Radical Child Participation in

Public Decision-Making:

Embracing politics and history

Cath Larkins, Tampere, October 2019

Children’s rights to participation

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989

Article 12,

Associated freedoms of expression (Art 13), of thought, conscience and religion (Art 14), of association (Art 15)

and rights to privacy (Article 16) and to access information (article 17)

The UN General Comment 2009

heard by those making the decisions AND taken seriously.

Listening to children’s views is an essential part of assessing what is in their best interests

UN COM RC (2009) General Comment No 12 The Rights of the Child to be Heard, CRC/C/GC/12

Children’s rights to participation in public decision making

General Comment No 12 The Rights of the Child to be Heard, Para 13:

The concept of participation emphasizes that including children should not only be a momentary act, but the starting point for an intense exchange between children and adults on the development of policies, programmes and measures in all relevant contexts of children’s lives.

Recommendation CM/Rec(2012)2 of the Committee of Ministers to member States on the participation of children and young people under the age of 18

‘particular efforts should be made to enable participation of children…who are vulnerable or affected by discrimination, including multiple discrimination’.

Member States are required to remove restrictions in law or practice, to ‘take a co-ordinated approach to strengthening children’s participation’ and ‘ensuring that participation is mainstreamed in decision and policy making structures.’

Children’s rights to participate promoted by the EU:

COMMISSION RECOMMENDATION of 20 February 2013 Investing in children: breaking the cycle of disadvantage (2013/112/EU)

Put in place mechanisms that promote children’s participation in decision-making;

Enable and encourage children to express informed views, ensuring that those views are given due weight and are reflected in the main decisions affecting them;

Involve children in running services and consult them on relevant policy planning;

Reach out to and support the participation of children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Laws and guidance on child participation in Finland

Chapter 2, section 6 of the Finnish Constitution – provides for equality, including that children should be allowed to influence matters pertaining to them.

Section 27 and 28 of the Local Government Act (365/1995) – eg the right for residents to “submit initiatives to the local authority in matters related to them”

2006 Youth Act (72/2006) the right of young people to be consulted in municipalities a legal obligation.

Section 8 states that “young people must be given the opportunity to become involved in dealing with issues relating to local and regional youth work and policy”.

We know what we should be doing…

Information

Freedom to associate and express views

Views being given weight in decisions

This should be an intense exchange

Feedback about how views are taken into account

These are legal obligations

We know what we should be doing…but are we doing it?

2011 CoE study on Finland:

More likely in family, in schools, by health workers and at leisure clubs.

‘little’/‘no influence’ in home town/ local/ national government. …

Of children who have been in residential care institutions, just less than half feel they have an influence over decisions in the institution.

Least successful methods for influencing decisions

national or international political consultations

meetings with child/youth delegates and school student bodies.

New opportunities in Finland

Finnish National Strategy: Enabling Growth Learning and Inclusion

“A child has a unique view and interpretation of the world that must be respected and valued, even if an adult strongly disagrees with it. ... Inclusion [particularly of special groups] is inadequately fulfilled in our current formal structures of participation.”

Finnish Programme to address reform in child and family services

‘A new operational culture to strengthen children’s rights …’ ensuring that ‘The rights and the best interests of the child are taken into account in all planning and decision-making’.

Larkins 2014 Cockburn 2010

What is meaningful participation?How can we achieve it in this context?

Raby 2014

What is meaningful children’s participation?

Conservative - Conventional - Radical

Silence - Voice – Action

Absence - Invited – Claimed

Ignored - Heard – Acted upon

Exploited - Contributing – Challenging

Informed – Consulted - Child-led agenda setting

Isolated – Resourced - Sustainably resourced

Responsibilised – Enabled - Directing

Myriad of forms of children and young people’s participate in public decisions

Invited/Claimed participation

From across Europe:

In Serbia children’s views fed into new national Violence Against Children Strategy.

Children aged under 12 in Ireland contributed to national after school-care policy.

Children aged 11-14 in Slovakia contributed to the national Action Plan for Children.

Thousands of children and young people aged from 12 years upwards being involved in the development of the new EU youth strategy.

But also in Finland:

campaigns, lobbying government, advising the children’s ombudsman.

Diversity of Issues

Inclusive of a diversity of children

Invited/Claimed participation

From across Europe:

In Serbia children’s views fed into new national Violence Against Children Strategy.

Children aged under 12 in Ireland contributed to national after school-care policy.

Children aged 11-14 in Slovakia contributed to the national Action Plan for Children.

Thousands of children and young people aged from 12 years upwards being involved in the development of the new EU youth strategy.

But also in Finland:

campaigns, lobbying government, advising the children’s ombudsman.

Claimed spaces - children lead activism

Emma Gonzalez Greta ThurnbergAmika GeorgeAutumn Peltier

Challenging participation from children

on 25 September:

Children from two schoolsmarched out of their classDemanding“shorter hours, lighter work… and better teachers”.

The Times reported this as:• a worrying "breakdown indiscipline".

• "very shocking“ demands• No sympathy for the cause• Blamed their parents - ‘hot-headed…‘irresponsible’ …militantNew Unionism

The Times (1889)

30th September.

