In this commentary on intervention studies in times and situations of war, violence and cultural conflict, I focus on the need to appropriately position children in specific situations. This involves ...acknowledging their presence and their rights, recognizing their participation, and incorporating their activities with the sociocultural and ecological environments. To theoretically position children in cultural conflict, I draw on Gottlieb's 1991 concept of “coaction” to analyze relations between agentic children and culture in a system of coactions. I propose the coacting system as an appropriate unit of analysis for understanding children's development and as a basis for intervention and policy following violence and cultural conflict. The papers in this special issue demand that developmental science attend to children's presence, participation, and activities as the basis for intervention and research.
Aim
This study investigated the impact of being in family foster care on selected health determinants and participation in Child Health Services (CHS).
Methods
Two groups of 100 children, born ...between 1992 and 2008, were studied using data from Swedish Child Health Services for the preschool period up to the age of six. The first group had been in family foster care, and the controls, matched for age, sex and geographic location, had not. Descriptive statistics were used to describe differences in health determinants and participation in Child Health Services between the two groups.
Results
The foster care group had higher health risks, with lower rates of breastfeeding and higher levels of parental smoking. They were less likely to have received immunisations and attended key nurse or physician visits and speech and vision screening. Missing data for the phenylketonuria test were more common in children in family foster care.
Conclusion
Children in family foster care were exposed to more health risks than the control children and had lower participation in the universal child health programme during the preschool period. These results call for secure access to high‐quality preventive health care for this particularly vulnerable group of children.
Jordan’s Principle is a child-first principle designed to ensure First Nation children do not experience delays, denials, or disruptions of services ordinarily available to other children in Canada. ...It was envisioned as a human rights principle tailored to address the unique risks of inequitable treatment arising from the complex structure of public services for First Nations. In 2016, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) found the federal government’s failure to implement Jordan’s Principle constitutes discrimination on the basis of race and/or national or ethnic origin, and ordered the federal government to cease this discrimination. In response, the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, one of the complainants in the case and a primary champion of Jordan’s Principle, called on the federal government to implement the principle immediately in keeping with the conclusions laid out in a 2015 report by the Jordan’s Principle Working Group (JPWG, 2015). This article provides an overview of the research presented and conclusions drawn in the report, integrating analysis of the initial CHRT rulings on Jordan’s Principle and of access to information documents received in the year following release of the report. Focusing on the rulings that the CHRT issued between January and September of 2016, we highlight requirements that the CHRT ruled the federal government must fulfill, as well as additional considerations that should be taken into account in implementing Jordan’s Principle.
Le principe de Jordan est un principe de l’enfant d’abord qui vise à assurer que tous les enfants des Premières Nations reçoivent, sans délai, refus ou perturbation, les services qui seraient habituellement à la disposition des autres enfants au Canada. Il s’agissait d’un principe des droits de la personne conçu pour remédier aux risques uniques d’un traitement inéquitable découlant de la structure complexe des services publics pour les Premières Nations. Le Tribunal canadien des droits de la personne (TCDP) a récemment conclu que la non-application du principe de Jordan par le gouvernement fédéral constituait une discrimination fondée sur la race et/ou l’origine nationale ou ethnique et a ordonné au gouvernement fédéral de mettre fin à cette discrimination. En réponse, la Société de soutien à l’enfance et à la famille des Premières Nations du Canada, l’un des plaignants dans l’affaire et l’un des principaux défenseurs du principe de Jordan, a fait appel au gouvernement fédéral afin de mettre en œuvre ce principe immédiatement, conformément aux conclusions du rapport de 2015 du groupe de travail sur le principe de Jordan. Cet article donne un aperçu des recherches présentées et des conclusions du rapport, en intégrant l’analyse des décisions du TCDP sur le principe de Jordan et les documents d’accès récemment reçus. En nous concentrant sur les décisions rendues par le TCDP entre janvier et septembre 2016, nous soulignons les exigences que le TCDP a imposées au gouvernement fédéral, ainsi que des considérations supplémentaires à prendre en compte lors de la mise en œuvre du principe de Jordan.
School psychology and children’s rights have great potential, well beyond what has been realized, for advancing the best interests of children, their communities, and societies. A child rights ...approach infused into school psychology can significantly contribute to the fulfillment of this potential. To respect and illuminate these factors and possibilities, a brief history of children’s rights is presented, its major components as embodied in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and their relevance for education and the school community are clarified, and the opportunities for school psychology to champion and deeply integrate children’s rights in policy and practice are explored. Employing this base, a proposal is made for a new social contract between school psychology and those it serves which moves beyond reactive problem oriented interventions to give primacy to proactive promotion of the well-being and full holistic development of the child, employing a prospective human development models emphasizing progressive achievement of self-stewardship for all children.
A growing number of empirical studies deal with children’s participation in care relationships in the family. Based on a review of empirical findings in the UK and Germany, this article discusses ...care-giving children in terms of vulnerability and agency. The focus is set on understandings of family life as interdependent and reciprocal relationships between parents and their minor children. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and social-political programmes in the UK are analysed with regard to their influence on child carers’ agency and participation as social citizens. The article contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of child carers, and contributes to the development of a theory of care.
