Background: As a society, children are often viewed as empty vessels in need of filling by grown-ups. They are often underestimated, not consulted and marginalised as active community citizens. The children who spoke at the Childhood Summit in 2023 (CH23) demonstrated they are active citizens with deep thoughts on the challenges and solutions for their communities.
Early in 2023, the Australian Institute of Play (AIP) approached Griffith University about hosting CH23. The AIP is a community-led organisation from Logan. Its goal is to make Logan the most play friendly city in Australia with CS23 providing children in Logan with the opportunity to share with ‘grown-ups’ what is on their mind. CS23 combined the voices of child speakers, four grown-up speakers and the fun of a play festival.

Approach: AIP’s journey to bring CS23 to life was a 15-month community consultative journey. Combining the efforts of 15 organisations and local primary schools, 43 child keynote speakers (3 to 14 years of age) were recruited to present across the two days.

Results: At the summit, the child keynote speakers talked about issues such as understanding how to respond better to neurodiversity, negative parenting, pressures on children, and mental illness. Importantly, children suggested that a strong source of solution needs to come from changes in themselves, their families and those in their immediate communities. Play, connection to culture, more time with family, and growing opportunities for healthy child agency were all solutions to the many issues/challenges raised by the children.

Conclusions: This paper introduces the principles that guided organisers to ensure CS20 was successful. More importantly, it discusses the approach and actions taken that enabled the issues raised by children at the summit to be heard and actioned into ongoing efforts to respond to community needs.

Implications for children and families: This project provides principles and actions to guide you in developing your own childhood summit to grow a child-friendly and child-informed community in your area.

Implications for practitioners: This presentation will assist you to understand how to work alongside children to strengthen and grow their voice in community.

Funding: The Childhood Summit was funded through a partnership of local and state organisations.

Key words: children’s voices, communication, well-being

This presentation relates to the following United Nations Sustainable Development Goals:

• • SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being
  • SDG 11: Sustainable Cities
  • SDG 17: Partnerships to Achieve the Goals