Author: Caoimhe-Hub

Researching Sensitive Topics Involving Children

High quality reliable evidence is essential if society is to effectively address many of the critical challenges facing children (including both children and adolescents for the purposes of this paper). Without such evidence, we are less able to understand their concerns and lived experiences, know what interventions work, or influence policy and investments to improve their lives. However, the process of conducting research with children can itself pose risks to children’s rights and well-being – especially when investigating sensitive topics such as violence and abuse. While there is a growing body of resources to support researchers in identifying and implementing good practices, an ongoing commitment to reflection and continuous improvement is needed to define ethical practice and confidently address the question of whether we can in fact conduct such research safely.

This document captures the key themes and reflections from a webinar hosted by UNICEF Innocenti – Global Office of Research and Foresight in June 2024 that was designed to bring together key international experts with UNICEF staff and practitioners and to provide links to additional relevant resources. Panelists Professor Lorraine Sherr, Professor Shanaaz Mathews and Marium Hussein each presented on specific aspects of the topic, drawing on their own experience, before engaging in a broad-ranging panel discussion that unpacked some of the issues presented in more detail.

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OCO Beyond Limits Accessible Event Guide

Who we are The Ombudsman for Children’s Office (OCO) is a human rights institution that promotes the rights and welfare of young people under 18 years of age living in Ireland. The OCO also investigates complaints about services provided to children by public organisations. The service is free and independent.

Introduction

The Ombudsman for Children’s Office hosted Beyond Limits, an event for children with disabilities, in 2019 and 2022. Beyond Limits is a family event made up of talks, entertainment and activities that include disabled children in the line-up and that they can take part in. Beyond Limits was designed to be fully accessible and inclusive. This means that all children should be able to attend and take part.

Over 2,000 people have attended Beyond Limits events. In 2019 Beyond Limits took place in Croke Park and in 2022 there were events in both Sligo and Limerick. In 2022 a Beyond Limits Youth Advisory Panel (YAP) was established to help plan and organise the events. The YAP was made up of eight amazing young people of all abilities from different parts of the country.

Beyond Limits is a special space where disabled children and their families do not feel different. They do not have to do the same preparation to attend, they do not need to worry about whether the supports they need will be available and they do not need to consider if children will disrupt what is going on.

In organising three Beyond Limits events we discovered that there is no centralised resource available (that we could find) to help organise a fully accessible and inclusive event. In order to make Beyond Limits happen we consulted with a range of organisations and we had the input of our YAP who experience barriers to participation and attendance every day.

Making an event accessible and inclusive should not be an added extra. This Accessible and Inclusive Event Guide has been created to bring together all of our learnings and to help other organisations and businesses to do better for disabled children and adults. 

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Children and Young People’s Participation in Child Protection: Outcomes of Transformative Participation in International Contexts

This article draws on case studies from Brazil, Denmark, Israel, Norway, and Nicaragua to analyse the outcomes of transformative participation in child welfare. Transformative participation occurs when children make meaningful choices, develop a sense of agency, possess the resources to exercise agency, and can make a real difference in their lives, their communities, and child welfare. Caring and inclusive attitudes, relationships, and practice approaches characterise transformative participatory professional practices. We demonstrate that transformative methods can create conditions so children feel recognised and empowered and empower themselves. They encourage children to collectively engage in actions to change cultural norms and develop new child welfare practice approaches and policies. We show how local-level practitioners in public and nongovernmental child welfare organisations can play a crucial role in fostering children’s transformative participation.

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Youth Voice in Creative Schools: Reflections on Practice

From the very beginning, the Creative Schools programme has aspired to hold youth voice at the centre. Back in 2017 and 2018 when the programme was being conceived and designed at the Arts Council the National Strategy on Children and Young People’s Participation in Decision-Making was an important touchstone. The Arts Council was already embodying a commitment to participation in decision making in many of its programme like the Young Ensembles Scheme and Creative Schools offered another route to centre children and young peoples’ opinions.

