Progressing children’s rights and participation: Utilising rights‐informed resources to guide policy and practice

Abstract

Social policy in Australia and internationally, that is focused on improving children's safety and well-being, increasingly makes implicit or explicit reference to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Concomitantly, children and young people's participation is more widely acknowledged as being key to ensuring policies, programmes and services reflect their views and lived experience. The non-government sector, along with statutory bodies like the National and State-based Children's Commissions in Australia, have led the way in advocating for children's participation, including the development of resources to assist in facilitating this. Little is known, however, about the nature, scope and extent of such resources nor the evidence informing them. This article reports the findings of a scoping review of rights-informed resources and academic articles that provide a sound rationale and "good practice" information, education and/or professional learning about children's participation rights, in particular. The findings highlight some of the tensions and possibilities between the rhetorical aspirations of participation and existing practice. The analysis is intended to support the efforts of organisations endeavouring to improve their understanding | 601 CANOSA et Al.

Operationalising children's participation: Competing understandings of the policy to practice ‘gap’

“…In NSW, the most recent include Empowerment and Participation: A guide for organisations working with children and young people (NSW Office of the Children's Guardian, 2021), and Engaging Children and Young People in Your Organisation (NSW Office of the Advocate for Children and Young People, 2019). There is ample information on how to 'do participation' alongside critique of the extent to which rights have been operationalised (Canosa et al, 2022;Kosher & Ben-Arieh, 2020;Morley et al, 2022) including for young people in juvenile justice (Cunneen et al, 2016), and children in detention-seeking asylum (Bochenek, 2015).Children who already experience marginalisation are less likely than others to have their rights extended to them. Furthermore, participation in practice can fail to meet the expectations of policy when the assumptions that underpin the policy are not congruent with the socio-political landscapes in which practice occurs (Toros, 2020).…”

Cultivating child and youth decision‐making: The principles and practices of the ReSPECT approach to professional development

“…Nevertheless, there are challenges associated with achieving participation in practice that go beyond tokenism and consultation, and towards children sharing power and responsibility, as outlined in Shier's Pathways to Participation (Shier, 2001) There are many participation guidelines and resources available to direct participation work with children. 3 However, a scoping review by Canosa et al (2022) on participation resources for organisations seeking to embed children's participation in decision-making found ambiguity around how to operationalise these resources, and a lack of exemplars of good practice. This may be because models of participation do not account for organisational cultures across and within organisations and their programs.…”