On 22 February, the Steering Committee of the Joint Project “CP4 EUROPE-Strengthening National Child Participation Frameworks and Action in Europe” and its 5 members from the Czech Republic, Finland, Iceland, Portugal and Slovenia met for the second time to discuss progress made at national and European level. This meeting was also an opportunity to start preparing a hybrid mid-term Conference on Child Participation under the Irish Chairmanship (23-25 May 2022, Cork, Ireland) where good practices and success stories of the CP4 will be shared with and by children themselves, governmental representatives, NGOs, researchers and experts notably.

The Council of Europe Child Participation Assessment Tool (CPAT) is now being deployed in the Czech Republic, Portugal and Iceland via notably governmental bodies and agencies, civil society organisations, groups of professionals and children themselves to understand and evaluate national child participation frameworks. These findings will be analysed in national reports which should be available by June 2022. Finland and Slovenia are following up respectively on the results of their own child participation assessments finalised prior to the project. This new step includes the development of targeted innovative tools to foster child participation such as training materials for professionals, child participation processes in policy-making and online tools.

All Partners are collecting national good practices which will be shared and made available in relevant CP4 activities, including  the online “Child Participation Leadership Network” which is currently being developed to be an innovative online platform led by the CP4 Partners to foster child participation with resources on initiatives, good practices and the regular sharing of projects and ideas.