T his paper explores how agencies approach the issue of children and young people's participation in child protection. It highlights tensions and dilemmas within both contested discourses of childhood and government guidance to argue that, while promoting children's participation is high on the agenda internationally, nationally and locally, in practice, the specificities of child protection lead to considerable difficulty with implementation in this context. The paper then describes the findings from a project that looked at agency policy on children's participation, how children's views were