In recent years, the use of social media among parents has increased rapidly. Before the children began to step, they have digital footprints through their parents' social media sharing. These ...rapidly increasing parental shares caused the concept of 'sharenting' derived from the words 'parenting' and share' to enter the literature. The social media, while providing some benefits to the parents, unconscious sharing can have potentially damaging children to follow up to adulthood. Parents unwittingly ignore their children's privacy, the right to be forgotten and can be instrumental in exploitation by others. There are a few sources of research and resources that will help parents recognize the impact of their sharing with their children and help them use healthy social media. The purpose of this article is to explore the possible legal solutions to this issue and to present a childcentered, public health-based proposal that parents will consider when sharing about their children and while at the same time protecting the child's rights and using social media without limiting parental freedom of expression. Keywords: Social Media, Parent, Child Rights, Sharenting Son yillarda ebeveynler arasinda sosyal medya kullanimi hizli bir sekilde artmistir. Cocuklar henuz adim atmaya baslamadan cok daha once ebeveynlerinin sosyal medya paylasimlari araciligi ile dijital ayak izlerine sahip olmaktadir. Hizli bir sekilde artan bu ebeveyn paylasimlari 'parenting' ve 'share' kelimelerinden turetilmis 'sharenting' kavraminin literature girmesine neden olmustur. Sosyal medya, ebeveynlere bir takim faydalar saglamakla birlikte, bilincsizce yapilan paylasimlar, cocuklarini yetiskinlige kadar takip edecek zararlara sebep olabilmektedir. Ebeveynler farkinda olmadan cocuklarinin mahremiyet, unutulma hakkini ihmal etmekte ve bunun baskalari tarafindan istismar edilmesine araci olabilmektedir. Ebeveynlerin cocuklariyla ilgili yaptiklari paylasimlarin etkilerini fark etmelerini saglayacak ve sosyal medyanin saglikli kullaniminda onlara yardimci olacak az sayida arastirma ve kaynak bulunmaktadir. Bu derlemenin amaci, bu konuyla ilgili olasi yasal cozumleri kesfetmek, ebeveynler ve diger paylasimcilar icin cocuklar hakkinda paylasim yaparken goz onune alacaklari cocuk merkezli, halk sagligi temelli onerileri sunmak, cocugun haklarini korurken ayni zamanda da ebeveynin ifade etme ozgurlugunu sinirlamaksizin sosyal medya kullanimini saglamaktir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Sosyal Medya, Ebeveyn, Cocuk Hakki, Sharenting
The present study examines strategies conference facilitators used to engage foster care youth in decision-making in the context of permanency planning family team conferences. Data collection ...included observations of permanency planning family team conferences, followed by interviews with foster care youth and conference facilitators. Data analysis focused on gaining a deeper understanding of how facilitators incorporate youth into decision-making, with a specific focus on the strategies they employed. Four strategies were identified in the analysis: creating a safe space, encouraging the youth voice, re-balancing power, and establishing a personal connection. The study's policy and practice implications, limitations and areas of further research are presented.
•Examined youth engagement in Team Decision Making•Used ethnographic methods•Results demonstrate how procedural justice may be executed with youth in foster care.•Results highlight strategies facilitators use to engage youth in decision making.
This paper discusses participatory research with young people who are leaving public care in Finland to begin independent lives. The aim of the research, organised by SOS Children's Villages ...International, was to bring about change in alternative care arrangements, particularly those involving young people's transition to independence. The project used a participatory research design based on employing care-leaving peers as co-researchers. This paper adheres to the methodological principles of empowerment in analysing the personal experiences of young people leaving alternative care with the goal of informing good practice. The findings suggest that the peer research method can be an effective means of empowering young people to develop research skills and to be involved in knowledge production, as well as serving as a means of promoting improved services for "care-leavers", those young people who are leaving either foster care or institutional care. The participatory and peer research method challenges the traditional understandings of expertise and knowledge production. Although the hierarchy between adult researchers and young people as co-researchers is still evident, the method provides possibilities for better understanding the social- and health-service systems and their challenges and pitfalls from a user's perspective.
Little research has focused on and tried to understand the link between children's participation in sports and their human rights. In Norway, children's leisure athletics and sports participation are ...regulated through rules of sport (crs), voted in the Executive Board of the Norwegian Olympic and Paraolympic Committee and Confederation of Sports ("Idrettstinget"). The crs represent formal legislation rooted in the un Convention on the Rights of the Child, binding for all Norwegian sport coaches in their work with children until the age of 13. This qualitative study investigates coaches' views of talent and talent development, and examines their views in the children's rights perspective. The study is based on interviews with eight professional coaches in football (soccer), gymnastics, swimming and skiing. In important areas the coaches' views are consistent with children's rights; however, there are also coaches who speak out in violation of the rights.
In a previous article (Stoecklin, 2017), I considered the example of the "paradox of institutionalisation" (Stammers, 2013) occurring in the drafting of the General Comment on Children in Street ...Situations (UNCRC, 2016). The vision of children's "living rights" as the outcome of a structured process translating specific claims into an institutionalised set of norms (Hanson and Nieuwenhuys, 2013) has been identified. Analysis of the labels used for "street children" underlines the transformability of signification, domination and legitimation in the theory of structuration (Giddens, 1979, 1984). In this article, a theory of situated agency is outlined. It provides a new framework to understand the institutionalisation of children's rights as the dual structuration of subjects (children) and objects (rights) occuring in given contexts. This makes "rights acting children" emerge as an interdisciplinary concept.
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