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The New Sociology of Childhood has generated a significant literature that illustrates children's agency in a wide range of contexts and settings but which oversimplifies the notion of agency. This paper develops Paul Hoggett's work on agency in the context of disadvantage to demonstrate the ways in which young people's agency is contingent on time and environmental contexts. We argue that the agency that marginalised young people enact can both implicitly pay homage to neo‐liberal ideals of individual autonomy and self, while simultaneously resisting other neo‐liberal ideals relating to parental and family responsibilities. This ambiguity in young people's relationship to neo‐liberal ideals highlights a contradiction inherent in the same ideals, where expectations of young people with respect to their human capital development are placed uneasily alongside the notion that families are key socialising agents of young people.

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to share reflections on the frontline delivery of a wrap-around secondary school re-engagement programme on compounding digital inequality during the COVID-19 lockdown. Design/methodology/approach This paper presents a deliberative reflection on practice and policy lessons learned while negotiating the digital divide during the COVID-19 lockdown in the delivery of the yourtown education youth engagement programme. Findings Frontline youth worker practice lessons highlight the compounding effect of digital inequality on vulnerable young people who are already disengaged or disengaging from secondary education and the necessity for a reflexive, agile and adaptable practice response, particularly during unprecedented events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Originality/value This paper presents a wraparound service perspective and outlines important practice lessons gained from adapting an education re-engagement programme to respond to the COVID-19 lockdown in the Greater Brisbane area, Australia.

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It is now accepted that high-quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) can bring lasting benefits to children from disadvantaged contexts. However, a significant number of families with young children who are disadvantaged find it difficult to take up resources in the ECEC system. As governments all over the world heed arguments that ECEC is a prudent social investment, it is useful to consider the service system from the perspective of the families targeted by these logics. Outside of the United Kingdom, the question of how families make moral and practical decisions about their use of ECEC has received relatively little attention. This article draws on an Australian study, which explored how families who were disadvantaged imagined strong childrearing environments and then used services to progress this vision. These perspectives complicate and challenge social investment approaches that predominantly focus on the provision of childcare or preschool subsidies and places as a way of redressing social disadvantage. Many participants wanted to establish family stability and adequate material and social resources before participating in early years education. Investment in community development is an important mechanism for addressing service exclusion. key words early childhood education and care • families • disadvantage • community development

When young women who have grown up in contact with child protection become mothers, they shift from being regarded as a child ‘at risk’ by the child protection system, to posing ‘a risk’ to their baby. In contrast to their peers, young care leavers transition to adulthood with very few resources and little support; they typically continue to experience the economic and related adversities of their childhoods. This article draws on biographical narrative interviews with young Australian mothers to understand how they navigate child protection as new mothers. We argue that, while inequalities endure, new understandings of the system can be acquired and dispositions can adapt to function more effectively in the field of child protection. We draw on Bourdieu’s notions of capital, habitus and field to analyse young mothers' adaptations, with additional insights from Hester’s analogy of separate planets to explore their experiences of the field of child protection.