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Qualitative research has long critiqued a simplistic association between youth parenting and poor outcomes. Despite this, the UK youth parenting policy continues to view young parents through a narrow deficit lens, focused on assumed risk rather than structural inequalities. The paper brings together the direct accounts of young parents' experiences, with ethnographic observation of practice, to argue that discrimination is the critical issue associated with being a young parent. This is then set within a wider critique of the policy framework which, it is argued, perpetuates and normalises negative ideas about young parents prevalent in political, societal and cultural processes. An integrative theoretical approach is used to highlight how a deficit lens at a policy level upholds, rather than undermines, young parents' intersectional experiences of discrimination and has ethical implications for practitioners working with them. The paper calls for a reorientation of policy which addresses and disrupts discrimination.

This paper examines the participation of children and young people within government consultation pro-cesses. It considers the recent Department for Education consultation on its statutory guidance for schools for Relationships and Sex Education in England. The paper is based on a Freedom of Information request for the consultation responses categorised as from ‘young people’. We identify two issues in our interrogation of the data. First, there is evidence that a substantial proportion of responses were not submitted by young people. Second, the consultation approach did not include all the features necessary for meaningful consultation. We consider the implications for the youth consultation on policy matters that affect them.

This paper responds to concerns over the assumed ‘feminisation’ of early childhood education and care (ECEC) and adds children's perspectives to debates on whether more men should work in ECEC. Pictorial conversations were conducted with 280 children aged 2–6 years old from the cities of Edinburgh, Hong Kong and Tianjin. Findings show that although children sometimes related practitioners to their gendered experiences in and outside ECEC, children's gender subjectivities are dynamic and are linked to their short-term and long-term, fluid and stable, and interactive relationships with practitioners. This paper argues that practitioners need to openly discuss gender with children in ECEC practices and pedagogies.

Based on a qualitative study of youth identities in Greece, the paper unpacks the dynamic processes of ethnonational (dis)identification and belonging that Albanian young migrants are implicated in. Analysis of in-depth interviews illustrates how racism, coupled with their lack of citizenship, affects their (dis)identifications. Additionally, categorisation is reported to crucially mediate their belonging, giving rise to a double-edged sense of otherness and alienation. The paper concludes by putting forward a conceptualisation of young migrants’ collective identities as involving the emotive dialectic of (dis)identification, categorisation and belonging, along with negotiation of boundaries and acceptance by ‘others’ in both home and settlement societies.

This paper presents a review of the international research literature published since 2005 focusing specifically on sibling relationships in fostering and adoptive families. It presents an overview of the current state of knowledge regarding sibling relationships of fostered and adopted children as well as gaps and limitations. The review concludes that while methodological advances are apparent in this body of work siblinghood is poorly conceptualised and there has been inadequate attention to the perspectives of children. The paper goes on to suggest that one possible source of insight comes from recent work undertaken within social anthropology and sociology and the application of this theoretical and methodological approach to the study of siblinghood in out-of-home care is considered.

Interviews with survivors of intimate partner violence were conducted in order to gain information on the transition from violent relationships to new non-violent relationships. A subset of this data was re-analyzed using Social Relational Theory to gain further insight into the roles of children and important others who were identified as impacting this transition for mothers who had exited violent relationships. This paper reviews two major themes discovered during the SRT analysis that were inherent in the women’s experiences: 1) agency of children, family, peers, and community; and 2) power. In addition, this paper suggests implications for research, intervention, and psychotherapeutic practice.

Although armed conflicts and crises affect people of all ages, children are particularly susceptible to the effects of war. One significant consequence of armed conflict that is especially critical for children's well-being, is when the belligerents use tactics specifically focused on harming children, including child soldier recruitment. Despite the increased attention of policy-makers, we still lack systematic knowledge of how many children are directly and indirectly at risk of being recruited by state and non-state actors. In overcoming this gap, we have collected data on the use of children by state and non-state actors from 2010 onwards. Moreover, we estimate the number of children at risk of recruitment. The results of our mapping and estimation sketch a dark picture. According to our estimates, in 2020, approximately 337 million children (or 14%, or more than one in eight of all children globally) were living in a conflict zone with reported child soldier recruitment—that is less than 50 km from ongoing conflict, which involved at least one actor who has been reported to recruit children. We close the paper by taking stock of the current knowledge on the root causes of child soldiering, and we discuss some policy implications.

