ABSTRACT
The introduction of Children in Care Councils under the Care Matters reforms in England set a challenge for local authorities to find effective ways by which children in care could ...contribute their views to the planning and provision of services. This paper discusses a review of progress across London which combined a survey of boroughs with focus group discussions with young people, local authority staff and elected members. The research found that considerable progress had been made in that virtually all boroughs had some mechanism for representing children in care, and that staff and young people were proud of their achievements. However, major challenges remain – to embed a culture of participation in services, to ensure continuity, to reach all children including the many placed ‘out of borough’ and to defend what has been achieved in the face of severe cuts in public spending. The paper highlights a tension between empowering young people and meeting targets as corporate parents. The results support other research pointing to the need for a better understanding of the relationship between participation in governance and participation grounded in ordinary life.
The participation of children and young people in decisions that affect them is now mainstream in social and public policy in the UK. Yet for many young people formal participation opportunities are ...abstracted from everyday lives and concerns. Children may not feel empowered despite the existence of formal structures for participation. This raises questions about how 'spaces' for participation are constructed. This paper critiques prevailing models of participation in formal structures and instead, argues for the need to rethink children's participation as a more diverse set of social processes rooted in everyday environments and interactions. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
In 2007, the Department for Children Schools and Families in the UK outlined the Sustainable Schools Strategy setting out an agenda for schools and environmental education. While many schools made ...advances in their provision of learning for sustainability, questions remained about the impact school-based Education for Sustainable Development could have in making communities more sustainable. A central question concerns the roles envisaged for children and youth and what forms of (transformative) learning are needed for children to become active agents in sustainable community development. Based on learning from an ESRC action research project exploring the role of schools in developing sustainable communities and drawing on international experience, this article presents a framework for discussing the roles children and young people might take as agents of change in sustainable community development. The article concludes by discussing the implications for cultures of learning in schools.
Abstract
This article considers the application of Communities of Practice theory to understand transition into, through and out of care, arguing that a sense of belonging and identity emerges from ...participation in supportive communities. We consider the influence of community on looked after children and care leavers’ sense of identity, engagement and well-being in transition. We also focus on the ways in which service policy and provision shapes professional practice. In doing so, we move beyond the argument for supportive relationships to examine some of the practices which mediate the interpersonal and reflect on the need to understand the meanings of disengagement. We discuss some of the ways practices within and across different communities affect young people’s trajectories and professionals’ responses, such as developing resilience, preparation for leaving care and achieving independence. Whilst current policy and provision focuses on preparation for independence, the article claims that resilience emerges through community and considers the importance of developing supportive social ecologies for cared for children to sustain them in their transition from care. It also calls for an examination of assumptions of accountability and measurement in policy and the importance of hearing the voices of professionals and developing dynamic and responsive practices.
For many local authority children and family services in the UK faced with the task of responding to children and families facing difficulties and with declining budgets, there is an increasing ...imperative on how services can respond more effectively to the diverse needs of families on the edge of care. At the same time policy and paradigm shifts have affected the way in which social workers engage with families. This paper is rooted in research commissioned by one local authority that used an innovative visual ‘river of experience’ co- production approach to understand better the experiences of children and families on their journeys to the edge of care and to inform how statutory services might respond ‘better’, and possibly earlier, to prevent children being taken into care. The research highlights the gap between assumptions and practices of child and family services and the realities and needs of children and families. The paper discusses these disjunctions and draws out questions to challenge statutory services. In particular, the paper asks why, in spite of serial involvement of professionals, do children still end up in the care system. The paper contributes to current discourses about rethinking child protection, arguing for a different approach to responding to families facing difficulties involving human centred, holistic family support and a more reflexive and relational approach to professional practice.
This inaugural special issue of ‘Beyond the Text’ brings together a collection of visual arts (animation, creative and fine art, film, photographs, and zines) produced by children, young people, ...families, artists, and academics as part of co-created research during the 2020–2021 coronavirus pandemic. Our aim, in making these pieces available in this new publication format, is to illustrate the potential of visual arts as a form of co-creation and knowledge exchange which can transcend the challenges of researching ‘at a distance’, enable participants and co-researchers to share their stories, and support different ways of knowing for academic, policy, and public audiences. This is not to suggest that such methods offer transparent windows into participants’ worlds. As the reflections from the contributing authors consider, visual arts outputs leave room for audience interpretations, making them vulnerable to alternative readings, generating challenges and opportunities about how much it is possible to know about another and what is ethical to share. It is to these issues of ethics, representation, and voice that this special issue attends, reflecting on the possibilities of arts-based approaches for knowledge generation and exchange in and beyond the coronavirus pandemic.
