Participation has been discussed as a multi-layered concept with varied outlooks on children's lived experiences. Children's participation occupies a complicated terrain in that whose participation ...counts and how it manifests itself within complex adult-child relations are enduring questions in the early childhood field. This qualitative study explored early years practitioners' perspectives about children's participation through their Froebelian lenses in the Scottish context. Semi-structured in-depth interviews (n = 14) were conducted online (May 2020-September 2020). As a result of the thematic analysis, three interrelated themes unfold practitioners' conceptualisations of children's participation: (i) listening to children's perspectives, (ii) acting upon children's perspectives and (iii) active learning and development. The study shows that Froebelian approaches open diverse intellectual spaces for practitioners to consider children's participation, agency and competency alongside everyday pedagogical encounters. Children's participation, which was not a common concept in Froebel's time, is reconceptualised by the practitioners in this research and identified as a substantial but fluid concept in children's multiple experiences, which is also acknowledged as children's rights.
In this article, the term ‘participation’ refers to the right of the child to express their views in matters affecting them and for their views to be acted upon as appropriate. While there is a ...growing emphasis in social work practice on a child’s right to participate, less attention has been given to how best to support children’s participation. A systematic review and narrative synthesis of twenty studies with varying methods explores how effective processes, commonly used in social work practice, are in supporting children’s participation in decisions concerning their personal welfare, protection and care. The review explores the effectiveness of the following processes: the use of advocates; a child’s attendance at an assessment, planning or review meeting; Family Welfare Conferences; and recording a child’s views in writing. There is indicative evidence that the use of advocates is an effective means of supporting children’s participation. Findings in relation to the other processes reviewed are mixed. A key factor influencing how effective these processes are in supporting children’s participation is the quality of the relationship with the child and his or her caseworker.
Research indicates that child welfare services reach out to children exposed to violence unequally depending on the child's social background, living conditions and violence type.
Based on the notion ...of selective recognition of vulnerability and risk, this study explores which children CWS pursue to a complete child welfare investigation.
A register was set up including all children (n = 1764) between 7 and 12 years that were investigated for suspected exposure to violence by CWS in the municipality of the City of Stockholm, Sweden, in 2019.
This cohort was systematically compared to demographic data and national self-report prevalence studies to explore possible biases regarding which children CWS investigates. Descriptive analysis, cluster analysis and logistic regressions were used.
The results confirm previous research that children exposed to violence have reduced access to material resources and inferior living conditions compared to non-exposed children. Physical abuse is more prevalent among boys of foreign backgrounds in stable, two-parent families residing in higher-status suburbs. Conversely, neglect is more common among children of Swedish backgrounds in low-income, single-parent households living in low-status suburbs. In comparison with self-reported prevalence studies, sexual and psychological abuse seem underrepresented in the study group, while neglect and violence in the family are relatively more frequently investigated compared to self-reported prevalence studies.
The results indicate that CWS should develop its methods to reach certain vulnerable groups that are underrepresented for safeguarding and support, for example, girls exposed to sexual abuse.
Advances in Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED) are providing teachers with a wealth of new tools and smart services to facilitate student learning. Meanwhile, growing public concern over the ...potentially harmful societal effects of AI has prompted the publication of a flurry of AI ethics guidelines and policy documents authored by national and international government agencies, academic consortia and industrial stakeholders. AI ethics policy guidance specific to children and K-12 education has lagged behind; this scene is swiftly changing. In this paper, we examine the ethical principles currently informing AI ethics policy development for children and K-12 education. To accomplish this, we located four recent and globally relevant Artificial Intelligence in K-12 Education (AIEdK-12) ethics guideline statements; we then performed a content analysis of these documents using eleven AI ethics principles identified by Jobin et al. (2019). We found that these AIEdK-12 ethics guidelines employed many of the core principles already employed in non-AIEdK-12 documents—Transparency; Justice and Fairness; Non-maleficence; Responsibility; Privacy; Beneficence; Freedom & Autonomy—and were sometimes adapted for children. We further identified four new ethical principles being employed that are unique to K-12 education, specifically: Pedagogical Appropriateness; Children's Rights; AI Literacy; and Teacher Well-being. Our analysis also calls for a decolonized “humanized posthuman” ethic able to address the intensifying human-AI collaborative environment in classrooms, and able to weigh the complex indications and contraindications for children's and youth's cognitive, social-emotional, physical, cultural and political development.
La mortalidad y formas graves atribuibles al COVID-19 en población pediátrica han sido bajas en comparación con los adultos. No obstante, los niños, niñas y adolescentes (NNA) constituyen un universo ...especialmente afectado por la pandemia, en cuanto a restricción y limitación de sus derechos. La Subcomisión de Derechos de la Niñez y Adolescencia y el Comité de Pediatría Social de la Sociedad Argentina de Pediatría entendieron trascendente recolectar sus voces para relevar el impacto que la transición de la situación de pandemia por COVID-19 a la actual "nueva normalidad" ha producido en los sentimientos, emociones y deseos de los NNA en Argentina. Realizamos un estudio cualitativo, descriptivo, basado en encuesta anónima, entre NNA argentinos de 6 a 18 años residentes en Argentina. El análisis incluyó 1537 entrevistas efectivas. Los resultados permitieron sugerir recomendaciones para desarrollar estrategias de afrontamiento, contención y acompañamiento de los NNA en la pospandemia.
