During 2010, the Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs (OMCYA) conducted a consultation process with children living in the care of the State. The project was called Listen to our voices! Hearing children and young people living in the care of the State.

In the Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (2009), Justice Ryan recommends that ‘children in care should be able to communicate without fear’. The Government’s Implementation Plan, brought out in response to the recommendations in the Ryan Report, committed the OMCYA to conducting a consultation process with children in the care of the State and to publishing the findings.

The objectives of the consultation process were to seek the views of children and young people in the care of the State, in detention and in residential services for children with a disability on the issues that matter to them, to explore existing mechanisms for children and young people to express their views and to make recommendations on future structures to be established for children and young people’s voices to be heard.

Advised and assisted by an Oversight Committee that included the HSE and a number of organisations that work with children and young people living in the care of the State, the OMCYA also worked with a Youth Advisory Group to help establish and support the consultation process.