Once the programme was established and the first 150 schools began working with their Creative Associates, we benefited hugely from support and guidance from Hub na nÓg to embed this way of working. As the programme has grown, we have witnessed the growth in confidence, experience and curiosity about youth voice among our community.

Since 2018, the landscape around Creative Schools has changed. There is now increased understanding and very welcome higher expectations of how children and young people will be listened to. New national policies for children and young people are clear in how young people have been consulted and there have been greater than ever efforts to ensure all children and young people are included in participation.

This publication is an attempt to capture, celebrate and share ways of working, reflections, ideas, and challenges that have been part of the journey of many Creative Schools. The articles provide a snapshot of the hundreds of projects and programmes which have creatively raised children’s voices. Of course, consultation with children and young people has been a feature of arts in schools and arts in other places for a long time but the scale and reach of Creative schools since 2018 has given us this opportunity to bring together some examples of recent practice, which we offer to anyone with an interest in this area.

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Children’s Rights Skills and Knowledge Framework

The Scottish Government is giving children’s rights the highest possible protection in Scotland by incorporating the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) (1) into Scots law through the UNCRC (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act 2024 (2). Children’s rights are already central to law and policy in Scotland and progressing them is a key part of the roles of  many workers. Incorporation of the UNCRC means there is a legal duty on public authorities and those carrying out public functions not to act in ways that are incompatible with the UNCRC requirements. The adoption and implementation of a children’s human rights approach will support workers in preparing for these new duties.

The framework has been designed to:
• Support individuals and organisations to adopt a children’s human rights approach.
• Improve and consolidate the workforce’s understanding of children’s rights and increase their confidence to implement the UNCRC in their everyday work.
• Set out the skills and knowledge the workforce will need to grow their children’s rights practice, and improve over time.
• Highlight useful resources for workers to engage with to further develop their skills and knowledge.
• Enable the necessary culture change to fully respect, protect and fulfil rights for children and young people in Scotland. Implementing a children’s human rights approach will build on existing best practice and support the realisation of other crucial policy objectives.

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A Review of Ethical and Methodological Practice for Research or Consultation with Children and Young People Who Experience Poverty

This review was commissioned by the Department for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DECDIY) to provide an up-to-date understanding of what children and young people who have experienced poverty have been asked about and consulted on, and to identify key methodological and ethical issues. The aim of the review is to provide practical guidance for researchers and practitioners who are contemplating involving children and young people living in poverty in a research project or a consultation. The involvement of children and young people in any research or consultation should be placed within the context of an international rights-based framework. The adoption of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child specifies the right of all children to express an opinion on matters and decisions that affect them directly and to have that opinion taken into account. In the Irish context, there is now increasing emphasis on eliciting the views and perspectives of children and young people in matters that relate to them, and this is reflected in policy and practice whereby government and agencies of the state are increasingly advocating and drawing on children young people’s voice in research and consultation processes. More recently, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) has expressed serious concern about the large number of children in Ireland that are living in poverty, food insecurity and homelessness, and about the children of ethnic minority groups who do not have access to child benefit payments due to the habitual residence condition. In a recent report the Committee urged the Irish state to ensure that measures to combat poverty comply with a child rights-based approach and include a particular focus on children from disadvantaged families, especially children of single parents, refugee children and children of ethnic minority groups (UNCRC, 2023). This report contributes to supporting this task and includes a methodological and ethical review of how to capture the voices of vulnerable children, with a particular focus on experiences of children and young people living in poverty. The practical guidance offered in this report can inform future research initiatives and consultations that aim to better understand the lived experience and views of children and young people experiencing poverty.

