Rights and the role of family engagement in child welfare: an international treaties perspective on families' rights, parents' rights, and children's rights

According to international human rights treaties, what rights do family members, parents, and children have in family engagement in child welfare decision-making? A socio-legal analytical approach produces a typology of rights, then applies the typology to eight countries' approaches to family engagement to show that strong bundles of rights are available in some countries, but not in others. This study reveals international treaties have articulated many rights necessary to family engagement, but some rights are missing.     

Fostering global dialogue: Conceptualisations of children's rights to participation and protection

The children's rights and child protection sectors are at a critical juncture: will they evolve to reflect and respond to changing conceptualisations in the 21st century or will they continue to reproduce 19th- and 20th-century preoccupations with saving child victims? Informed by systematic reviews of the English- and Latin American academic literature in Spanish and Portuguese and key informant interviews with international stakeholders, this paper fosters global dialogue with some Global South and Global North perspectives about the interconnections of children's rights. It explores current conceptualisations of child participation and protection, and concludes that children's rights will only progress after recognition of limitations inherent to current conceptualisations.     

Taking children's rights seriously

SUMMARY. How are we to justify our criticisms of current policies in relation to children? This paper, delivered as the Fourth Brian Jackson Memorial Lecture at Huddersfield Polytechnic on 6 November 1987, argues that we need to address the questions of why we ought to take children's rights seriously and of how this can be done. The article examines the moral grounds for rights for children and concludes by suggesting some institutional changes including the establishment of a Children's Ombudsperson. The suggestion is also made that a ‘child impact statement’ should be attached to all new legislation and other major policy statements.     

The future of children's rights

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child was a great achievement. The rights strategy must continue to be pursued. The Convention itself is an imperfect instrument and a new Convention or Protocols needs to address many children whose rights are currently neglected, including disabled children, gay children, girl children and street children. Rights themselves need rethinking, and so does the reporting and implementation process. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What Hillary Rodham Clinton really said about children's rights and child policy

As editors of a professional, scientific and scholarly journal in the children's field our interest is to promote fair, careful and objective discussion of children's issues. In this regard, we have been disturbed by recent efforts to misrepresent the views and contribution of Hillary Rodham Clinton, one of our colleagues in the children's field. In this paper we systematically analyze Hillary Rodham Clinton's writings and review her contribution. Her legal approach can best be described as conservative, arguing for judicial restraint with respect to state involvement in family life. Taking into account her work on behalf of children through the Children's Defense Fund we conclude that Hillary Rodham Clinton has been an important voice for the cause of children.     

Sexually abused children's perceptions of family functioning

A clinical sample of 76 children in a day and residential treatment facility was administered the McMaster Family Assessment Device (FAD) at time of admission. Interviews with therapists enabled identification of students who had been sexually abused prior to admission. A comparison group of children who had not been sexually abused was selected to match age, grade level and gender of the sexually abused children. ANOVA yielded significant differences on the dimensions of problem-solving, roles, and general functioning, with the direction of the effect indicating greater pathology among the sexually abused group. Analyses of differences between victims of intrafamilial or extrafamilial abuse yielded significance in affective responsivity, affective involvement, and general functioning, with greater enmeshment and dysfunction reported by the victims of intrafamilial abuse. Some gender differences were also noted, with females reporting greater general dysfunction in their families. Implications of this research as supportive of current clinical beliefs about family functioning are offered.     

Children's participation in family law decision-making: Theoretical approaches to understanding children's views

The aim of this paper is to explore children's views about their involvement in the post-separation arrangements that were made in their families and via the court process in the light of three theoretical models. It distinguishes between various aspects of children's participation, a term that carries a number of meanings and is used in various ways. In particular, it examines children's reasons for wanting to be involved or not, and the association between the amount of say children thought they had had, how much say they wanted, and the perceived fairness of the arrangements and their happiness with them.     

