Ms Aideen Howard:

Indeed we have. We have been marking Universal Children's Day in recent years. It is in our thinking that we may find some way to acknowledge what children have gone through over the past 18 months. That length of time will have passed by the time Universal Children's Day comes around in November this year. It is a day when we celebrate children's rights across the broadest spectrum. We are considering whether we can find some appropriate way to acknowledge children's recent experiences of the pandemic as we are hopefully coming out of it and as we start to figure out how to rebuild and reflect on what are the things we want to take with us as learnings for children in the future. One of the mechanisms we use to guide our thinking, planning and action is a child participation process which we lead through the children's council but with children more broadly. We look to them to give us some indication and information about what is crucial and critical to them. Through the processes of consultation and participation, we hope we will be able to find some fitting way to acknowledge children's experiences in the future. We also aim to acknowledge that while they were children when the pandemic happened, the experience will travel with them into their future as young people and adults.