The Children’s Panel was an educational initiative established and funded by Puketāpapa Local Board in 2016 and implemented by Roskill Together Trust. The aim of the Children's panel was to provide opportunities for children and youth to participate in civic engagements in the local board area and to have a voice in their community.

Participating schools used a range of student leadership models to select their panel of participants including Student Enviro Council’s, class leaders, or undertook an expression of interest process. All schools had a cross section of students to ensure ethnic and gender diversity, as well as student leaders and students.

Every year from 2016 to 2023, a survey was distributed to the participating local schools where students answered some questions exploring a community theme. Participants were asked to communicate their responses in a few ways, including drawings, comments on post it notes, writing descriptive sentences and participating in a panel discussion. The responses were analyzed for common themes and opportunities by Roskill Together, then shared with the schools and the Local Board.

Feedback sessions were held with all participating schools, and demonstrated how the children could put their ideas into action.

The children’s panel enabled the Puketāpapa Local Board to be more responsive to young people. It also helped to inform Local Board work programmes and budget allocation as part of annual financial planning. Further, the panels helped to socialise young people’s ideas and responses to community topics of interest to the wider local board, Auckland Council departments and community stakeholders.