Today landed heavy.
It reminded me how uneven “the voice of the child” can feel in practice, and how different the response looks depending on which child is speaking.
One child expresses a view
and suddenly everything shifts,
plans rearranged, professionals mobilised,
families reshaping their day around a single sentence.
Another child has been saying the same thing
for months:
Calmly.
Consistently.
With hope that someone is listening.
And somehow their voice is still:
• being reviewed,
• not quite understood,
• not yet the right time.
The gap between those responses isn’t just frustrating,
it’s painful.
It affects siblings.
It affects families.
It affects the grandparents and carers who rearrange their lives with less than a day’s notice
because the system finally “responded”
not out of care,
but out of convenience.
Some voices are acted upon instantly.
Others are recorded, minimised, monitored and delayed.
That is not child-centred practice.
That is selective responsiveness,
and too many families live it silently.
We are told the system listens to children,
but the truth many of us see is this:
A voice matters most when it serves a narrative.
When a child’s wish challenges the professional agenda,
it is somehow:
• misunderstood,
• developmentally unclear,
• emotionally unsafe,
• needing therapeutic work before being validated.
But when a child’s view aligns neatly with what is easiest for professionals,
the system moves at extraordinary speed.
This is where the illusion of safeguarding cracks.
True child-centred practice means:
• every child’s voice holds equal weight,
• consistency matters more than convenience,
• urgency should not depend on which story professionals prefer.
To every parent, carer, grandparent or sibling
who has stood in that bewildering space of unequal listening,
I see you.
You are not imagining the pattern.
You are not overreacting.
It really does happen this way,
quietly, quickly, and often without accountability.
Some days hurt more than others.
Today was one of them.
But naming it is the first step to changing it.
We will keep naming it
not just for our families,
but for every family who has been silenced
by selective listening dressed up as care.
Until every child’s voice carries equal weight,
none of us are done speaking
thegirlspeaks.uk 