Since children do not have the right to vote, they are not represented in the same way in politics as adults are, nevertheless it is important for children to be involved in deciding on issues concerning the lives of children – therefore it is important to include the children’s perspective when deciding . The children’s perspective is about getting the children’s voice and the children’s best in every political decision. In order for authorities, municipalities and county councils to be able to easily start from the children’s perspective and for the children’s perspective to be applied equally in different activities, there are aids for how to work. Part of this is the use of child impact assessment, which means that in each decision, the child’s best interests are visualized and analyzed. Child checklist is another tool for getting into the children’s perspective. The child checklist means that before each decision you go through a checklist of different issues that deal with the child’s perspective, for example, a question can be “Has children been allowed to express their meaning in the decision?”.

Video about children’s perspective, note that this video will be shared with the participants during meeting 6!

The National Children’s Policy

The national youth policy works to enable young people to participate in and decide and influence decisions that affect their lives. They work to ensure that all young people have good living conditions and to be supported in becoming independent. Youth policy has three goals, these are that all young people should have good living conditions, the power to shape their lives and influence the development of society. Young people include persons between the ages of 13 and 25. It is the state’s responsibility to include a youth perspective in all decisions, including county councils and municipalities to work from the youth perspective.

Citizen Proposal

If you want to influence in your municipality, you can write a citizen proposal. The proposal is to apply to changes that the municipality can decide on, for example, you may think that a recreation farm should be in your area. All individuals can submit a citizen proposal – no matter how old you are or if you are not a Swedish citizen – the only requirement is that you must be registered in the municipality you are writing the proposal for. A citizen’s proposal may look a bit different from municipality to municipality, sometimes a vote is taken among other citizens in your municipality before the proposal is taken up in the municipal council – sometimes it is sent directly to the relevant committee for voting. To check out how to write a citizen proposal for your particular municipality, you can easily google “citizen proposal + your municipality”, directions will come up.