Participation and health – a research review of child participation in planning and decision‐making

Effective child participation in child protection proceedings has proved difficult to achieve in Norway. Although participation is in principle accepted as a human right and something of benefit to children, when children's health is at stake there is a tendency to view participation in decision‐making processes by children as potentially disruptive to their well‐being. The purpose of this study is to review the research evidence for effects, positive or negative, of participation on health outcomes for children in care. A scoping review of major health and social work research databases was undertaken. Searches in five databases yielded 1830 studies of which 21 were finally included in this review. Studies were included if a relationship between health and participation was evident from the data presented, even if this was not the main objective in the study at hand. We conclude that when participation is successful, it may have beneficial side effects. Chief among these are that participation may improve children's safety, increase the success of care arrangements and increase feelings of well‐being for children involved. Evidence for long‐term effects of successful or failed participation attempts on subsequent health outcomes is however largely absent.     

Children's and young people's participation within child welfare and child protection services: a state‐of‐the‐art review

This state‐of‐the‐art literature review, based on a literature search of multiple scientific bibliographic databases, aims to shed light on what is known about barriers and factors facilitating child participation within the child protection and child welfare services from both children's and social workers' perspectives. The personal relationship between the child and the social worker is mentioned as one of the most important facilitators for participation, although multiple barriers in creating this relationship are demonstrated by both children and case managers and social workers. In studies, children say they should always participate while social workers and case managers identify many situations where, according to them, participation is inappropriate. Professionals' objections to participation mainly stem from the socio‐cultural image of children as vulnerable and in need of adult protection, and a lack of understanding of what participation actually entails. Interventions to strengthen participation should be directed at making social workers and case managers aware that children are knowledgeable social actors.     

Mother–Child Reminiscing About Peer Experiences and Children's Peer‐related Self‐views and Social Competence

This study examined mother–child reminiscing about children's experiences with peers and its relation to children's peer‐related self‐views and social competence. Sixty‐three mothers and their preschool‐aged children discussed at home two specific past events involving the child and his or her peers, one event being positive and one negative. The children's self‐views in peer relationships were assessed at school during individual interviews, and their social competence was rated by mothers. Both maternal and child participation in the reminiscing, in terms of reminiscing style and content, were uniquely associated with children's peer‐related self‐views and social competence. The results suggest the important role of family narrative practices in children's social development.     

The Children's Delphi: considerations for developing a programme for promoting children's self‐concept and well‐being

This study is premised on the notion that intervention programmes aimed at improving children's well‐being should be inclusive of activities which promote children's self‐concept. Using a child participation framework, this study aimed to explore children's perceptions of the nature and content of intervention programmes aimed at improving children's self‐concept within two impoverished communities of the Western Cape, South Africa. The Delphi technique was followed with a group of 10 children between the ages of 10 and 12 years who were considered to be knowledgeable experts and authorities on matters affecting their lives and well‐being of children. They suggested that intervention programmes include a focus on safety, the provision of social support, the creation of opportunities for learning and for play and the provision of basic material needs.     

Age limits for participation in child protection court proceedings in Sweden

According to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and Swedish legislation, children have the right to participate in child protection proceedings. The aim of this paper is to describe and analyse the notion of age and maturity in child protection proceedings in order to elucidate how these aspects could influence children's rights to participate. We focus on the view of three groups of actors involved in child protection proceedings in Sweden—social workers, lawyers, and laypersons in social welfare boards and administrative courts—and on how children's age and maturity should be taken into consideration in decisions on their participation in court. The analysis is based on survey data. The study found that social workers, laypersons, and lawyers have different views on when children are old enough to have the right to litigate in court. Additionally, there is no consensus on how the maturity of the child can be assessed to inform the decision about participation. More discussion is needed about what competences a child needs to participate in court and to what extent this right should be limited by their age. Importantly, courts and decision‐making proceedings can be made more child friendly.     

Putting the child at the centre of inter‐professional cooperation in out‐of‐home care

A large part of most children's childhood is about taking part in educational and leisure‐time activities together with other children across various contexts. However, children in out‐of‐home care do not always have easy access to these possibilities for participation. In general, parents coordinate their children's everyday lives, but in the case of children in out‐of‐home care, the responsibility of care is distributed between several professionals and institutions. Research often recommends that inter‐professional cooperation should put the child at the centre and be more child focused. But what does that mean? The paper investigates theoretical understandings of ‘child centredness’ in inter‐professional cooperation. It also includes an empirical example taken from a research project that followed four children in their everyday lives in two residential homes in Denmark. The research explored how professionals work together across contexts in order to support children to take part in school and leisure‐time activities. The overall reasoning leads to the point that for children in out‐of‐home care, the possibility of exercising personal agency in their everyday life constitutes a difficult but vital issue. How children in out‐of‐home care learn how to conduct their everyday lives, is closely related to the ways professionals cooperate across contexts. It points to the need for close inter‐professional cooperation in order to encourage and support children's initiatives and engagements in activities in communities with other children.     