Increasing rates of school enrolment have changed childhoods in the global South, so that it is now the norm for children to attend at least some years of primary school. This paper explores the extent to which valuing of children as educational projects and outcomes may be displacing previous valuations of children as contributors to the domestic economy. The paper draws on qualitative interview data from Young Lives, a longitudinal study of children growing up in four developing countries, using a case study approach to explore the experiences of four children in rural Andhra Pradesh, India. The paper suggests that children are balancing expectations for the future with responsibilities to their families in the present, and concludes that the over-valuing of formal qualifications and the under-valuing of forms of work such as agriculture risk being internalised by children, leaving those who do not succeed feeling they are ‘a waste’.

This paper focuses on the experiences of children and young people whose parents employ personal assistant(s) (PAs). It describes findings from a UK-based qualitative doctoral research study which explored the significance, influence and meaning of the PA role in supporting family life. Ten children and young adults aged 8–28 years with lived experience were interviewed face to face as part of this study, which also explored the perspectives of disabled parents and PAs. Findings reveal that PA support can alter both the quality and nature of the parent/child relationship. The provision of personal assistance can support family life and prevent children from becoming ‘young carers’; however, it can also create tension, anxiety and even destabilise family life.

In recent years, social exclusion has gained the attention of governments around the world. This paper reports on a qualitative study involving 27 young men aged 14-19 years experiencing particular forms of exclusion in the context of Northern Irish society. The study used a focus group methodology to elicit their views with the aim of exploring both emotional and psychological needs and the structural factors that may contribute to their experiences of social exclusion. The findings reveal a range of unmet social and psychological needs, the impact of sectarianism and segregation, and a paucity of support systems in place. The paper concludes by making recommendations about how policy-makers and practitioners could find more imaginative ways of engaging such vulnerable young men to reduce social exclusion. Language: en

Recent public concern about youth gangs in Britain has prompted a narrow, almost stereotypical, range of US-derived policy responses. This paper argues that family support is an unexplored but potentially effective gang reduction tool, but in order to overcome persistent concerns regarding misidentification, stigmatic labelling and policy misdirection, programmes must not only be ‘good science’ but also be non-punitive, acceptable to families and context-sensitive. Beginning with a discussion of the grounds for intervention, the paper identifies likely barriers from the point of view of the parents of gang members, and from these, derives necessary standards for effective support. The paper describes some promising (‘public health oriented’) and unpromising (‘criminal justice oriented’) programmes, and argues for more ‘gang-sensitive’ family support and a related research agenda.

This paper explores children’s understandings of poverty, ill-being and well-being in Ethiopia using data collected through group exercises with children aged 5–6 and 11–13 participating in Young Lives, an international study of childhood poverty. In some respects the characteristics of poverty reported by children resemble those reported by adults participating in similar exercises. However, the children’s addition of appearance and clothing, and their explanations of the reasoning behind the importance of these indicators of well-being reflect growing inequalities in Ethiopia, where experiences of relative poverty and social exclusion are increasingly common. This evidence argues for broadening the focus of child poverty reduction to include the psychosocial costs of lacking the culturally specific resources required for full participation in society. The paper also illustrates ways in which poverty can be explored by asking about ill-being and that children as young as five years are able to address these themes through well-designed research methods. � 2010 The Author(s). Journal compilation � 2010 National Children’s Bureau and Blackwell Publishing Limited.

Reflexivity has received relatively little analytic attention in discussions of younger adolescents’ agency. Using interview data from a sample of South Korean adolescents, this paper explores whether and how they manifested reflexivity concerning the impacts of socioeconomic inequality on their own occupational prospects. Through combining and adapting existing theorisations, it proposes a heuristic model for analysing adolescents’ reflexivity based on three interrelated continua: reflectiveness, criticality and boundedness. It is hoped this model will facilitate a more nuanced understanding of how adolescents’ agency is constructed in relation to their developing capacity for reflexivity and the impacts of structural inequalities upon it.

