I Raise My Voice Because I want Children's Rights to Be Enforceable
- Danielle
- 13 hours ago
- 3 min read
Reflecting on Children's Rights in the Context of the Stigma of a Parent's Substance Use
This week we launched Starling's first Children's Rights Toolkit for young people who have or are growing up with the stigma of a parent's substance use, the first of its kind resource created by Starlings youth and young adult advocacy council members and mentor, include Cassandra (team lead) Sim, Danielle, and Mentor Agnes. The below blog is by Starlings Peer and YYAAC member (and fierce advocate), Danielle.
'Initially when we started working on the Children's Rights Toolkit at Starlings, I was very excited, and I'm thrilled with how the toolkit came together. But in between those moments, I couldn't help but read the United Nations Convention on the Rights of A Child and feel deeply sad. As a young adult, still considered a youth in Canada, I am grieving the fact that, for a long time, my rights and those of my parents were taken away or not supported. And it's time for change.
I am a member of starlings Youth and Young Adult Advocacy Council, a group of peers creating advocacy tools to advocate for and support our peers to know they have a voice and how they can use it (safely. )
I learned about how we have rights and how the the United Nations Convention on the Rights of A Child even states that my parents had a right to support: to not provide support to those coping with substance use challenges is to take these rights away from so many children affected by their guardian’s substance use, and to do so should be the crime.
Why I raise my voice? I want children's rights to be enforceable, I want there to be a clear and easy way to ensure that every child, youth, and adult is empowered enough to know their rights, to know how those rights apply to their experience, and how to actually experience their rights by getting their needs met. I wish my younger self knew her worth, and I wish desperately that she knew that what happened to her was not earned or a personal failure.
As someone with lived experience with the stigma of a parent's substance use, I believe that we cannot continue on this path: It is time to recognize that the deplorable conditions under which we are meant to live as the ‘other’, the ‘outcast’, is the perfect environment for addiction to thrive, which then drives the narrative about how bad ‘those people’ are, which then is further isolating.
These rights are supposed to be given to us as people, human beings, and they should not be taken away, especially from children or adults who had to become adults as children.
Why did we create this toolkit? We created this toolkit for our younger peers aged 7 and up (including the youth in many of us adults) so we can better understand what we have a RIGHT to, we can feel validated in our frustrations at the injustices that we have experienced, and to raise our collective voice so that our peers and the adults who create policies, laws, and care for young people know that our rights matter, too.
Today, lives continue to be lost daily, families continue to be torn apart and children have their lives taken away. But let me tell you something, they are the toughest, most resilient bunch you’ll ever see. For those who have survived what i have seen, the days are daunting and it feels endless.
For youth growing up with parental addiction, my peers, we need grace and understanding for the fact that many of us had our rights to safety, dignity, respect, non-violence, care and culture taken away, forcibly, over and over and over.
But we have to keep going for our younger selves and our younger peers growing up not experiencing their rights today: they need us, and they need the future we are trying so hard to create.
Because our rights matter, too.
Since 2021, Starlings Community has led International Conversations on how Stigma is a Children's Rights Issue.
Check out our Past Events and Blogs on Children's Rights below:
Want to join our Youth and young Adult Advocacy Council? Join here:
Want to join our 8 week free program where we reflect on our stories with the stress and stigma of a parent's substance use to lead the change we wish to experience through storytelling? Sign up for Septemeber here: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=Mwg5N8vC2UyCdUEmsAacWM4VqQ6AgZFDjNCMXIZ5orBUNTVXQkpDWURWVlNBV1lEOVQySklBME5CQi4u
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