Child protection practitioners: Including children in decision making

This article presents findings from a study with 467 child protection practitioners in Australia to determine their practice responses and views on children's participation. The practitioners, recruited from 5 state jurisdictions, completed an online survey responding to case studies designed to determine the extent to which they would seek and include children's perspectives in decision making, and their confidence in talking to children. We report on practitioners' responses to a case study of a 5‐year‐old girl with suspicious bruising where the mother reports domestic violence. Based on previous research, it was hypothesized that the child's young age would lead to low levels of confidence in consulting with the child and giving weight to her perspective. In contrast to the findings of other research, our results show that almost all workers report that they would speak with the child, would be confident doing so, and would give weight to the child's perspective. Our discussion explores the potential reasons for the difference in these findings compared with other research, including the experience of practitioners, increased child‐centred policy in Australia, multiple understandings of participation, and variation in children and practitioner views of participation.     

Vulnerable children's rights to participation,protection, and provision: The process of defining the problem in Swedish child and family welfare

This study addresses the relationship between children's participation and the protection and provision offered to them by social services in Sweden. It applies a theoretical framework for analysing child welfare that is anchored in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. How child participation may affect child protection and provision is examined empirically using case documentation from 2 municipalities. The main finding is that when children are not given voice or opportunity to influence the framing of what “the problem” is, the design of protection and care tends to be poorly matched to the actual problems documented in the child investigation and vice versa; when children can influence framing, this is associated with well‐matched protection and care. This suggests that traditional child welfare ethos, to the effect that protection should be of such overriding concern that children even should be protected from participation, is misguided. The study further illustrates the intrinsic problems with the family orientation of Swedish social services and its reliance on partnership with parents, which makes it difficult to live up to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Incorporating child participation into existing service models can transform Swedish social services to an augmented child‐focused system that by ensuring participation also promotes protection and provision.     

Attachment‐facilitating interactions in non‐kin foster families

This study aims to analyse the interaction between children in foster care and their main caregivers during a microcoded co‐construction task, focusing on the verbal and non‐verbal behaviours that the adults use to promote a secure attachment in the child. It also examines how children and caregivers' socio‐demographic variables relate to the interaction. The sample is made up of 28 Spanish children between 4 and 9 years old in long‐term non‐kin foster care and their foster families. The building task was administered to 28 dyads, composed of the child and the main caregiver in each family. Our results showed that the caregivers' use of attachment‐facilitating behaviours was frequent during the interaction. Moreover, children tended to display a positive attitude when adults used these attachment‐facilitating behaviours. We also found some differences in the interaction according to the caregivers and children's age, the child's gender and the caregivers' satisfaction with the child's development. These results offer us a better understanding of the functioning of the adult–child relationships in foster families, which helps us make more efficient interventions to improve the caregivers' sensitivity towards the children's needs and difficulties.     

Three measures of non‐resident fathers' involvement,maternal parenting and child development in low‐income single‐mother families

This study examined the relationships among non‐resident fathers' involvement, mothers' parenting and parenting stress, and children's behavioural and cognitive development in low‐income single‐mother families. Based on the theoretical concepts of father involvement in terms of accessibility, responsibility and interaction, this study operationalizes fathers' involvement with three different measures: (i) fathers' frequency of contact with their children; (ii) fathers' amount of child support payment; and (iii) fathers' quality of parenting. Analyses used the first three waves of longitudinal data from a subsample of single and non‐cohabiting mothers with low income in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Results suggest that non‐resident fathers' child support payment is indirectly associated with both children's behaviour problems and cognitive development. Fathers' parenting is also found to be indirectly associated with children's behaviour problems. The findings further suggest that those estimated associations are transmitted through mothers' parenting. The expected associations between fathers' contact and child outcomes are not found in this sample. The study also discusses the policy and practice implications of its findings.     