Felt tip pens and school councils: children's participation rights in four English schools

The United Nation Convention on the Rights of the Child has created practical challenges for nation states and institutions particularly in relation to children's rights to participation. The limited research that is available has tended to use survey methodology; qualitative accounts of children's daily lives are rare. The present study investigated the nature of children's participation in their education in two primary and two secondary schools; in particular the right to express views freely in all matters affecting the child. The study found that children's opportunities to express their views were extremely limited even when school councils were in place. It is concluded that the goal of active citizenship espoused by recent national curriculum developments will remain illusive unless educational practice changes to a focus on school processes rather than products. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Addressing systemic neglect of young indigenous children's rights to attend school in the northern territory,Australia

Indigenous children in the Northern Territory (NT) of Australia have the highest school non‐attendance rates and the lowest literacy and numeracy outcomes in Australia. The NT Department of Health and Families classifies failure to send children to school as neglect, and as such, a form of child abuse. This paper contends that the failure to provide children with learning opportunities by a lack of insistence by authorities on attendance is a form of systemic neglect. It suggests that an educative approach is required to lead rather than coerce students into attending school, encouraging maximum participation in learning experiences that bridge cultural landscapes, and is inviting, inclusive and informed. The purpose of this paper is to recommend changes to ongoing systemic neglect of school truancy by examining models that build an Indigenous teaching staff and in so doing, integrate culturally responsive teaching with systemic support to produce a ‘school attending’ culture. Ethics approval for this paper has been sought and approved from the NT Catholic Education Office. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Trauma adapted family connections: reducing developmental and complex trauma symptomatology to prevent child abuse and neglect

Families living in urban poverty, enduring chronic and complex traumatic stress, and having difficulty meeting their children's basic needs have significant child maltreatment risk factors. There is a paucity of family focused, trauma-informed evidence-based interventions aimed to alleviate trauma symptomatology, strengthen family functioning, and prevent child abuse and neglect. Trauma Adapted Family Connections (TA-FC) is a manualized trauma-focused practice rooted in the principles of Family Connections (FC), an evidence supported preventive intervention developed to address the glaring gap in services for this specific, growing, and underserved population. This paper describes the science based development of TA-FC, its phases and essential components, which are based on theories of attachment, neglect, trauma, and family interaction within a comprehensive community-based family focused intervention framework.     

Internalising and externalising children's behaviour problems in Britain and the US: relationships to family resources1

A large sample of British children (n=994) of varying ages (7–18 years) and a large sample of American children (n=886) of varying ages (7–16 years) were rated by their mothers using respectively the Rutter Child Scale A and the Behaviour Problems Index both of which cover a variety of behavioural problems. Factor analysis of the behavioural scales distinguished externalising and internalising dimensions of behaviour in both countries. We examined whether children's experiences of family change, cognitive ability and family adversity including economic deprivation were associated with differences in the prevalence of the behavioural dimensions. Mean cognitive scores decreased significantly with increasing level of externalising behavioural problems in British and American children but showed no significant relationship to levels of internalising behaviour problems in either sample. Among American children internalising and externalising behavioural problems were related to experience of non‐intact family structures and measures of family adversity. Externalising behavioural problems were related to measures of family adversity among British boys and girls but were only related to experience of non‐intact family structures in the sample of British girls. Among British girls, internalising behavioural problems were also related to non‐intact family structures. The associations between non‐intact family structures and behavioural problems were independent of measures of economic deprivation in both samples of children. This study documents some of the background factors which affect children's behavioural and cognitive outcomes. Unlike children's family structure economic deprivation can be influenced through policy intervention, and the analysis supports the view that relieving economic deprivation would help improve children's behavioural outcomes. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Children of prisoners: exploring the impact of families' reappraisal of the role and status of the imprisoned parent on children's coping strategies

Qualitative data from a larger study on the impact of parental imprisonment in four countries found that children of prisoners face fundamentally similar psychological and social challenges. The ways that children cope, however, are influenced by the interpretative frame adopted by the adults around them, and by how issues of parental imprisonment are talked about in their families. This article argues that families have to reappraise their view of the imprisoned parent and then decide on their policy for how to deal with this publicly. Their approach may be based on openness and honesty or may emphasise privacy and secrecy, or a combination of these. Children are likely to be influenced by their parents'/carers' views, although these may cause conflict for them. Where parents/carers retain a positive view of the imprisoned parent, children are likely to benefit; where parents/carers feel issues of shame and stigma acutely, this is likely to be transmitted to their children. This is important for social workers and practitioners involved in supporting prisoners' families and for parenting programmes.     

Lesbian and bisexual women in Cuba: family,rights, and policy

This article draws on interviews with 17 self-identified lesbian and bisexual women living in Havana, Cuba, focusing on state support for their family relationships. It examines some of the tensions and contradictions between international and national policy, and societal norms, some of which support LGBT people, and some of which do not. In many ways, Cuba is progressive and has actively protected women’s rights. However, non-heterosexual and gender non-conforming women appear to have been somewhat overlooked in the gains of the Revolution, as there are few specific policies protecting their rights. The key policy points participants raised were the need for same-sex marriage and the lack of assisted reproduction for those in same-sex relationships. Nonetheless, Cuba’s traditional non-nuclear family forms also provide some social space for LGBT parents and queer families.     

