This chapter reviews the overall context in which professional groups accommodate the voices and needs of children. It uses the categories of professions identified in Chapter 1 as a framework in which to assess the perceptions towards them of children, referring to the material obtained during the three consultation exercises with children. The key questions that we consider include:

• • Why should professionals be interested in children's perspectives?

• • What can professionals learn from a child's perspective?

• • How can they gain access to a child's perspective?

It concludes with a series of observations and recommendations for good practice, referring where appropriate to actual examples.

The context: worlds of working with children

At first sight this seems a somewhat off-the-wall remark: whatever does it have to do with children and their interaction with different groups of professionals? It actually refers to a family conversation taking place in one of the author's cars as she and her family returned from a brisk walk in the North Yorkshire countryside: “a wobbly cyclist veered across our path, and a heated debate followed as to which methods of transport should assume priority on the road. The statement of hierarchy voiced by my daughter encapsulates neatly her metaphor for how she sees power distributed in our society, with adults firmly in control!”

If the metaphor is transferred to the world of work where we begin to question and debate the extent to which professionals are the juggernauts and trucks cutting up the cars (and presumably failing to see the bicycles at all), we can see the extent to which the interaction between professionals and children is often fraught with difficulties. The Chartered Institute of Housing argues that devising strategies for allowing children's voices to be heard is not straightforward and calls for a good understanding of how children think! (see Housing, February 1999). While this sounds oversimplistic, it is important to realise that this kind of common sense is not typical and is rarely grasped by the range of professionals whose roles involve engagement if not directly with children, then with the issues, policies and practices that will have some impact on children's lives.