Stability and change – a 7‐ to 8‐year follow‐up study of mental health problems in Norwegian children in long‐term out‐of‐home care

The aim of the study was to explore stability and change in mental health problems in Norwegian children aged 6–12 years old (n = 70) in long‐term out‐of‐home care. The children's mental health problems were assessed shortly after the placement and 7–8 years later by the caregivers and the teachers on the Revised Rutter Scales. Information on pre‐placement and placement factors were collected from the child welfare workers. At a group level the children's mental health problems had improved significantly over time according to the teachers' reports. According to the caregivers' reports, however, the children's problems were high and stable across time. Analyses aimed at detecting individual changes revealed a great variability in development according to both informants, indicating that treating the placed children as a homogenous group could be misleading. Several pre‐placement and placement variables were associated with the change in the children's mental health problems from the time of placement to the follow‐up time according to both informants' reports. However, all the predictors were accounted for by the strong effect of the children's problem scores when entering care.     

‘You've got to trust her and she's got to trust you’: children's views on participation in the child protection system

Participation by children in child protection remains a complex area of practice. This paper presents findings from a qualitative study exploring the views of 26 children, aged 6–17 years, about their participation in the child protection system in England. All of the children were subject to a child protection plan and were living at home at the time of interview. The children's understanding of the child protection process was categorized, and the majority of children, including the youngest, were found be at least partially aware of the child protection process, often struggling to make sense of the professional intervention in their families on the basis of partial information. It is argued that decisions about children's involvement should take into account not only children's age and understanding, but be seen in the context of wider family dynamics. Participation in formal processes such as child protection conferences was experienced as difficult and emotive. The child's relationship with their social worker was central to meaningful participation.     

Maternal Conflict Behavior Profiles and Child Social Skills

The current study examined associations between mothers’ behavioral profiles during mother‐child conflict interactions and their children's social skills. This person‐centered approach classified 181 mothers according to their levels of emotional responsiveness, intrusiveness, negativity, and engagement facilitation behaviors during an eight‐minute conflict discussion task with their child. Three distinct classes of mothers were identified using latent profile analysis: sensitive/engaged, moderately sensitive/engaged, and insensitive/disengaged. An analysis of covariance indicated that children of mothers in the sensitive/engaged group had significantly higher social skills than children of mothers in the moderately sensitive/engaged and insensitive/disengaged groups. Results suggest that mother‐child conflict interactions may benefit children's social development when mothers facilitate their children's participation in a highly sensitive manner.     

Dialogic literary gatherings and out‐of‐home child care: Creation of new meanings through classic literature

Research on out‐of‐home child care has revealed that foster care programmes focused on educational attainment and reading have the potential to improve the academic outcomes of children in care. However, no studies have examined which elements of these programmes positively benefit children's emotional well‐being. This article presents evidence of the positive effects of implementing a successful educational action, dialogic literary gatherings, in a children's residential care institution. A qualitative study using a communicative‐oriented methodology was conducted and involved five participant observations and eight daily life stories with children in out‐of‐home care in Catalonia (Spain). The children's reflections demonstrated that reading classic books, such as Dickens' Oliver Twist, deeply influenced their feelings and self‐conceptions and created new and exciting meaning in their lives.     

A court file analysis of child protection cases: What do children say?

Children's participation in legal proceedings affecting them personally has been gaining importance. So far, a primary research concern has been how children experience their participation in court proceedings. However, little is known about the child's voice itself: Are children able to clearly express their wishes, and if so, what do they say in child protection cases? In this study, we extracted information about children's statements from court file data of 220 child protection cases in Germany. We found 182 children were asked about their wishes. The majority of the statements found came either from reports of the guardians ad litem or from judicial records of the child hearings. Using content analysis, three main aspects of the statements were extracted: wishes concerning main place of residence, wishes about whom to have or not contact with, and children granting decision‐making authority to someone else. Children's main focus was on their parents, but others (e.g., relatives and foster care providers) were also mentioned. Intercoder agreement was substantial. Making sure that child hearings are as informative as possible is in the child's best interest. Therefore, the categories developed herein might help professionals to ask questions more precisely relevant to the child.     

Mothers' Socialization of Children's Emotion in India and the USA: A Cross‐ and Within‐culture Comparison

Parent responses to children's emotions vary within and across cultures. The present study compared mothers' reports of their emotional and behavioral responses in hypothetical situations depicting their children experiencing anger, sadness, or physical pain in two communities in India (traditional old city, N = 60; suburban middle class, N = 60), with a suburban middle‐class group in the USA (N = 60). Results showed that mothers in both groups in India reported more explanation‐oriented problem‐focused responses to their children's emotions than US mothers. US mothers reported the most solution‐oriented problem‐focused responses, followed by suburban Indian mothers, followed by old‐city mothers. US mothers reported behaviorally‐oriented punitive responses (i.e., time out, removal of privileges) towards child anger more than the other groups. Suburban Indian mothers reported briefly not talking to the child in response to child anger more than the other groups whereas old‐city Indian mothers reported scolding/spanking more than the other groups.     

