How would your child’s photo look on our wall of innocence?

Take a look at your child, or perhaps a child playing in your neighbourhood. Find the best picture you have of them – is that the one you want the media to publish in the event of their death?

Will their face be added to our Faces of Innocents memorial next year? Their name added to our National Child Victim toll?

The Faces of Innocents series has been a harrowing project to work on for all involved. So many children have died. The toll tells us 210 killed as a result of neglect, abuse or maltreatment since 1992. Last year’s toll was 14 and two have already died this year.

As part of this project, I sat down with the Youth Panel who advised Social Development Minister Anne Tolley on what it was like growing up under the care of CYF.

Their full video interview can be viewed on Stuff. Please take a look.

Each one of them could have ended up a statistic on the toll, both before CYF became involved in their lives, and after.

Each one of them is grown up beyond their years – both impressive and immensely sad.

They were never allowed a childhood. It was ripped away from them incrementally, every time they wondered why their parents didn’t love them enough to look after them properly.

Now, that may not always be the case with every child.

‘‘Some parents love their children, but they cannot care for them,’’ says Tolley. ‘‘The state can care for children but the state cannot love a child.’’

If there’s a child looking up at you, it’s your job as the adult to get it right.

The Youth Panel was disbanded after the CYF overhaul was announced, but has been reconvened to help oversee it’s next incarnation put in place.

They detail the abuse they suffered, the neglect, their achievements in spite of it – which are huge – and the varied hopes they have for the future.

They all have voices, and their message is clear – it applies to their own parents and state parents; ‘‘step the hell up and be it,’’ says panel member Tupua Urlich.

Because he can’t just move on with life once the marching has stopped, or the news is switched off.

‘‘You still live it every day, even though you’re out of the system, you’re still in it.’’