Reflections on the enactment of children's participation rights through research: Between transactional and relational spaces

Young people's participation in the evaluation of services designed for them has become widespread in England following the United Kingdom's ratification of the UNCRC. This makes participation a matter of citizenship as well as of research. The paper reflects on these developments from a critical social psychological perspective. In particular it looks at the experience of working with a transformational model of participation. The author reflects on the possibilities and limitations of such a model and argues that within the English socio-cultural context a number of challenges, conceptualised by the author as transactional practices, make the establishment of enduring relational practices difficult. Epistemological reflexivity and a pragmatic approach towards children's participation rights are advocated by the author as a way of managing the conflicts between different participatory approaches that present themselves in practice.     

Equal rights to trade and mediate

Consider any exchange economy with a fixed finite set of traders whose preference orderings and feasible sets of net trades satisfy standard convexity and continuity assumptions. Suppose these traders are granted equal rights to choose net trade vectors within a common convex cone. This property, when combined with Pareto efficiency, characterizes Walrasian equilibrium without lump-sum transfers in two special cases: when there are only two goods; or when at least one trader has unique supporting prices. In general, even without imposing Pareto efficiency explicitly, conferring an additional right to mediate mutually beneficial transactions with other traders will characterize Walrasian equilibrium.An early version was presented to the Conference on Axiomatic Resource Allocation Theory in Namur, July 1999, in honour of Louis Gevers, with whom I have had many enjoyable and fruitful exchanges since we first met in 1971. A later version was presented at the conference of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare in Alicante, June/July 2000. It is a pleasant duty to acknowledge helpful discussions at these conferences with Marc Fleurbaey, François Maniquet, and Yves Sprumont, as well as subsequently with Karl Vind. Further very helpful suggestions came from two anonymous referees, as well as François Maniquet acting in an editorial role. Finally, my gratitute to the Institute of Economic Research at Hitotsubashi University, to the Japanese Ministry of Education, and to my host Kotaro Suzumura, for making possible a visit in Autumn 1998 during which preliminary research for this paper was conducted.     

Linking family engagement with a rights perspective: macro factors influencing practice

While child welfare practitioners in many countries are struggling to develop methods of effective family engagement, they operate within different national and cultural contexts that influence, both positively and negatively, the ability to engage with families. Increasingly, international comparisons are necessary to further understanding of the development of social work practice. This is particularly necessary because most countries utilize international frameworks (such as the United National Convention on the Rights of the Child) to provide guidance in the development of policies, programs, and interventions. Each country (and locality) struggles to advance practice to be more effective and humane. Our paper offers a comparative analysis focused on family-oriented and rights-based frameworks of different countries. Based on a review of current national policies and a review of the literature regarding family-based practices, we examine similarities and differences among four countries: the United Kingdom, Sweden, the United States, and South Korea. These countries were selected because they have some similarities (advanced industrialized democracies, professional social work, and formal child protection systems) but have some differences in their social welfare systems (policies, specific practices, and socio-cultural context). These differences can be utilized to advance understanding regarding the promise and potential for family engagement strategies. We then discuss the utility of this comparison for theory-building in the arena of child-care practice and conclude by identifying the challenges and limitations of this work.     

Women's rights,the family,and organisational culture: a Lesotho case study

Traditional cultural norms have had significant implications for the work and internal structure of Lesotho Save the Children (LSC). From 1964-90, the organization's work focused entirely on the needs of neglected and abandoned boys, for whom it provided residential care. After consultation with the Department of Social Welfare, it was decided to make the residential center a haven for girls as well as boys in need of protection. Many girls in Lesotho experience physical and sexual abuse within their families; moreover, daughters in poor families are often placed in households of wealthier extended family as domestics, where further abuse occurs. Cultural discomfort acknowledging and discussing sexuality extended to Children's Village staff responsible for the care of child rape victims. Coercive sex is often a prelude to marriage in Lesotho, where many women are kidnapped and raped by their prospective bridegrooms. In-service training has enabled staff to overcome their reticence regarding sexual issues and view rape as a criminal act. Although LSC is unable to challenge the oppression of women and children implicit in the traditional family, it continues to encourage girls and women to protest sexual violence, the abuse of their daughters, and the unequal distribution of labor within the family. All children in the LSC residence perform both male- and female-defined duties and attempts are being made to reduce the division of labor among staff in which females are caretakers and males are authority figures.