A Handbook of Children and Young People’s Participation

Barry Percy-Smith is Professor of Childhood, Youth and Participatory Practice and Director of the Just Futures Research Centre at University of Huddersfield, UK. He has extensive experience as a participatory action researcher and an international reputation for his work in child and youth participation. His main interests are in children and young people as active agents of change, participatory social learning and action inquiry approaches to learning and change in organisations and communities. He has published widely on these issues, including as co-editor of the first edition of A Handbook of Children and Young People’s Participation with Nigel Patrick Thomas. Nigel Patrick Thomas is Professor Emeritus of Childhood and Youth at the University of Central Lancashire and founder of The Centre for Children and Young People’s Participation. He was previously a social work practitioner, manager and advisor and later a social work educator. His research interests are principally in child welfare, children’s rights, children and young people’s participation, and theories of childhood and intergenerational relations. His many publications include Children, Family and the State: Decision-Making and Child Participation (2000, 2002) and Children, Politics and Communication: Participation at the Margins (2009). Claire O’Kane is a child rights practitioner and researcher with over 28 years of international experience working with nongovernment organisations, UN agencies and child-led organisations on children’s rights, participation, care, protection and peacebuilding in development and humanitarian contexts. She is a qualified social worker with a masters in applied social studies and a postgraduate diploma in social research and evaluation from UK universities. Claire works as an international child rights consultant and is a senior associate with Proteknôn. She is the author of more than 60 publications, including toolkits on child rights, protection and participation. Afua Twum-Danso Imoh is Senior Lecturer in Global Childhoods and Welfare at the University of Bristol. Her research interests are centred around conceptualisations of childhood, parent-child relationships and the intersections between dominant global children’s rights discourses and social and cultural norms in West Africa. Afua is the lead co-editor of three other edited collections: Childhoods at the Intersection of the Global and the Local (2012), Children’s Lives in an Era of Children’s Rights: The Progress of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in Africa (Routledge 2013) and Global Childhoods Beyond the North-South Divide (2018).

0.Introduction: The shifting landscape of children and young people’s participation: looking forward, looking back. Part one: Reflection. Section one: Continuing challenges. 1.Children’s participation in transformational development: reflections emerging from praxis. 2.Youth participation in Aotearoa New Zealand: rationales, rights and responsiveness. 3.Discursive barriers to children's political influence. Section two: Intergenerational dynamics and the role of adults. 4.‘There was no fence’: reconceptualising children’s participation for transformative change within a school context. 5.Overcoming the adult gaze in participatory research with young people. 6.Transformative constraints in practices of co-production with social workers and young people in Hong Kong. 7.What about my voice? Facilitating the participation of disabled children and young people with complex communication needs through independent advocacy. 8.Transformative spaces: intergenerational partnership and personal transformation at the heart (and art) of child participation. Part two: Learning. Section one: Participation as a learning process. 9.Youth participation with a purpose? Promoting the transformative power of remote action-reflection research with Brazilian youth in conditions of resource insecurity. 10.Politics, participation and the pandemic: reflections on new democratic engagement and participatory inquiry growing up under Covid-19. 11.‘Hope in the present’: foregrounding uncertainty in transformative education for sustainability in the Global South. 12.Realisation of children’s right to participate using Action Research principles: a Kenyan case study. Section two: Children and young people as researchers. 13.Children’s Circle of Learning: doing critical sexuality education in India. 14.From principles to practice: application of child participation principles in collaborative participatory research between children and adults in Mali, Somalia and Sudan. 15.Peer research, power and ethics: navigating participatory research in an Africa-focused mobilities study before and during Covid-19. 16.Adventures in youth-led research with disabled young people in the UK and Japan. 17.Learning from experience: Sistematización of ten years of action research by children and adolescents with CESESMA in Nicaragua. Section three: Participation seen from ‘above’ and ‘below’. 18.Representation and conflict: tensions of youth participation. 19.Children’s participation in Aotearoa New Zealand: changes, challenges and indigenous critiques. 20.Affecting change in different contexts: children’s participation in social and public policy dialogues in Brazil, Canada and South Africa. 21.I-participate: culture and identity in enabling meaningful opportunities. Part three: Action. Section one: Children and young people as activists. 22.How perception of agency influences young people’s activism in the UK. 23.Children and young people’s activism in Brazil: from the fringes of society to the centre of decision-making. 24."Asamblea de Niñas": exploring the bonds between children's participation and the feminist movement in Buenos Aires. 25.Being a young political actor: reflections with young domestic abuse survivors from the frontline of transformative participation. 26.Understanding children's participation using the capability approach. Section two: Children and young people contesting inequalities and striving for inclusion. 27.Political mobilization through everyday struggles: children’s participation in Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST). 28.Courageous Conversations: youth participatory action research as resistance. 29.The future is ours: young people and the inclusive city. 30.Belonging and agency: the transformatory power of participatory design with children affected by displacement. Section three: Children and young people responding to the climate crisis. 31.'It’s up to you, me – all of us!' Children’s participation in Scotland’s Climate Assembly. 32.Transformative learning and societal change in climate policy: a participatory workshop with children and youth. 33.Greta Thunberg’s climate activism: challenging generational and economic power. 34.Conclusion: moving forwards for meaningful and transformative participation.