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8 - Investing in Children: Respecting Rights and Promoting Agency
- Edited by Louca-Mai Brady
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- Book:
- Embedding Young People's Participation in Health Services
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 25 February 2021
- Print publication:
- 07 October 2020, pp 205-230
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- Chapter
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Summary
Introduction
Investing in Children (IiC) is an organisation which exists to promote the human rights of children and young people, in particular their right to have a say in decisions that affect them, as defined by Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). We do this primarily by creating spaces in which children and young people can come together, identify and discuss issues, and develop arguments about how these issues might be addressed. IiC then supports them to enter into dialogue with adults who have the power to act on their agenda.
This chapter will draw upon IiC's archive of work over the last 22 years, along with testimony from young people involved in two of our current projects: Type 1 Kidz, an initiative for young people with Type 1 diabetes, and YASC, a youth café providing support to young people transitioning from CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) to Adult Mental Health Services, to inform a discussion on the nature of effective engagement in dialogue, and the relevance and significance of IiC's collaborative approach. In particular, we will consider the notion that participation is not a single event (or a series of events) but a sustainable process through which children and young people are seeking to take effective action on issues which they identify as in need of change. It is this clarity about the purpose of participation which lies at the heart of the IiC approach.
In Section 2 we consider some of the complexities of creating opportunities for children and young people to be seen as genuine contributors to dialogue about decisions that affect them, and how focus on the process of participation without critical attention on the purpose and intended outcomes of participative practice has resulted in confusion.
In Section 3 we describe the origins of IiC, and how the IiC practice model developed, highlighting a key point at which the contribution of children and young people changed the direction of the organisation by helping us to appreciate the difference between consultation and active participation. In Section 4 we consider three case examples, one from our archive and two from our current range of projects, where the participants have gone on to become active agents in creating new solutions to the dilemmas that they faced.
twelve - Participation with purpose
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- By Liam Cairns
- Edited by E. Kay M. Tisdall, John M. Davis, Alan Prout, Malcolm Hill
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- Book:
- Children, Young People and Social Inclusion
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 January 2022
- Print publication:
- 01 November 2006, pp 217-234
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Summary
Introduction
The past 20 years have seen a change in the language and the rhetorical framework within which the debate about social policy for children and young people is conducted. There is a growing acceptance, in principle at least, that children and young people are not simply objects of adult concern, but should be seen as citizens with rights. The most obvious manifestation of this change can be seen in the near-universal ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC, endorsed by the UK Government in 1991).
Many of the rights contained in the UNCRC are based on predictable and well-accepted ideas about welfare and protection, but the UNCRC also recognises that children are in possession of the political right to participate in decisions that affect them, and this represents a significant and qualitatively different dimension (Foley et al, 2001). It has been argued that failure to recognise the legitimate political rights of children and young people to contribute to the debate about the construction of social policy is an important factor in understanding the marginal position and social exclusion of particular groups of children and young people (Brown, 1998; Badham, 2004; Brannen and Cairns, 2005).
It has to be said that, although there is evidence of a change in the rhetoric, it is less easy to provide evidence of a change in the extent to which the participation rights of children and young people are respected in reality. If, as is argued below, some of the mechanisms that have been adopted are ineffective, that is, they create an impression of participation without the contribution of children and young people having any actual impact upon the outcome of the debate, then it is reasonable to question the depth of the commitment to the human rights of children. Osler and Starkey (2003) summarise the rights of citizens to ‘participate in and influence government’. Without the influence, participation would be tokenistic. It is in reference to this relationship – between the rhetoric and reality of children's involvement in decision making – that the debate about the purpose of participation is particularly relevant.
This is partly because it is possible to promote the participation of children and young people for a number of purposes (Crimmens and West, 2004; Sinclair, 2004). Not all of these are necessarily exclusive, but nor are they always complementary.