120 children. 495 postcards. 20 conditions for a good childhood.

In 2019, South Australia set out to write a Charter for Children and Young People: the conditions every young South Australian needs to be safe, happy and well. The law required the Child Development Council to consult children. The risk was the familiar one. A survey goes out, adults read the answers, adults write the document, and children never see what happened to what they said.

The Council wanted the Charter to belong to children. That meant designing the consultation around how children think and talk, and then proving to the people in charge that what children said was worth writing into law.

On 5 June 2019, more than 120 children and young people aged 5 to 18 came to a Charter Summit at Adelaide Zoo. Becky designed and facilitated the day around play and making: group discussions, craft, sticky notes, and three illustrators drawing on “The Wall” as children spoke. By the end of the day, every child could see what they had said about a good life up on that wall.

Each child then wrote or drew a postcard to the Minister. Summit participants contributed 110 of the 495 postcards the Council analysed.

“The facilitation process was engaging, participatory and empowering, enabling participants to contribute their ideas and lived realities freely.”

Child Development Council, Synthesis Report, 2021

The Council synthesised what children said and used it to write the Charter’s 20 conditions. Its own Outcomes Framework states that the Charter represents the voices of children and young people. That is the Validate step in action: the organisation accepted the children’s account as the authority on what a good childhood needs.

In 2021 the Council tested that belief. Its Charter Reference Group coded what a new group of children said at the launch and cross-checked it against the 2019 Summit responses. The finding: the 2021 children’s words “reflected the original intent of the children and young people from 2019”. The Council’s report concluded the Charter is “credible, legitimate and powerful”.

South Australia’s first Outcomes Framework for Children and Young People, with the Charter at its heart, was gazetted on 14 November 2019. As the Governor later said, the state became the first place in Australia to formally legislate an outcomes framework for children and young people.

Then the Council did what most organisations never do. It went back. On 9 June 2021, the Minister for Education thanked the children who had written postcards and unveiled the Charter in front of 108 children and young people. Becky facilitated again. Children worked in round tables on what each condition looks like, sounds like and feels like, while illustrators turned their words into giant wall drawings. Becky Hirst Consulting wrote the official report of the day, Children & Young People’s Charter Launch: What We Heard.

“Adults listening to children!”

Children’s words on the Health wall, Charter Launch 2021

In children’s own words, the conditions now read like this:

“Not being ignored all the time.”

“Teachers listening to students and taking their thoughts into consideration.”

“Having a say in climate change.”

At the 2021 launch, children also told the Council how to spread the Charter. They invented advocate characters to take it into schools, from “Hakuna ma-charter: it means no worries” to “Be an avo-cate”. By the end of the day, 67 children and young people had volunteered to take the Charter into their own schools.

The Council built on that. The Governor, as Charter Patron, launched the Charter Ambassador Program at Government House on 10 May 2022. In 2023, the Council asked Becky to interview Ambassadors about the conditions that matter most to them. Since then the program has grown by 374 percent:

For children: 168 Ambassadors at the 2024 Wellbeing Summit, back at Adelaide Zoo where it started, and 230 Ambassadors and facilitators at Government House in March 2025, the largest ceremony to date.

For schools: 21 schools engaged in 2024 to 2025, including regional schools.

For the state: a legislated framework that the Council now uses when it advises government on policy and law reform.

“I think that children should be able to play, be creative and enjoy free time...”

Charter Ambassador, interviewed by Becky Hirst, 2023

The Council wrote the Charter and runs the Ambassador Program. Becky designed and ran the rooms where children shaped it, and reported what they said. The volunteers and the idea of children as advocates came out of those rooms.

Children’s rights expert Laura Lundy argues children need four things: space to form a view, voice to express it, an audience that listens, and influence over what happens next. The Council’s own report assesses the process against her model. Space: a day designed for children. Voice: facilitation that made it easy. Audience: a Minister and a Council that listened. Influence: a Charter written into law, taken into schools by the children who shaped it.

That is fixing the system from the outside in. Ask the people a system exists to serve, properly. Get the people in charge to believe them. Change the system. Then go back and show them what you did.