Move beyond patchy success - support consistent and radical children’s participation Variety of formal invited and radical activist ways to influence public decision

making.

Not new – widespread – can be inclusive – can have impact.

Moving beyond voice to embrace action, moving beyond being heard to include brining about change.

Valuing the concerns that children raise in both invited and claimed spaces regardless of whether these contribute ideas to debates that adults have initiated or whether they trouble adult agendas and challenge

Ensuring that children’s participation is not isolated from adult political decision making (unless they want it to be) but rather that it is directly connected to the people who have power over public resources,

Enabling children to engage in the governance of these resources rather than their ideas being used as resources for adult decision-making.

Supporting consistent radical child participation in the current context

a new government which has made a stronger commitment to protecting the minimum citizen income

prior to social transfers – or welfare benefits – similar proportions of people are at risk of poverty in Finland as in Romania, that is around 1 in 4 people

Around 10% of children still living in poverty and this has an impact on educational outcomes for children.

Amongst children born in 1997 - 1 in five children have received a psychiartic diagnosis; twice the number of children are coming into the care system as previously (Ristikari et al 2018) .

Children and young people who are placed in out-of-home care fair worse than their peers in relatrion to, for example, educational and mental health outcomes, work trajectories and life expectancy (Elina Pekkarinen 2018)

Supporting consistent radical child participation in the current context

Finnish Programme to address reform in child and family services

Based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Using new information on children’s wellbeing and on costs. We will learn from children’s experiences. Better knowledge gives better decisions.

Knowledge form this morning:

Despite integrating CRBA continue to bring children in care in large numbers, and to fail them once they are within the system

Once consistent person is invaluable. Social workers should be more active.

But hard to recruit and retain social workers and case loads are massive.

Fix the problem before it starts

More, and more effective, systems to ensure children’s view influence decisions

A participation wheel with lots of spokes

What else strengthens the wheel?

High level commitment from and direct dialogue with senior politicians (Scotland)

Followed by public commitments to implement children’s recommendations

adults and children together pushing an issue up the political agenda (Estonia)

intergenerational and inter-organisational alliances to support this – the chains of support mentioned this morning

funding to support the services that build and maintain the relationships with children enables children to set agenda (Wales) - ringfenced funding to enable children and young people in contact with welfare services to gather and represent a wide diversity of children’s views

Reinforcing participation wheel

1. Public commitments

to listen and act

2. Changing the policy

3. Continual funding

4. A cyclical process

where children:

• set agenda

• Represent themselves

and others

• oversee

implementation

• ensure accountability

In public decisions

Governance in practice

Cyprus, where children were involved in a consultation about a national Sexual Health Strategy in 2017.

giving their views and making recommendations,

representatives on the committees that is developing the action plan and budget for the strategy and the on the monitoring committee.

Supported by a child parliament and some of the children involved had experience of being in care, being disabled, living in poverty or minority ethnic backgrounds.

Lancashire, children in care can nominate half the agenda for the scrutiny committee of the corporate parenting board.

Supported to do this by an on-going children in care council, which is facilitated by adults.

Eg demanded that foster carers get improved training, contributed to the content of this training, and bring workers in to the scrutiny committee from that service to check on how the training is being implemented.

Reinforcing participation wheel

Child led scrutiny of practice

written into a national child

participation strategy

Bucharest declaration on child

participation in public decision

making

• accessible materials on policies and participation possibilities

• platforms for online and offline interaction

• capacity-building for staff working in the governmental institutions

In public decisions

If we focus just on these ways of supporting child participation in public decision making, then we will continue to maintain existing inequalities

Make a difference now

Young people leaving care have created services

they identify the outcome goals (stronger chains of support)

they design the interventions (collective meals and a home decoration service)

They evaluate service.

1. Fix cause not problem

• Working hours need to be restricted• Campaigns against discrimination• Invest in services by increasing debt or increasing tax

2. Think about how we read behaviour

1920s Mental Health problem1950s Criminal Problem2010s mental health and criminal diagnosis??

Learning from William:What are we letting their actions and experience communicate to us? What are we masking?

Gender disparity Social health issue?

Reinforcing participation wheel

• Involvement of children and young people in the interpretation of data

• Data shared in accessible formats so children can choose models

In public decisions

3. Support for activism

• legislation that provides support for children to go on strike about all issues that affect them –not just the acceptable ones

• Social Change not just climate change

Amend Articles 27- 31 of the Charter, to apply these workers’

rights to children…. rights to information and consultation,

collective bargaining and action, protection in the event of

unjustified dismissal, and fair working conditions would then

be given to children at home and at school… [they] could also

be protected by the Working Time Directive (Directive

2003/88/EC, OJ L 299/9, 18.11.2003), which would guarantee

11 hours’ rest a day, limit their average working week to 48

hours and provide a minimum 4 weeks’ paid vacation a year.”

(Larkins 2011 p.471)

Reinforcing participation wheel

• Extend Workers Collective Rights to Children and Young People

• Create the chains of support that enable them to lead this

• Intergenerational solidarity

In public decisions