Listening to young people: reflections from the 2026 Youth Summit

Queensland therapist Debbie Milne reflects on listening to young people at the Youth Summit

I had the privilege of attending this year’s Youth Summit in April 2026, and it was a truly inspiring and humbling experience. I was in awe of the young speakers and how openly and powerfully they shared their stories. I learnt so much from each of them, and their passion and advocacy for change were truly outstanding.

About the Youth Summit

The Youth Summit is an annual event run by the Queensland Family and Child Commission that provides young people aged 25 and under with a platform to share their views and ideas, based on their lived experiences, directly with leaders and decision-makers across the sectors. By placing lived experience at the centre, the summit focuses on issues that affect young people’s safety, wellbeing and futures, including health, education, identity, participation and family support, with the aim of influencing real system and policy change.

The issues that matter most to young people

Speaker sessions were grouped around key areas of wellbeing:

• Ensuring children and young people feel valued, loved and safe
• Supporting physical, mental and emotional health
• Access to learning and skill development
• Participation in decisions that affect them
• Access to material basics such as housing and financial security
• Identity and culture, including the importance of culture and community for First Nations young people

Across all areas, young people were clear in their message - systems need to respond earlier, more consistently and with genuine action.

Urgent themes raised by young people

There were a number of urgent themes that emerged consistently throughout the summit.

Early and preventative support was strongly emphasised, with young people expressing that help too often comes after harm or crisis has occurred. There was a clear call for therapeutic and preventative responses rather than crisis-driven intervention.

The importance of consistency and stable relationships also stood out. Young people spoke about the value of long-term, trusting relationships and the ongoing harm caused by repeated changes in workers, services and supports.

Cultural connection and identity were identified as critical to wellbeing and healing, particularly for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people. Connection to culture, Country, family, language and community was consistently described as essential, alongside the need for culturally led and peer-led supports.

Young people also called for greater safety and prevention in domestic and family violence contexts, with targeted, youth-focused prevention programs that recognise young people as directly impacted. Inequity in access to healthcare for young people in rural and regional Queensland was another major concern, with geographical distance and limited services creating barriers to basic, specialist and therapeutic care.

In education, young people highlighted limited access to school counsellors, the need for improved training for teachers in ASD and ADHD, and the impact these gaps have on early identification, inclusion and appropriate support for students with diverse learning and mental health needs.

A story that stayed with me

One session that has stayed with me was led by a 15-year-old boy living in out-of-home care. He spoke powerfully about the lack of therapeutic support for children and young people in care, explaining that support is often only offered after significant crises. He described a system that is “managing harm, not preventing it”, and advocated for every child in care to have one consistent key worker or advocate, regardless of placement changes.

His message was clear: children in care need action, not more promises. This session stood out because it articulated systemic issues with such clarity, firmly grounded in lived experience.

Reflections on practice and advocacy

Hearing young people speak collectively outside of a clinical or casework context, highlighted patterns of systemic gaps not only in child protection but across health, disability and education systems. It challenged assumptions and reinforced the importance of listening differently.

The summit prompted me to reflect critically on my own role as a social worker and therapist. It reminded me of the importance of holding young people’s perspectives at the centre of my/our work and reminded me that meaningful change often starts with how seriously we take what they tell us and what we do with that information.

What I will take forward

I came away with a renewed sense of my advocacy role, both within individual cases and at a broader systems level. The voices of young people highlighted the need to push for action and timely responses, rather than inadvertently perpetuating cycles of delay, review or unmet need.

Overall, the summit strengthened my commitment to relationship-based, youth-informed practice, and to holding systems accountable to the needs that young people so clearly tell us.

The power of young people’s voices

All of the young people who spoke left a strong and lasting impression. Their honesty, insight and clarity highlighted not only the challenges they face but their clear ideas for meaningful change. Collectively, their voices reinforced the urgency of translating lived experience into action.

“Stop reviewing and start fixing” was a clear and consistent message.

Messages that deserve wider attention

Some of the messages shared by young people that deserve ongoing attention and action include:

“My name is not a number, it’s Alex.”

“Prevention isn’t complicated, it’s just not prioritised.”

“No young person should have to fight the system harder than they fight the cancer.”

“Without the relationship, learning doesn’t land.”

“You should not have to prove your pain to receive support.”

“Standards for kids are not good enough.”

“Fear limits growth, stability strengthens it.”

“Breaking the cycle needs to start with youth — they are the next generation.”

“Everyone has imperfections; schools need to support different kinds of brains.”

“Stop reacting and start preventing.”

“Children in care need next action, not more promises.”

Hearing directly from the young people at the Youth Summit was both inspiring and deeply humbling. Their honesty, courage and willingness to share deeply personal experiences and to speak their truth reinforced the importance of truly listening. I left the summit with a renewed passion for supporting young people to challenge systems that don’t serve them, to be meaningfully included in decision making and to feel empowered to speak up when they are not heard or validated. The experience strengthened my sense of purpose and left me thinking that we, as adults, must actively create space for young people’s voices to be heard, because if not us, then who?