Children's participation in child protection—How do practitioners understand children's participation in practice?

Children's participation is essential to achieve good outcomes for children involved in child protection systems. Despite this, research has consistently found children report low levels of participation, are poorly consulted and feel inadequately involved in decisions about their lives. To explore how practitioners understand children's participation, 18 in-depth interviews were conducted with statutory child protection practitioners in Australia. The interviews explored the ways child protection practitioners understand children's participation. Our findings show practitioners conceptualize children as rights holders and believe it is essential to hear directly from children about their needs and wishes to keep them safe. Practitioners identified the importance of transparent processes and decisions. Different understanding of participation emerged, with some participants talking about children as their central focus but not discussing meaningful participation of the child. It appeared that children's participation relied largely on the views and skills of individual workers, as well as their ability to incorporate meaningful participation in limited time and in complex practice environments where children's safety is a primary concern. Systemic changes to address time barriers, training practitioners to understand and implement participatory practice, and seeking children's input into service design, will support consistent and meaningful participation.     

Between‐ and within‐person predictors of children’s information management following rule violations

The purpose of this study was to better understand both why some children disclose more about their misbehavior to their parents than do other children, as well as why a child discloses to parents about misbehavior in some situations but not in others. Analyses test parental warmth, children's beliefs regarding the legitimacy of parental authority and their own obligation to disclose misbehavior, and parent's responses to children's disclosure of disagreement with parents’ rules and children's misbehavior as predictors of both between‐person and within‐person variations in disclosing and revealing forms of information management. Parent‐child dyads (n = 218) were interviewed during the summers following the child's 5th (M age = 11.9 years) and 6th grade school years. Feeling obligated to disclose rule violations and believing that parents have legitimate authority to impose rules across more topics explained why some children reveal more and conceal less from parents than do other children. Children were more likely to conceal information about the specific topics for which they felt less obligated to disclose rule violations and following rule violations in areas in which their parents previously punished rule violations.     

Decision‐making in child welfare services: Professional discretion versus standardized templates

The article explores differences in the assessment and decision‐making processes, in child welfare services where a standardized template is implemented and in services where it is not. Child welfare services in several countries use different approaches to assess children's and families' need for intervention. In Norway, as in other European countries, there is a shortage of knowledge about decision‐making strategies. The article examines how 36 child welfare caseworkers in 6 different teams in Norway investigate, assess, and make decisions at the phase of an incoming referral. The analysed data were collected by focus group interviews. We use decision theory as a theoretical frame of reference. The analysis shows variation in the assessment procedure at different points of the process, depending on which approach was used. Despite such differences, the final decisions made were almost identical. Even though the data has its limitations because of the small number of informants, the results indicate that choice of approach is not decisive for decision‐making in the child welfare services.     

Applying the ICF‐CY to identify children's everyday life situations: A step towards participation‐focused code sets

Adolfsson M. Applying the ICF‐CY to identify children's everyday life situations: a step towards participation‐focused code sets With the long‐term goal to create an interdisciplinary screening tool with code sets focusing on children's participation in everyday life situations (ELS), the purpose of the present study was to identify ELS for children 0–17 years. The views of professionals and parents in Sweden, South Africa and the USA were integrated based on ICF‐CY ¹ 1 The WHO International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, version for Children and Youth.
linkages. The chapters Self‐care and Major life areas seemed most obvious to include in ELS. At the 2nd ICF‐CY level, 11 categories emerged as ELS, with Hygiene and Recreation as the most obvious. Two sets of ELS were identified for infants/preschoolers and school‐aged children/adolescents. Professionals and parents agreed on ELS for the older age group. Findings suggest that ELS differ in context specificity depending on maturity and growing autonomy. The study has implications for the future screening tool that is intended to support children with disabilities in describing what matters most to them in intervention planning. Key Practitioner Message: ?Children and parents need opportunities to express their opinions during intervention processes, but a structured family–professional collaboration model is lacking; ?Using ICF‐CY‐based models, including holistic views of participation in everyday life situations, increases professionals' focus on family perspectives; ?Models to connect interventions to participation in everyday life situations enhance children's motivation and support interdisciplinary assessment.