NICCY urges young people to complain

The Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People today launched a campaign to encourage children, young people, their parents and carers to tell him when services aren’t good enough.

Commissioner Nigel Williams said bus shelters across Northern Ireland would bear the message “We’re Listening to You” and details on how to contact NICCY for the next two weeks.

Head of Legal and Complaints at the Commissioner’s office, Linda Kerr, said NICCY has already received more than 350 complaints from children and young people about the services they receive or the way they are treated.

“This campaign is designed to help us reach out to children and young people who may be experiencing problems with the services they receive from public bodies, or the way they are treated in their day-to-day lives,” she said.

“It is really important that we hear about these problems from children and young people. As well as dealing with individual problems it helps us decide if there is a more widespread problem that we may need to review.”

The ‘Adshel’-style bus shelter advertisements will appear from today for two weeks on 120 sites across Northern Ireland.

(MB/SP)