Involved by right - The voice of the child in the child protection system

The participation of children and young people in care: insights from an analysis of national inspection reports in the Republic of Ireland

“…The EPIC organisation was seen to play a significant role in the provision of advocacy services to young people, with many reports of young people having met with EPIC staff. While the HIQA reports are not required to comment on the outcomes of such advocacy services, previous studies have found that advocates can help young people to be more at ease in adult-dominated decision-making processes (Chase et al, 2006) ; support the child to influence the decisions taken (Jelicic et al, 2013) and facilitate meaningful feedback to be provided to the child on the outcome of the process (Jelicic et al, 2013).…”

“…The use of advocates is widely seen as an effective means of enabling children to be engaged in decisions taken regarding their care, protection or welfare (Kennan et al, forthcoming). Advocates can enable children's views to be represented in a relatively systematic way, ensure that due attention is paid to these views, and facilitate feedback to be provided to the child on the outcome of the process (Jelicic et al., 2013).The national standards for foster care, residential care and special care require that children must be informed of their right to avail of the services of an advocate or other independent service.…”

Participation in child protection: A small-scale qualitative study

“…Either way, researchers are in danger of simply adding to an overreliance on the adult voice already evident in practice (Winter, 2011). Several useful research reports by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (Timms and Thoburn, 2003), the Office of the Children's Commissioner (Cossar et al, 2011) and the National Children's Bureau (Jelicic et al, 2013) are however freely available in the UK, which address the issue of participation in CP/CIN processes, at least in part, from the child's point of view.…”

Non-voluntary service interaction from a service logic perspective: children and value co-creation

“…This research emphasizes children as active agents rather than passive recipients of social service (Archard 2004;Bolin 2016;Fattore, Mason, and Watson 2016;Hilppö et al 2016;Tisdall 2017;Warming and Farnøe 2017). Nevertheless, such research has repeatedly shown that children are far from always allowed agency in everyday social work targeting children (Lewis and Lindsay 2000;Hallett and Prout 2003;Sandin and Halldén 2003;Mason 2008;Archard and Skivenes 2009;Jelicic et al 2013;O'Reilly and Dolan 2016;Muench, Diaz, and Wright 2017;Urek 2017).…”