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Young Audience Sector Research: Embedding the Voices and Rights of Babies, Children and Young People in the Young Audience Sector

This research was commissioned by the Young Audience Group and funded by Creative Scotland. The Young Audience Group is a collective of organisations and freelancers who have been meeting informally since 2018 to advocate for and raise awareness of the young audience sector. The collective is currently comprised of the following organisations and individuals: Action Boat, Barrowland Ballet, Catherine Wheels & Shona Reppe, Curious Seed, Frozen Charlotte, Imaginate, Independent Arts Projects, Lyra, Scottish Theatre Producers, Starcatchers and Visible Fictions. In 2021, research carried out by Cultural Radar identified key needs and priorities for the Young Audience Group’s ongoing work. Victoria Beesley led a second phase of research in 2023 exploring what a new network/ membership collective of freelancers and organisations working in the young audience sector might look like. This third phase of research is focused on two different elements: equity and access in a membership collective for the young audience sector – this research has been carried out by Kirstin Georgia Abraham; and the voices and rights of babies, children and young people within a membership collective for the young audience sector – this research has been carried out by Victoria Beesley and is the focus of this report.

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Making My Mark Resource: Digital Participation in the Early Years

At Starcatchers, we want to ensure that more babies and young children 0-5 can make their mark through art. Through arts and creative experiences like music, storytelling, theatre, movement, mark-making, painting, drawing and craft, little ones are: exploring, experimenting, concentrating and getting stuck in, persevering, making choices, expressing their feelings, thoughts and ideas. When a child creates something, whether this be a sound, a movement or a wonderful, colourful splodge on a page, they are learning that they have impact and can make a difference. They are learning that they have a voice. Through arts and creative experiences, babies and young children are learning about their rights!

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Voice of the Baby in Practice: Resources to Guide the Practical Application of The Voice of the Baby: A Reflective Guide for the Arts

Welcome to the Starcatchers Voice of the Baby In Practice Resource. This resource has been inspired by research that Starcatchers commissioned in response to increasing curiosity from across Arts, Health, Early Learning and Childcare and Voluntary sectors about how to consider the ‘voice’ of our youngest children in consultation and participation activities and our belief that the arts could be a wonderful tool to support this.

The research undertaken by Dr Rachel Drury from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Dr Cara Blaisdell from Queen Margaret University, and research assistant Claire Ruckert, resulted in the creation of the Starcatchers Voice of the Baby: A Reflective Guide for the Arts, which outlines five areas for consideration when using rights-based creative approaches with babies and very young children. The Voice of the Baby In Practice Resource sits alongside the Reflective Guide to help put this work into practice and we hope you will find these tools helpful in your work with babies, young children and their parents and carers.

Why is this needed? Babies and young children, those from birth – 3 years are a group who are consistently overlooked in terms of children’s rights. Their lack of verbal language, perceptions about their capabilities and their reliance on the adults makes it much harder for them to access their rights than older children and young people. What we do know, however, is that babies and young children use a myriad of ways to communicate with those around them, sharing their views and their experience of the world.

With the incorporation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) into domestic law in Scotland, it has never been more important for us to ensure that babies, those from birth– 3 years, are supported to have their rights realised. A key aspect is that this is not solely focused on the protection and provision rights within the UNCRC but also the participation rights that babies are entitled to. Being included and heard in decisions that are made about their lives is essential, but it is also complex. We know that professionals across sectors are seeking to engage with, and include the views of, babies and young children but that they need support and tools to do this effectively.

The Starcatchers Approach; Putting the needs and ‘voice’ of babies and young children has been at the heart of Starcatchers’ work since our pilot project in 2006. Since then, we have evolved our rights-based approach informed by the babies and young children we have connected with, and by our increased understanding of children’s rights. Where initially our focus was on Article 31 and realising the rights of babies and very young children to engage with and participate in the arts and cultural life, we know that the arts can be a vehicle for babies and very young children to experience the breadth and depth of the rights held within the UNCRC. This includes being able to express views and feelings about matters that affect them and that these views can be taken into account by decision-makers.

The Voice of the Baby Reflective Guide and the In Practice Resource is only a small step in the consideration of the ‘voice’ of babies and very young children in Scotland. It is, however, an exciting step towards enabling increased visibility of babies and their inclusion in discussions regarding their rights.

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