This paper explores the perspectives of 29 child language brokers living in the UK who interpret for their family following migration. They were presented with vignette stories depicting a potentially conflictual situation between a language broker, a parent and an adult ‘other’ in a position of power or authority. Drawing on debates about language brokering as a family care practice, the ‘parentified child’ and discussions about non‐normative childhoods, the analysis highlights how the role played by the adult ‘other’, coupled with a sometimes‐hostile sociocultural context, can exaggerate tensions or facilitate interactions in the parent–child relationship. The young people's views and experiences illuminate how they navigate these complexities.

This paper explores how more or less relationally oriented forms of professional practices could be expressed in collaborations between young people living with bodily impairments and their multiprofessional teams. The analysis was based on life-mode interviews with young people (16– 20 years), individual and focus group interviews with the professionals and participant observation in team meetings. Drawing on sociocultural perspectives on participation and the workings of power, different discourses, subject positions and participatory strategies were recognised and related to the participation of the young people. Finally, the relevance of the findings for practice is reflected on in a participation rights perspective.

Trauma-informed practice has been developing for decades, though much remains unknown regarding how it is understood and practised. Drawing upon focus group data from an evaluation of a trauma-informed approach (TIA) implemented by an organisation in Southeast England, this paper provides a unique perspective of 31 staff members and 18 young people. Results indicate how choice and control, key elements of a TIA, align with the Capability Approach (CA). The CA is then used as a novel analytic framework to examine the data. A ‘Trauma-Informed Capabilities Approach’ is introduced as a holistic, person-centred way of conceptualising young trauma survivors’ wellbeing.

This paper develops understandings of how being publicly identified and consequently labelled as ‘looked after’ can have damaging consequences for young people, particularly in how they are perceived by their peers in the context of schooling. Based on qualitative research in northern England utilising participatory approaches with young people and interviews with support staff, we explore barriers that inhibit young people’s sense of belonging. We highlight how the very processes and practices set up to support the young people can often have unintended consequences by routinely positioning them as Other, before considering the implications for education and schooling in particular.

This paper explores how children's perceptions of their agency, as something that is closely associated with its exercise, appear in relation to social structural factors, especially their socioeconomic positions, as they age. Using data from 862 10–18 years old in South Korea, we examine how children's expressed optimism about their ability to achieve their occupational choices can conceal the impact of structural factors on their ‘choices’ and dispositions for (non-)action over time. Based on the findings, we argue for a more careful interpretation of children's sense of agency that recognises its propensity to continuously adjust in contexts of structural inequality.

There is limited knowledge about key factors that enable adolescent girls with a low socioeconomic position (SEP) to adopt a healthy lifestyle. This paper aims to better understand the complexity of addressing health behaviour of adolescent girls with a low SEP by gaining insights into (i) the perspectives of adolescent girls with a low SEP (n = 26) on a healthy lifestyle, (ii) how to develop health promotion that fits these girls’ daily realities, by using participatory action research (PAR) in which girls developed health promotion materials. The study offers an understanding of girls’ daily lives and how health promotion could be improved.

Young people aged between 12 and 17 across three major British cities — London, Leeds and Nottingham — were invited to play the role of ‘jurors’ on a case where ‘the Internet was put on trial’. The recommendations reported in this paper are intended to improve digital experience and online safety as contributions to policy. These recommendations derive from the ‘youth jurors’ policy deliberations designed to encourage young people to reflect on their digital experience and collectively develop their own problem definitions and solutions.

Poverty in early childhood is pervasive, effecting every aspect of children’s lives. Under current government policies child poverty in the UK is predicted to rise to 40% by 2022. Dominant discourses of poverty have historically focussed on an over-arching discourse of moral responsibility essentially relating to deserving and underserving poor. This paper examines how government policy continues to significantly impact on young children and families low incomes in early childhood and how stigmatised discourses about welfare, work are pervasive. It is argued that discourses of redistribution and children’s rights deserve greater recognition if poverty is to be addressed.

This paper engages with the lived and experiential aspects of (trans)national identities in childhood, through the exploration of an ethnographic biography of a Greek-Albanian boy in Athens. Through a grounded ethnographic approach, we examine the ways in which he experiences and negotiates his (trans)national identity. Our analysis demonstrates the everyday subtle and sophisticated understanding of the complexities and contradictions of national identities, and the child’s own positioning within that. In conclusion, we suggest that interdisciplinary approaches should be assumed in the study of (trans)national identities in childhood, and ones that are grounded in children’s own meaning making of their experiences of such identities.

