Moving beyond suggestion boxes: children and young people’s voice in OSHC routines and environments

A suggestion box can be a useful tool.

So can a survey, a voting chart, a group meeting, a reflection wall or a clipboard asking children and young people what they would like to do next week.

But none of these, on their own, are children and young people’s voices.

In Outside School Hours Care, voice is not simply something we collect. It is something we build into the daily life of the service.

It is in the way children and young people influence routines, negotiate shared spaces, shape the program, challenge rules, contribute ideas, express discomfort, request change, lead play, seek privacy, and tell educators, sometimes with words, sometimes through behaviour, what is working for them and what is not.

This is where OSHC has such important work to do.

Under the National Quality Framework, services must deliver an educational program based on an approved learning framework, designed around children’s developmental needs, interests, experiences and individual differences. My Time, Our Place: Framework for School Age Care in Australia V2.0 is the national approved learning framework for school-age children.

MTOP gives OSHC educators strong language for moving beyond tokenistic consultation. The MTOP practice Collaboration with children and young people recognises that responding to children and young people’s knowledge, ideas and play forms is an important basis for relationships and program decision-making. ACECQA also connects this collaborative engagement with children’s rights and with safe and secure environments where educators, children and young people share decisions, respect, trust and learn from one another. 

That is a much richer idea than asking children what activity they want on Friday.

It asks us to think about power.

Who decides what happens in the afternoon? Who controls the space? Who gets heard quickly? Who has to ask permission repeatedly? Which children’s ideas are treated as realistic? Which children are seen as leaders, and which are seen as difficult? Who feels confident to speak? Who communicates in other ways?

When we talk about children and young people’s voices in OSHC, we are not only talking about giving them more options. We are talking about whether they experience the service as a place where their views, preferences, cultures, needs, frustrations and ideas are taken seriously.

The National Quality Standard is clear about agency. Element 1.2.3 states that each child’s agency is promoted, enabling them to make choices and decisions that influence events and their world. Quality Area 1 also recognises that routines are part of the program and can be organised in ways that maximise opportunities for children’s learning.

This is especially important in OSHC because so much of the program happens through routines.

Arrival from school. Afternoon tea. Indoor and outdoor transitions. Packing away. Moving between shared spaces. Deciding who can use which equipment. Negotiating noise, movement, and rest. Choosing whether to join a group or spend time alone. Managing the final stretch of the day when children are tired and families are arriving.

These are not just operational moments. They are participation moments.

A service that takes children and young people’s voices seriously might ask: How does arrival feel from their point of view? Do older children have enough autonomy? Can children influence how afternoon tea works? Are quiet spaces genuinely available, or only theoretical? Do children understand why some rules exist? Can they help review those rules? Are routines designed for adult convenience only, or do they also reflect children’s experience of the day?

Voice also lives in the environment.

Children and young people tell us what they need through how they use space. The corner that is always crowded. The outdoor area where older children gather. The table where children return to the same project for days. The room that becomes too loud. The place where a child hides when overwhelmed. The area nobody chooses, even though adults keep setting it up.

Educators do not need to wait for a formal consultation to learn from these patterns. They can listen with their eyes, their relationships and their professional judgement.

ACECQA’s guidance on supporting agency encourages educators to arrange activities, routines and physical environments so children have opportunities to make choices about what they will do and how they will do it. It also prompts educators to reflect on whether they really need to decide for children. 

That question is powerful in OSHC.

Do adults need to decide where every resource goes? Do adults need to create every rule? Do adults need to choose the groupings, the order of the afternoon, the theme of the week, the way the room is used, or whether a project is finished?

Sometimes the answer will be yes. Adults still carry responsibility for safety, inclusion, supervision, equity and the smooth running of the service.

Children and young people’s voices does not mean children carry adult responsibility. It does not mean every decision becomes a vote. It does not mean the loudest group wins. It does not mean educators abandon boundaries, planning or professional judgement.

In fact, a genuine voice requires strong educator judgement.

Educators need to know which decisions children can fully make, which decisions can be shared, which decisions require adult boundaries, and which decisions need explanation because they are connected to safety, regulation or duty of care.

The work is not to say yes to everything. The work is to make decision-making more visible, respectful and participatory.

This includes being honest when something cannot happen.

Children and young people are more likely to trust participation when adults close the loop. If they ask for a change to the outdoor area and nothing changes, do they know why? If they vote for an excursion that is not possible, is the reason explained? If they raise a concern about fairness, does anyone come back to them? If their idea is trialed, do educators help the group review how it went?

The Australian Government’s 2026 Voice of Children Framework is aimed at policy and program development rather than daily OSHC practice, but one of its useful reminders is that meaningful inclusion of children’s perspectives includes safe and inclusive consultation, attention to children from diverse backgrounds and those experiencing vulnerability, and post-consultation activities that show how children’s views have been considered.

That principle translates well to OSHC: listening is not complete until children and young people can see that their contribution mattered.

There is also an important child safety connection here.

The National Principles for Child Safe Organisations include that children and young people are informed about their rights, participate in decisions affecting them and are taken seriously. The Australian Human Rights Commission also describes child safe organisations as those that listen to and value children and young people’s views, create conditions that reduce the likelihood of harm, and respond to concerns or suspicions of harm. 

This does not mean every conversation about voice should become heavy or risk-focused. OSHC is also a place of play, leisure, friendship, humour and rest.

But a culture where children and young people are listened to in everyday matters helps build the relational foundations for them to speak up about bigger matters.

If children know educators listen when they say a space feels unfair, a game keeps excluding them, a routine is stressful, or they need time alone, they are also learning something important about the service: my experience counts here.

For providers and leaders, this has practical implications.

Children and young people’s voices need systems, not just good intentions. Educators need time and permission to notice patterns, talk with children, document ideas, reflect on routines and review environments. Educational Leaders can help teams move beyond “we asked children what they wanted” towards deeper questions about agency, power and participation.

A strong OSHC team might ask:

Where do children and young people already influence the daily life of the service?

Which routines could be more participatory?

Whose voices are most visible, and whose might be missing?

How do we include children who are quiet, new, neurodivergent, younger, older, culturally and linguistically diverse, Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, or less confident in group settings?

How do we show children and young people what changed because of their input?

How do we explain decisions that cannot be changed?

These questions do not require a complicated new system. They require a shift in attention.

A suggestion box may still have a place. But it should not be the main evidence that children and young people have a voice.

Voice is visible when children help shape the environment. When routines change because educators have listened. When older children have real responsibilities. When younger children can influence play. When children can question a rule. When a quiet child’s preference is noticed. When a child’s withdrawal is treated as communication, not simply non-participation. When educators explain why a decision was made. When children and young people see that their ideas have left a trace in the service.

Moving beyond suggestion boxes does not mean making participation complicated.

It means making it everyday.

In OSHC, children and young people’s voice is not an extra activity to schedule after the program is planned. It is part of the program itself: in the routines, the environments, the relationships, the decisions and the shared life of the service.

When children and young people are taken seriously in these everyday ways, OSHC becomes more than a place where adults provide care around the edges of the day.

It becomes a place where children and young people practice belonging, responsibility, contribution and agency, and where educators listen closely enough to let the service keep learning from them.

Author:
 

Belinda Wright is an Australian OSHC practitioner-researcher, instructional designer and sector leader with extensive experience across Outside School Hours Care, educator capability development and professional learning. She is the Founder and Director of Learning at Learn OSHC and a PhD Candidate, with doctoral research focused on Outside School Hours Care and educational leadership in Australian school-age care contexts.