2 - Children’s Participation as Contested Practice

Summary

This chapter shows that children's participation in child protection remains a contested practice – a practice not yet fully embraced by the public agencies charged with keeping children safe. The term ‘contested practice’ here refers to a set of social practices related to children's participation in decision-making occurring in child protection, including decisions about children's removal from home into foster or residential care, out-of-home placements, contact with parents and siblings while in care, and decisions related to family reunification. These decisions occur in interactions between children, their parents and/or other caregivers, child protection workers and other professionals (such as magistrates, judges and lawyers) in different settings. These settings include children's home or school, the child protection agency, court or court-like settings and other environments. Children's participation in these decisions may range from children being uninformed or not thoroughly consulted to, conversely, children's wishes and opinions being heard, respected and given weight in decisions.

This chapter starts by describing how children experience participation in different child protection systems in Norway, the US and other countries. I shall then focus on the barriers to children's participation in child protection, especially the role that child protection workers play in creating participation barriers. I shall show that child protection workers’ lack of availability, skills, training and a respectful rapport with children present participation barriers. Workers’ protective attitudes and safety concerns in high-risk case contexts prevent children's participation too.

Children's experiences with participation

Children in contact with child protection agencies hold a variety of opinions about participation and experience a range of involvement in child protection-related processes. The spectrum ranges from exclusion to full participation (Thomas and O’Kane, 1999a and 1999b; Eidhammer, 2014; Paulsen, 2015 and 2016; Arbeiter and Toros, 2017; Balsells et al, 2017; Križ and Roundtree-Swain, 2017). Children can experience participation in meetings and court hearings as comfortable and useful (Thomas and O’Kane, 1999a; Weisz et al, 2011; Križ and Roundtree-Swain, 2017), but participation can also feel tedious, oppressive, intrusive and frightening.