This paper reports the findings of a recent scoping study on the nature, evidence base and policy context of breakfast clubs and school holiday projects in the UK and aims to do three things. Firstly, bring child feeding initiatives firmly into the critical food and poverty debate. Secondly, critically assess the state of evidence on these projects and their perceived role in the lives of children at risk of, or experiencing, poverty. Thirdly, set out the next steps which will be required to build a systematic body of research on child feeding projects within the food and poverty research agenda.

The New Sociology of Childhood has generated a significant literature that illustrates children's agency in a wide range of contexts and settings but which oversimplifies the notion of agency. This paper develops Paul Hoggett's work on agency in the context of disadvantage to demonstrate the ways in which young people's agency is contingent on time and environmental contexts. We argue that the agency that marginalised young people enact can both implicitly pay homage to neo-liberal ideals of individual autonomy and self, while simultaneously resisting other neo-liberal ideals relating to parental and family responsibilities. This ambiguity in young people's relationship to neo-liberal ideals highlights a contradiction inherent in the same ideals, where expectations of young people with respect to their human capital development are placed uneasily alongside the notion that families are key socialising agents of young people.

This paper posits the need to align child participation principles and the emerging field of digital pedagogies. Informed by a contextualisation of children's participatory rights in contemporary technologically enhanced classrooms, the challenges of facilitating Voice Inclusive Practices are explored. Education is experiencing unprecedented change, particularly in the area of digital pedagogies, student engagement and voice. Such developments necessitate a participatory, Voice Inclusive Practice model relevant to contemporary education contexts where digital pedagogies are engaged. The potential of digital spaces in education will only be fully realised when student perspectives are included in the planning and implementation of digital pedagogies.

This paper discusses the development of a children's rights-based measure of participation and the findings from its use in a survey of 10- to 11-year-old children (n = 3773). The measure, which was developed in collaboration with a group of children, had a high reliability (Cronbach's alpha = 0.89). Findings suggest that children's positive experience of their participation rights is higher in school than in community, and higher for girls compared to boys. It is argued that involving children in the ‘measurement’ of their own lives has the potential to generate more authentic data on children's lived experiences.

This paper reports findings about parents' experiences of caring for young people with Autistic Spectrum Conditions (ASCs) moving into adulthood. In-depth interviews were conducted with 38 parents of young people (15–21 years) with ASCs. Data were analysed thematically. In the perceived absence of service support, parents' acted as ‘care-coordinators’ and ‘life-supporters’ for their child as they moved into adulthood. These roles came with little choice, emotional demands and personal restrictions. Being supported was important for parents, but preferences differed regarding what this should look like. Implications for policy are discussed.

Sure Start Children's Centres were central to the last UK Labour government in improving outcomes for children and families. Yet, participation by those who ‘ought’ to attend was and remains a focus of concern. Using the work of Foucault, this paper explores parental participation in two Centres to examine how ‘government operates at a distance’, through the everyday interactions of those who inhabit these spaces. In exploring micro-practices, the humble cup of tea can be seen, not only as a small act of caring but a site of power and struggle over what these spaces meant to parents and practitioners.

For migrant children, moving to a new country is marked by excitement, anxiety and practical challenges in managing this significant transition. This paper draws upon the concepts of social capital and social networks to examine migrant children’s access to services post-migration. Using data from a qualitative study with Eastern European families in Scotland, we identify a range of cumulative barriers that limit children’s access to services and illustrate how their experiences are shaped by ethnicity, social class and place. The study shows that migrant children are often disadvantaged post-migration and develop their own mechanisms to mitigate the impact of migration on their lives. We argue that migrant children’s own social networks are relevant and they need to be analysed through a more individualised approach.

This article highlights three dimensions to understanding children's well-being during and after parental imprisonment which have not been fully explored in current research. A consideration of ‘time’ reveals the importance of children's past experiences and their anticipated futures. A focus on ‘space’ highlights the impact of new or altered environmental dynamics. A study of ‘agency’ illuminates how children cope within structural, material and social confines which intensify vulnerability and dependency. This integrated perspective reveals important differences in individual children's experiences and commonalities in broader systemic and social constraints on prisoners’ children. The paper analyses data from a prospective longitudinal study of 35 prisoners’ children during and after their (step) father's imprisonment to illustrate the arguments.

