We want your links!

Children and young people can now submit their favourite weblinks to be included in the brand new website of the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People (NICCY).

The website – www.niccy.org – has been completely revamped to make it more user friendly and has even more information on its pages than previously.

To make sure it grows and develops, Nigel Williams, the Children's Commissioner, wants children and young people throughout Northern Ireland to tell him their favourite websites, so he can post them on the site.

“The NICCY website was very popular, with more than 7,000 unique visitors each month,” said Mr Williams. “But it was getting difficult to find information as we had so much on the site!

“With the help of our Youth Panel we developed a new look and new features. Now we want to make it a site that has a lot of input from children and young people. The first stage is encouraging children and young people to submit their favourite sites.”

Once sites have been submitted, a member of the NICCY team will check them for suitability and then post the site address as a link in the children and young people’s section of the site.

Youth Panel

The Youth Panel helped to appoint the website supplier, contributed ideas to the new look and influenced the way information is presented.

Straight talking

Over coming months the site will grow and more features will be added. Already there are several new and exciting elements. To help everyone decide whether to read a page there are ‘No Waffle’ boxes with plain language explaining what’s below.

Among the features already on the site are a dedicated form for complaints about services children and young people receive, polls to find out your views, an events page, and new ways to get in touch with the Commissioner.

And, if you feel the need for a change of scenery online, you can choose what colour you want the site to be.