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One of the most notable breakthroughs in promoting the right of children to be consulted about policies that affect them is the UNCRC (United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, General Assembly of the United Nations, 1989). At the time of writing, the UNCRC has been ratified by all but two (Somalia and the USA) member states of United Nations. The Convention was ratified by the United Kingdom in 1991 and according to Daniel and Ivatts (1998, p. 16) “it is arguably the most significant development in United Kingdom policy towards children since 1945.” By ratifying the Convention, governments must take steps to ensure that they meet the standards and principles set out in the various Articles in the Convention and must provide regular reports to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child on its implementation. One of the most significant Articles is Article 12 which specifies that:State Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child (General Assembly of the United Nations, 1989).This Article has found its way into United Kingdom social policy through the introduction of the Children's Act in 1989 (this Act was extended to Northern Ireland in 1995). This provides children in care or children whose parents are going through a divorce some involvement in the decision-making process. The Children's Rights Development Unit which monitors the United Kingdom implementation of the Convention has made Article 12 the primary focus of its work (Shier, 2001). This is partly due to the reaction of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (1995) to the United Kingdom's first report. The Committee identified a number of gaps in the implementation of children's rights particularly in the area of participation rights. Indeed, children's voices remain largely absent in many areas of social policy particularly those relating to education and health (Daniel & Ivatts, 1998). As Hill and Tisdall (1997, p. 256) put it “the rhetoric of children's participation is easier and cheaper than its effective implementation.” Involving children in policy throws up all sorts of issues relating to the participation of children in the decision-making process. What does adopting a child-centred approach to children's role in decision-making entail? How do we ensure that children's views are effectively incorporated in the policy-making arena? How do we find out about the views and perceptions of children in relation to whatever issue is being debated? As Hill and Tisdall (1997) point out, involving children in social policy often gets narrowly translated to listening sympathetically to their views rather than considering them as a social group capable of influencing policy and practice. Yet organisations, which promote the rights of children, such as Save the Children, argue that more meaningful social policies will evolve from taking on board the perspectives of those who are influenced by such policies. One useful model that could be employed to ensure that children effectively participate in research linked to social policy is Hart's ladder of participation (1992). A survey of children's organisations throughout the United Kingdom in their attempts to introduce mechanisms to ensure that their policies and decisions take more account of children's opinions revealed that Hart's model played a significant role in their strategies to involve children in policy related research (Barn & Franklin, 1996). Academic researchers have also utilised Hart's ladder as a framework for advocating approaches to enhance the participation of children in the research process (Landsdown, 1995; Shier, 2001; Verhellen, 1997). The purpose of this paper is to examine the usefulness of Hart's model in involving children in social policy related research concerning the Eleven Plus system in Northern Ireland.

The population of internationally forcibly displaced people, which includes refugees and asylum seekers, is large and heterogeneous. To determine the varying reasons for and experiences during the migration journey, including exposure to violence and health- and integration-related needs, there is an urgent need to involve children with refugee backgrounds in research and development activities. This chapter describes a model for the child participatory approach developed at Barnafrid, a national competence centre on violence against children at Linköping University in Sweden. The model has been tested in the Long Journey to Shelter study, which investigated exposure to violence and its consequences on mental health and functional ability among forcibly displaced children and young adults. As part of this project, we conducted workshops with children (n = 36, aged 13–18 years) to design a questionnaire on exposure to community violence in the country of resettlement. Experiences recounted during the child participatory workshops indicated no problems involving newly arrived children with refugee backgrounds and Swedish-born adolescents in research activities. However, attention should be paid to proper preparatory work and the need for adjustments. We discuss the results in light of other studies on refugee child participation, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child and diversity considerations.

The objective of the chapter is to provide an integrative appraisal of recent participatory research projects with children on violence and maltreatment conducted by members of the COST Action CA 19106 working group on children's participation (WG3) and their colleagues to identify what is working well and what needs to change in future research. The evaluation of research examples clustered around four key questions: Why, when, how and how much do children participate in research? Data were collected using a unified tool designed to characterise participatory research, which was distributed among WG3 members. In addition, chapters of the current book were another source of data about participatory research. Overall, data on 19 studies involving 46,761 children were collected and analysed using Shier's matrix. Findings show that most studies (n = 10) engaged children as consultants to adults in data collection, whereas a few studies (n = 5) demonstrated a more children-led research approach. The analysis uncovered specific areas where more progress is required, including engaging children in decisions about the research topic, involving young children, utilising methods that are more natural and familiar to children, and gaining children's reflective accounts about their participation experience. The authors encourage scholars to publish their work to advance evidence-based knowledge and skills in participatory research with children about sensitive topics.