This book focuses on the significance of family in child welfare (CW) services from multidisciplinary perspectives. The authors are concerned with how families experience encounters with CW workers, ...how professional CW work with families is guided by rules and principles, and how social structures and ideologies influence CW work. Taken together, the chapters contribute to a comprehensive understanding of how CW workers should understand the importance of family for children. The book is important for everyone who works with the welfare of children and their families, and for those who educate CW workers. Although the context for many of the discussions in the book is Norwegian CW work, the topics are general, recognisable and relevant to similar discussions in other countries. The book is intended for CW workers, policymakers, researchers, and teachers and students in social work and child welfare study programmes.
The United Nations Convention on Children’s Rights and the subsequent African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child together with the Bill of Children’s Rights and numerous other policies ...and regulations in many African countries have set the precedent for children’s rights to be respected and implemented across the African Continent. However, little is known about the actual advancement of children’s rights within Sub-Saharan Africa; hence, the purpose of this study was to explore the advancement of children’s rights within an African context. This qualitative study included a sample of eight respected leaders on different aspects of children’s rights, including academics; policy analysts; directors of children’s centres; legal experts; and members of national, regional, and international committees on children’s rights issues. Data were collected through individual interviews, a questionnaire and the analysis of instruments on children’s rights. The findings indicate there have been considerable improvements in terms of the development of policies and instruments concerning children’s rights. However, challenges around implementation were vividly conspicuous. It is argued here that school psychologists should adopt a social justice framework embedded within a rights based approach to promote children’s rights within the African context.
Nurses’ involvement of children in their care is essential to quality pediatric care. Various international guidelines stress the need for children's involvement in decisions and activities affecting ...their care and lives; widely known among them is the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This convention gives children the right to participate in decisions and activities that affect their growth and development.
This study assessed the level of nursing staff involvement of children in care activities and the benefits they perceived from this involvement.
Descriptive cross-sectional study.
Units of Evangelical Church of Ghana Hospital, Kpandai rendering services for children.
A total of 116 nursing staff members were invited to participate; 97 (84%) responded. The term "nurses" in this study includes unlicensed nursing assistants, as well as licensed professional nursing staff.
Descriptive statistics were used to analyze participants’ demographic characteristics and the nurses’ perceived benefits derived from children's involvement in care activities. A Chi-square test was used to analyze associations between nurses’ demographic data and the level of nurses’ involvement of children in care activities at a significance level of p< 0.05.
A majority (56.7%) of the nurses poorly involved children in their care activities. They either involved children to some extent or did not involve children at all. Nurses’ age and gender predicted involvement. Older nurses aged 30 and above (56.4%) were more likely to involve children in care activities than those under 30 (26.1%) p=0.003. Female nurses (31.7%) were marginally less likely to involve children in their care activities than their male colleagues (51.8%) p=0.049. Most of the nurses agreed to several impactful benefits of involving children in care activities, thus benefiting children, caregivers, and health professionals.
The overall level of nurses’ involvement of children in care activities was poor. Policy documents to safeguard children's rights in healthcare involvement must be developed and implemented from the national down to the hospital level to safeguard children's rights to healthcare involvement.
This article considers the predicament of a low-status Tuareg woman living close by her former master's family in rural central Niger in 2010; for the family, she maintained the status of taklit ...("slave descendant," feminine singular of iklan), somewhere along the spectrum between paid family servant and domestic slave. Analysis focuses on why she and so many like her have not managed to improve their life chances by moving to town, despite the Nigerien ban on slavery. Relevant factors include her lack of a family support network, the continued impact of prejudice against former slaves, a fear of possibly worsening her economic standing via such a move, and the strong moral compulsion of ordained gender roles in contemporary Sahelian cities. Former mistresses/masters also resisted the departure of women like her from wealthy herding households because of their housework contribution and their crucial role in producing the next generation of workers.
Article 43 of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child mandates state parties to report on their efforts made towards implementing treaty provisions to the African Committee on the ...Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC). The aim of this process is to afford states an opportunity to internally assess their progress and to grant the ACERWC an opportunity to guide states in the implementation of the treaty provisions through constructive dialogue during the state reporting process and through concluding observations which states are required to implement. While much has been written about the value of the state reporting process, not much has been said about the measures taken by states to implement the concluding observations from the state reporting process. The concluding observations offer a premise on which to advance a discourse on state implementation of the regional norms, given that they emanate from an incisive reflection of state parties' reports by the ACERWC. This paper finds that while the ratification of the African Children's Charter by the countries under consideration has led to normative and institutional changes in these countries, there are pertinent challenges that need to be addressed in the realisation of children's rights in Africa. Through the concluding observations, this paper examines the domestic implementation of children's rights in four African countries, namely: Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt.
