed as we can be about our child’s needs and stages of development, do we know how to help ensure our child has the best outcomes they can have in life? 

As professionals we need to ask, are we really considering the child in all that we do? Does this stop with the child, or do we need to ensure that we help parents (who have no training in child development) build the skills and confidence they need to ensure that they are able to help build their child’s skills over their lifetime? After all, confident parents, those with strong parental self-efficacy, build confident children. Parental self-efficacy (PSE) is important because it has been shown, through literature, to have considerable impact on parenting quality and outcomes.

“Parents with high PSE are more likely to engage in promotive parenting strategies, thereby enhancing the child’s chances of successful development, while parents with low PSE may give up more easily when faced with challenges in their parental role [1].

Parental self-efficacy has also been linked through the research to findings related to child development including, children’s behaviour, academics and school-related performance, children’s mental health and physical health outcomes.

Article 18 of the UNCRC states that governments should ‘assist parents in the performance of their child-rearing responsibilities and should ensure the development of…services for the care of children’. 65% of families in the UK are not formally seeing a health visitor (or any other professional) after their baby is eight weeks old? While this is a shocking statistic, it does make the role of other agencies SO important, the work we do to support parents and therefore the child is more and more important.

Article 19 of the UNCRC states that governments should take all appropriate measures to protect children. The Children’s commissioner in England estimates that 3300 children aged under one live in “extremely high risk” households but are not on child protection plans, once again, as government and non-governmental agencies our role becomes vital. Providing support in all forms to these families could make all the difference for that child, the parents and the family's outcomes.

Here at Oliiki, we firmly believe that helping parents understand the importance of their role, helping them understand what children gain from playful interactions and helping parents feel valued and supported and ultimately successful is what will make all the difference for our tiny people. 

What are you and your organisation doing to support the smallest people who ultimately might go on to make the biggest impact in our world?

[1] Ardelt M, Eccles J (2001) Effects of mothers’ parental efficacy beliefs and promotive parenting strategies on inner-city youth. J Fam Issues 22:944–972

A big thank you to @first1001days for finding the relevant articles in the UNCRC documentation and for some of the statistics provided in this paper.