We can improve services by letting children challenge

My children and young people's advisory board Amplify has published its report on what children and young people feel makes life "do-able" in 2013. Amplify designed the research, were funded to carry it out, worked with web designers and co-authors, and have published what they found. They knew that like them, their peers live in an interactive, boundary-free world, so this was where the research reached them. The interactive web survey they devised attracted 1,300 responses. Their analysis is clear, accessible and mature.

Their respondents told them that first and foremost, children and young people want secure, loving, nurturing support from a family - be it their own or, if that is not possible, another, where boundaries are clear and affection is natural and unconditional. They want support and help from their friends. They want good schools that will support and develop them as well as educating them to achieve. Underpinning these wishes, they want a level of funding and resources that enable them to live their lives with dignity, supporting their access to services and activities that make life itself dignified. We will ensure every government department has their research report and the film that goes with it, and will press for responses. You can view them on our website.

Listen and learn

A short time ago, I spent time listening to and engaging with the Tri-Services Youth forum, made up of representatives of children of serving forces personnel as part of their away weekend. Many of them throughout their childhoods say hello and goodbye again to the most significant adults in their lives. They may be sending them to a front line from which dad or mum could return altered: physically, emotionally or both. They may say goodbye to a parent who will be away, often largely incommunicado, over Christmas, birthdays, exam result days, and more. They may live where they can't tell their school friends what work their mum or dad does. As the services scale back and families come home from long postings elsewhere, they may soon be in your schools, youth settings and communities. In moving terms, they told us they need a society, and services, that listen and act on their behalf, including when they are in fact silent and their behaviour and demeanour do the talking. As a nation, we recently marked our thanks to those who serve. This is not history. It is now.

These two examples of ownership and agency will be mirrored when thousands of young people across hundreds of organisations take part in England's Children's Commissioner's Takeover Day on 22 November. Everybody from the chief executive at Tesco, media outlets, ministers, MPs, mayors, police chiefs, head teachers and governors, class teachers, NHS managers, business owners, museum curators, clergy, those working in children's centres and youth services, councillors and local government managers, will step to one side as children and young people bring their thinking, leadership and agency to bear on the decisions of the day. Where it works best, it's far more than just a day. Our young citizens are engaged all year, questioning, being guided and helped to play their part. As a nation, we can take them seriously and bring them to the table. We just have to want to, and commit.

Maggie Atkinson is children's commissioner for England