This book confronts readers with questions emerging from the 'gap' between EU aspirations to reduce youth unemployment without increasing social exclusion - and what is actually happening in ...practice. Aimed at a diverse readership, it is based on a three year European Union (EU) project into education, training, guidance and employment (ETG) programmes for young adults across six countries. Insights are grounded in the lives and stories of disadvantaged young adults, and of those who work with them, bringing to life unintended impacts of well intended interventions. The authors consider the influence of shifting political and pedagogical ideologies in the EU on local practices and young peoples’ lives and choices. They also consider the impact of policy and performance management discourses ’on the ground’. This work uses rigorous yet innovative narrative forms to invite readers into a ’whole system’ inquiry into these complexities. Unemployed Youth and Social Exclusion in Europe will make an important contribution to reflecting critically on current policy and practice, as well as to academic understandings of unemployed youth, and restrictive and reflexive approaches to learning for inclusion across Europe.
Contents: Foreword, Karen Evans. Encounters: Orientations; The research wellspring for this book; Three starting stories: young Europeans being 'Activated' for employment; Youth transition research: changing metaphors and languages in a globalizing world. Lenses On The Shifting Landscape Of 'Activation': Activation practices: an emerging topography; Working-identities in (com)motion; Agency, empowerment, and activation: balancing contradictions; Re-vis(ion)ing professional practice with young unemployed adults. Paradoxes And Possibilities: Policy, Practice And Research: Making the bridge: introduction; Ideologies and policy discourses: impacts from 'On High' and 'Afar'; Restrictive and reflexive activation discourses explored; Learning and improvisation at the policy-practice interface; Epilogue; Appendix; Bibliography; Index.
Susan Warner Weil is a Professor at the University of the West of England, UK. Danny Wildemeersch is a Professor at the University of Leuven, Belgium. Dr Theo Jansen lectures at the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
The COVID-19 pandemic transformed the nature of family life in countries across the world. School, and workplace closures meant that families spent more time at home and had to confront new economic, ...social, and psychological challenges as a result of lockdowns and the greater proximity of family members. Policy, research and media coverage of the pandemic’s impact on family life has focused primarily on the economic costs borne by households. This article draws on the findings from an empirical research project funded by the UK Nuffield Foundation on “Politics, Participation and Pandemics: Growing up under COVID-19”, which worked with young people as co-researchers, to present an innovative perspective on the impact of lockdown on family relationships. The research team adopted a longitudinal ethnographic action research approach to document and make sense of the experiences of young people (aged 14–18) in four countries: Italy, Lebanon Singapore and the United Kingdom. The project used digital ethnography and participatory methods to track the responses of 70 young people to the challenges created by the pandemic. The study used the family as a prism for understanding how the lives of children and young people in different family circumstances and relationships were affected by the crisis. This article analyses, firstly, the complex shifting dynamics within households to identify the transformative effects of the pandemic on family life in various socio-cultural contexts. Secondly, it examines how young people’s agency shaped family dynamics. In conclusion, the authors recommend how the findings from the study can be used to inform government interventions designed to minimise the impacts of the pandemic on the social well-being and rights of children and young people, and to recognise them as active participants in family and civic life both during and after the pandemic
For many local authority children and family services in the UK faced with the task of responding to children and families facing difficulties and with declining budgets, there is an increasing ...imperative on how services can respond more effectively to the diverse needs of families on the edge of care. At the same time policy and paradigm shifts have affected the way in which social workers engage with families. This paper is rooted in research commissioned by one local authority that used an innovative visual ‘river of experience’ co- production approach to understand better the experiences of children and families on their journeys to the edge of care and to inform how statutory services might respond ‘better’, and possibly earlier, to prevent children being taken into care. The research highlights the gap between assumptions and practices of child and family services and the realities and needs of children and families. The paper discusses these disjunctions and draws out questions to challenge statutory services. In particular, the paper asks why, in spite of serial involvement of professionals, do children still end up in the care system. The paper contributes to current discourses about rethinking child protection, arguing for a different approach to responding to families facing difficulties involving human centred, holistic family support and a more reflexive and relational approach to professional practice.
•The continuing gap between services and the needs of children and families•Children's voices frequently go unheard in statutory professional interventions.•Insufficient attention to emotional/psychological legacy of early neglect•Reiterates the need for re-imagining child protection as family-centred practice•Need for Children and Family services to be flexible and adaptive learning systems
This paper discusses learning from a project that set out to explore how the general public perceived the value of public art in the context of urban regeneration of a city centre space. Whilst not ...set up explicitly as an action research project, the paper discusses the way in which participatory public art projects of this kind can be understood and valued as action research processes. The paper is set within contemporary debates about urban development and new genre public art, and is based on a project that deliberately set out to challenge and interrupt conventional 'ways of seeing' about urban design and redevelopment and so provide a different context - a creative action space - for public involvement. The project focused particularly on the role of children and how playfulness and the input from children might activate alternative possibilities for imagining urban space as a key element to a 'liveable' urban realm. The paper discusses different levels of learning that arose from people's experience and engagement with the installation and draws conclusions about the role of art in urban regeneration.
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