Carole Wilkinson: Our young people need a real voice – and we have to listen

IN RECENT weeks, you could have been forgiven for imagining we had returned to Victorian times, when the common cry was: "Children should be seen and not heard."

Coverage of the trial in England of two ten-year-old boys convicted of the shocking crime of attempted rape of an eight-year-old girl raises critical questions for us all about the circumstances that give rise to such horrific events.

In all the comments and observations about this case – which included the inevitable links to the cases of Mary Bell, Jamie Bulger and others – I have been struck by the lamentable absence of the voice of the child, both victim and perpetrator.

We must never delude ourselves that such shocking crimes could not happen here in Scotland, but we do have an added safety net in our enduring Children's Hearings System, a distinctive approach that considers the needs (and the behaviours) of both troubled and troublesome children and young people.

The powerful combination of an independent official (the Children's Reporter) who will investigate the circumstances and background of children who come to our attention because of concerns about their welfare or behaviour (often both) and the reflective, probing considerations of a community-based lay tribunal (the Children's Panel) gives us a very real opportunity to hear the voices of our most vulnerable young people, while acting in their best long-term interest. This is possible in Scotland because the Children's Hearings System sits within a wider setting of integrated children's services, which provides a range of professional services and support.

As adults, however, we must never presume to speak on behalf of children and young people. I have been inspired by the work of our Commissioner for Children and Young People and his determination to give a real voice to the young people of Scotland through the "A Right Blether" initiative.

At the Scottish Children's Reporter Administration, we are taking this message as key to our work through a programme of modernisation and change that seeks to improve further the services and decisions we make every day on behalf of the many children and young people who are referred to us. We intend to move beyond the rhetoric of good intentions and aspirations, and later this year we will recruit and employ four young people on modern apprenticeships and take them into the heart of our organisation, at all levels, giving them a voice in challenging and supporting everything we do.

To ensure meaningful improvements take place, these young people will be recruited in partnership with Who Cares? Scotland, and they will have had recent experience of being in care in Scotland. If you like, they will have graduated through our system and will be uniquely placed to tell us how well (or otherwise) we are doing.

Our determination to let the voices of children and young people be heard is mirrored in the plans of the Scottish Government to reform and strengthen the Children's Hearings System through the Children's Hearings Bill, which will be discussed at Holyrood today .

It is our belief that the bill will present Scotland with a once- in-a-lifetime opportunity to cement everything that is good and great in our Children's Hearings System, while also tackling, openly and honestly, those areas where we know we can and must do better.

The alternative is that the voices of children and young people might be quieter still: something we cannot allow to happen.

• Carole Wilkinson is chair of the Scottish Children's Reporter Administration.