Seen and Heard: John Buckley on 10 years of the OCO

John Buckley, youth engagement officer from spunout.ie talks to Louise Denvir about the successes of the Ombudsman for Children's Office and what that means for spunout.ie. John acknowledges how the work of the Ombudsman has highlighted the issues of children and young people and how that has inspired spunout to play their part in the awareness of children's rights.

SpunOut.ie is a not-for-profit website created by young people for young people.

For more information on Children's Rights and the 'Its Your Right' campaign, visit the Its Your Right website:

http://itsyourright.ie/

Hear from more of the leading experts in the industry, and advocates for children's rights on the It's Your Right Vimeo Channel:

https://vimeo.com/album/2864707

Text Transcript Below

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John Buckley; I’m John Buckley, I’m the youth engagement officer with spunout.ie so my job involves making sure that young people are at the core of our work. I look after our youth participation structures and manage our campaigns that we run.

Question; And it’s a great day for the OCO, 10th Anniversary, what are your views on it?

John Buckley; It’s great to see such expertise in a room today celebrating the achievements but also acknowledging the challenges that are ahead of us. The last ten years has been great for progressing children’s rights and having such an advocate like the Ombudsman’s Office has been key but I think today identified a lot of challenges we have going forward in terms of making sure that rights are at the core of everything we do going forward but also retaining the independence of the Ombudsman’s Office, increasing the capacity of their work and making sure we look at ensuring remedies are offered quicker and more preventative way as well.

Question; And, in terms of Spunout, what does it mean for you guys?

John Buckley; Well, I suppose, our bread and butter is making sure that young people are armed with the information to live in the world that surrounds them, so stuff about mental health, sexual health around employment, challenges and things that the recession and that children’s rights throws up all the time, around family, care, etc. So what it’s brought up for us is that we need to raise the bar in participation, we need to really look at making sure that rights is at the core of everything that we do but also looking to support the Ombudsman's Office in the job that they do to make sure that young people are aware of the remedy that's there and that’s it there as a support so i think that’s some of the things that we need to look at too.

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