Choice is often presented as a defining feature of play and it has been argued that a perception of choice contributes to the developmental potential of play. This paper investigates children's self-recorded levels of choice during play across three contexts—the home, the school playground and the out-of-school club. Children recorded their play activities across contexts using a structured diary technique. Findings based on 401 reported play episodes indicated that choice varied across contexts, according to the number of children involved and whether or not an adult was present. The findings are discussed in relation to theory, policy and professional practice.

Researchers who involve children in their research are faced with the challenge of choosing between differing theoretical approaches which can prioritise children's autonomy rights or their 'vulnerability' and their need to be protected. Somewhat confusingly, ethical guidelines seem to reflect a combination of these approaches. Even when researchers have settled on their preferred approach, they may find that this then has to be modified in accordance with gatekeeper requirements. In the context of children's involvement in a child safety online project, this paper highlights the difficulties encountered because of a tension between children's autonomy rights, educational norms in a school setting and child protection concerns and considers whether an appropriate balance was achieved. Language: en

There are few published articles on conducting large-scale surveys in secondary schools, and this paper seeks to fill this gap. Drawing on the experiences of the Youth On Religion project, it discusses the politics of gaining access to these schools and the considerations leading to the adoption and administration of an online survey. It is concluded that successful research in schools has to be planned carefully in collaboration with key members of staff, and justified as an educational activity. Providing speedy feedback was helpful to ensure schools benefited from the research and to keep them engaged with the project. © 2011 The Author(s). Children & Society © 2011 National Children’s Bureau and Blackwell Publishing Limited

This paper explores the emotional aspects of participation within social welfare contexts. The focus is on individual professionals, such as social workers and children’s rights workers and their articulation, management and negotiation of the emotional when working with children and young people. The institutions of welfare are also shown to be ambiguous in their approaches to participation. Lastly, the dimensions of power that are enacted in relations between professionals and children reveal some of the complex dynamics in this fraught area of social welfare policy and practice.

Based on ethnographic research among Kinh, Hmong and Cham H’Roi children in the highlands of Vietnam in 2008, this paper presents a narrative analysis of how poverty and ethnicity affect children’s experience of adversity. It explores the meanings children give to their experience and their use of discursive strategies such as criticising displays of wealth to create a repertoire of meanings from which personal and collective resilience is drawn. Acknowledging the ambiguities and contradictions in children’s accounts, the author reflects on how their understanding of social differences is underpinned by local power structures.

Mentoring has become a popular model of intervention to reduce the risk of offending, and has been proposed as an effective tool to tackle the risk of gang membership. This paper reviews the existing literature on mentoring and reports on a qualitative evaluation of a mentoring programme targeted at young people 'at risk' of gang membership in an English city. The study highlights important issues around these interventions. Although we found it a useful way to engage otherwise hard-to-reach families, important limitations remain: their potential labelling impact and their limited impact in isolation from other more ambitious measures.

The paper tells of the social constructs surrounding young children with learning difficulties in their home, ‘special’ early education setting and ‘inclusive’ or mainstream early education setting in England. The exploratory study focused on how three- to four-year-old children made sense of their environments and how their identities were constructed by different parties in the different contexts. Ethnographic case studies were conducted using semi-structured and informal interviews with parents and practitioners, documentary analysis, fieldnotes, and live and video observations. Shared constructions across the contexts for each child were common, with constructions of them being happy and making progress pervasive across the children and settings. Differences in constructions across settings indicated that qualities could shine or negative constructions be tempered, thus showing the role of the environment and the culture of inclusion in socially constructing children with special needs.

Consumption practices of children in contemporary Western societies are implicated in the reconstruction of childhood, according to both popular debate and to those academic perspectives stressing the individualisation of identities within the life course of late modern consumer societies. Yet, little is known about the meanings children themselves give to their own consumption. Drawing from an ethnographic study of children aged 6-11 years and their families, the paper presents girls' constructions of fashion in relation to their own bodies and to those of others. It is shown that although girls may both desire and actually 'dress up' in fashionable clothing, they present a range of contingent and contradictory meanings for doing so. For some girls, 'dressing up' in certain clothes may be a way of 'ageing up' toward feminine adulthood, albeit in restricted contexts and after negotiations between themselves and their parents as to what can be worn and where. Nonetheless, girls in the study also showed anxieties and disapproval of 'showing the body' through 'revealing' clothing. The article concludes by considering the implication of these findings for debates about gendered childhoods, and intergenerational relations in late modern consumer society.

