The person affected most may be the least able to attend the meeting where the decision is made.

The meeting is at eleven on a Tuesday, in a building across town, and it decides something about a person who is working, or caring, or ill, or dependent on exactly the outcome being discussed. Their inability to attend is not incidental to their situation, it is caused by it. So the discussion proceeds with the least informed people present and the most affected absent.

If you convene decisions, build in a way for the affected person to contribute without attending, and ask for it before the meeting rather than after. If you are the affected person, send something in writing and ask for it to be read aloud. Absence should not be mistaken for having nothing to say.