Independent visitors Children and young people’s views

To find out children’s and young people’s views and experiences of independent visitors, we gave out questionnaires to the children and young people who came to all the consultation events we held about other things between November 2011 and March 2012. Our questionnaire had two separate sections – one side had questions for people who had an independent visitor, and the other had questions for people who didn’t have one. People could either hand their questionnaires in to a member of our team during the event or send it back to our office later.

As always, we asked for children’s and young people’s own views, rather than adults’ views. We have reported what children wrote to us, not our own views. We have not added our comments. We have not left out any views we might disagree with, or which the government, councils, professionals or research people might disagree with. Many of our questions asked children to tell us their views or experiences without us giving them any choices or suggestions, and for those questions we have listed the most common answers they gave us. As with all our reports of children’s views, we have done our best to write this report so that it can be easily read by young people themselves, by professionals working with young people and by politicians.