This chapter aims to present and critically question the work undertaken with a group of children as experts in a transdisciplinary research project, ‘Exploring the way to and from school with children: An interdisciplinary approach of children’s experiences of the third place’. The project is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.¹ A partnership was established between the research team and a group of 10 children (11–12 years old). The children were actively involved as co-researchers to provide the research team with expertise regarding their experiences of the school journey. Their roles as co-researchers included refining the research questions and methodological tools, analysing data, and drafting final recommendations. In this chapter, the authors outline the different stages of this transdisciplinary partnership with children as co-researchers, whilst addressing some key issues encountered during the process, including: What is expertise? When, and under what conditions, can children genuinely be co-researchers? What ethical aspects should be considered? The authors commence with an outline of the project’s theoretical framework before detailing how the participatory process enabled children to actively take part and give their views on the research. The authors address a specific focus on the ethical challenges encountered as part of the complexities of conducting research with children. They conclude with some reflections on the benefits of involving children as co-researchers and, in doing so, offer a critique of the notion of ‘expertise’ in research with children.

Children have been recognized as an important user group for information and communication technology (ICT) and methods for involving them in ICT design have already been devised. However, there is a lack of research on children’s genuine or authentic participation in ICT design as well as a lack of critical research scrutinizing how “children” and “their participation” actually end up constructed in ICT design. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

An intervention involving children in ICT design following the research strategy of nexus analysis was implemented. A qualitative data archive of this intervention is examined through a Foucauldian lens.

The study reveals that numerous discourses were relied on when talking about “children” and “their participation” in the case project: the discourses of participation, equality, domination, segregation, rebellion, and patronization were identified. Moreover, “children” were constructed as equal partners and influential, but also as ignorant, ignored, silent, and silencing each other. Some of the findings are in line with the existing ICT literature on the matter, others even with the literature on genuine participation of children. However, children and their participation were also constructed as “problematic” in many senses.

The study contributes to and opens up avenues for critical research on genuine participation of users, especially children.

Practical suggestions for researchers interested in participation of children in ICT design are provided.

While research literature offers an abundance of best practices and an idealized view on children and their participation, this study shows the multitude of challenges involved and discourses circulating around.

This chapter discusses how to involve children and young people in decisions and encourage them to express their needs and participate in the decision-making process to develop a quality intervention. By describing the different aspects of projects involving a participatory approach, it shows how giving voice to children and young people unlocked new perspectives regarding the Hungarian child protection system. Participation of children in research is limited in Hungary, partly due to the challenging legislation and authorisation process. This chapter shows how research to develop child-friendly digital tools can contribute to collecting children's views on their needs related to child protection support, and how the process of listening to children can improve parenting and caregiving responses to the needs of younger and older children living with their families or in the child protection system. The chapter analyses the effect of digital applications on children's and young people's capacity to advance towards autonomy, including applications and a video campaign with short video clips created by young people. These projects gave an opportunity for children and youth in the public care system to describe their lives and wishes for the future. The analysis found: (a) for a functional child protection system and to promote development for children and young people, children's voices need to be amplified; (b) by expressing their voices, children become more autonomous; (c) children's voices contribute to decreasing social prejudices against children and young people in public care; and (d) listening to children and youth who age out of care can help professionals working in the child protection system better understand their beneficiaries.

Involvement of children in research on different aspects of children's rights, including research on violence against children, is continuously increasing, as is the interest in participatory approaches (European Agency for Fundamental Rights [FRA], 2014; Larsson et al., 2018; UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, 2011). Svevo-Cianci et al. (2011) noted that ‘as researchers commit to learning from community members, including children and adolescents themselves, it has become more clear that an understanding of the lived reality and definition of violence for children in their individual communities, is essential to envision and implement effective child protection’ (p. 985).

In this chapter, the legislative context regarding children's rights to be heard and participate is initially discussed; currently applied age requirements for children to acquire rights across the countries of the European Union (EU) are briefly presented; and children's potential roles and relevant provisions for their participation in social research are explored. The last part is dedicated to the presentation and discussion of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR; Regulation [EU] 2016/679, 2016) – specifically, children's personal data–related recitals and articles; the importance of the definition of a legal basis for personal data processing according to the GDPR, including consent; and the necessary information to be provided to children before their data are processed.

Researchers have been known to complain that practitioners do not listen to their findings or recommendations, and have emphasised the importance of evidence-based practice. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, research concerning children produced a shift leading to a new sociological paradigm of childhood. This paradigm parallels the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), produced at the same time. Both productions emphasise common themes, which in the principles of the CRC are expressed as non-discrimination, children's participation and the best interests of the child. Sociological frameworks and the CRC were brought together in the growing movement to ‘child-rights programming’ (CRP) taken up by many UN and international children's agencies since the turn of the twenty-first century.¹