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Research Briefing – Child-Led Research: from Participating in Research to Leading it – Addressing inequalities in decision-making

Article 12 of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child recognises the right of children and young people to express their views on issues relevant to their lives. Countries who have ratified the Convention have a legal obligation to take appropriate measures to implement this right. However, implementing children and young people’s participation rights has been challenging for countries and existing structures, as it entails substantive changes in how children and young people are viewed by society, ways of working and priorities. Globally, efforts to realise children and young people’s right to participate have generally been tokenistic and have a minimal impact on decision-making. As models and programmes have been developed to address these limitations, child-led research has emerged as an approach that can provide children and young people with particularly meaningful opportunities to participate. Therefore, there is a growing interest in child-led research as a mechanism to enhance participation rights, based on the premise that children and young people bring particular expertise to the research process. This study explores examples of children and young people who led their own research and took actions based on their research findings.

Child-Led Research: From Participation in Research to Leading it. Addressing inequalities in decision-making

Participation Framework – National Framework for Children and Young People’s Participation in Decision-making

The Framework is underpinned by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.  Since the publication of the National Strategy for Children and Youth People’s Participation in Decision-Making 2015-2020, Ireland has led the way in ensuring that children and young people are at the heart of government decision making. This Participation Framework will further support and enhance that work by providing practical tools to ensure that children and young people are included in decision-making in all settings where decisions made by adults will impact their lives.

The Covid and Care Leavers Study

A study exploring care leavers' lived experiences on flife in the time of COVID-19. A team of researchers and advocates from Trinity College Dublin and Empowering People in Care (EPIC) have come together to learn more about the experiences of care leavers in the time of the Covid-19 pandemic. By exploring how the pandemic is being experienced by care leavers in Ireland they hope to shed light on the ways in which daily life may have changed for care leavers in this period, how they navigated those changes, and how they made sense of their experience.

Let’s Talk Young, Let’s Talk About Children’s Rights in decision-making

Let’s talk young, let’s talk about children’s rights in decision-making was an online initiative which brought together round 20 young people between the ages of 13 to 16 years of age. Yearly, Commissioner for Children consults the young people on different themes. For the 2^nd year running Aġenzija Żgħażagħ led 5 sessions which gave the opportunity to the participating young people to express their views and propose recommendations in order to be passed to the European Network of Ombudspersons for Children (ENOC).

Lockdown life: Teenagers have your say

A team of psychologists at NUI, Galway and Trinity College Dublin are keen to understand how the Covid-19 pandemic and the various restrictions that are in place, are impacting on the lives of teenagers.It is important we understand how teenagers are coping with and responding to the ongoing restrictions and changes in their lives so we can best support young people as we move forward.The impact of this pandemic on young people is complex and it may mean different things for different individuals. Help us gather important evidence on the impact of the pandemic on the lives of young people.

Report “Our Europe, Our Rights, Our Future”

The perspectives and priorities of more than 10,000 children and young people, from within and outside the European Union (EU), are expressed powerfully throughout this report.In preparing for the new EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child 2021 - 2024, the European Commission decided to set a new standard by inviting children living in Europe and beyond to share their views and influence how the strategy would be shaped and what topics it would prioritize. To this end, the European Commission called on five child rights organizations - ChildFund Alliance, Eurochild, Save the Children, UNICEF and World Vision - to facilitate consultations with children across Europe and beyond, based on their collective experience of working with millions of children worldwide, evidence, research, and policies.

Newsletter on rights of the child No 1/2021

The first 2021 edition of the newsletter on the rights of the child.

Working back to the future: strengthening radical social work with children and young people, and their perspectives on resilience, capabilities and overcoming adversity

Using data from participatory storytelling research with 65 young people, this article provides a co-created theoretical grounding for radical social work with children and young people. The problems and solutions social work should be seeking are explored in the light of resilience theories and the capability approach. The young people’s perspectives echo but extend existing resilience interventions and definitions of the capability approach, highlighting structural and historical patterns of inequality. They call for a collective response to adverse experiences, which become obvious in one zone of experience but have consequences and roots in other places. Social work could usefully employ expanded understandings of socio-ecological resilience and the capability approach to focus interventions more clearly on the root causes of adversities and shape interventions that highlight capability sustainability and co-created solutions. This would involve professionals working alongside children and young people, as well as their families and allies, to confront enduring patterns of disadvantage.

Study on child participation in EU political and democratic life – Children’s participation structures and mechanisms

List of childrens participation structures and mechanisms