In this paper, we explore young peoples' normative representations of work. In particular, we are interested in the ways young people view work roles which could be considered 'atypical' such as young caring or language brokering. Interviewed were 46 young people (15–18 years) some who did, and some who did not engage in the 'atypical' work roles of language brokering or young caring. Findings indicated that young people have a strong representation of what a 'normal' childhood comprises and that friends, teachers and parents play a mediational role in cementing this contextually. However, respondents presented two alternative representations around engagement in 'atypical' roles, with some individuals holding both views at the same time. On the one hand, they felt that engagement in 'atypical' activities would be experienced as a loss of 'normal' childhood. On the other hand, a more positive representation of 'atypical' childhoods was also drawn on, in which engagement in 'atypical' activities was seen as a source of pride and a contributor of additional skills to a child's development. This opinion was evidenced by both those who had, and those who had not engaged in 'atypical' work.

On Track started life in 2000 as part of the Crime Reduction Programme in the Home Office, but was shifted to the Children and Young People's Unit less than a year later. This paper describes tensions that emerged during the first phase of the evaluation of this innovative programme, designed to provide interventions for four to twelve year olds at risk of becoming involved in crime. Analysis of interventions and multiple intervention is presented, together with reflections on the need for a different kind of evaluation and a more positive approach to services for children and young people.

This single authored article publishes the findings of the only national research about the impact of the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 on the life chances of young people leaving care. It is widely quoted by professionals, academics and government, and the author is the only academic whose leaving care research is referenced in the DfES 2006 Green Paper Care Matters. As a result of the methodology and national scope of the study, it is used by professionals, campaigners, academics alike to improve young people’s outcomes and lobby for improved services.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child has raised the profile of children's participation in the United Kingdom. Hart's ‘ladder of participation’ has been the most influential model in this field. This paper offers an alternative model, based on five levels of participation: 1. Children are listened to. 2. Children are supported in expressing their views. 3. Children's views are taken into account. 4. Children are involved in decision-making processes. 5. Children share power and responsibility for decision-making. In addition, three stages of commitment are identified at each level: ‘openings’, ‘opportunities’ and ‘obligations’. The model thus provides a logical sequence of 15 questions as a tool for planning for participation. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This article examines legal discourses on precarious status children in Canada over the last decade. Drawing on different theoretical frameworks and taking into account laws and court decisions, the paper will examine the way in which precarious status children are regarded as powerless subjects in need of protection and as threatening others. The article argues that these two apparently contrasting discourses are embedded within specific socio-historical constructions of childhood and children’s citizenship which deny and limit their agency and conceive of their claim to membership as illegitimate. In the case of precarious status children, illegality and citizenship need to be redefined in a developmental perspective, questioning the potential risks associated with prevalent moral and social assumptions on childhood. © 2013 The Author(s). Children & Society © 2013 National Children’s Bureau and Blackwell Publishing Limited.

The appropriateness and desirability of researching children have been issues of some debate. Children may be perceived as non-competent or vulnerable, and proxies have been used as children's representatives. Increasingly researchers are speaking to children directly. Why is this so and what are the methodological and ethical implications of researching children's views? In this paper the authors draw on their own experiences of researching children in the fields of child carers and the impact of the Child Support Act 1991. A number of social, political and legal trends are identified which form a background to the growing interest in children as potential and actual participants in the research process. The theoretical, methodological, ethical and practical issues involved are then identified and described, using examples from two separate studies conducted by the authors.

A growing awareness of child sexual exploitation (CSE) in the United Kingdom and throughout the world has prompted human service and legal/policy professionals to seek ways of engaging young people experiencing sexual exploitation, although much remains unknown regarding effective practice, and whether or not current knowledge regarding best practices with young people can be expanded to address CSE. This paper considers how principles of harm reduction, a public health approach widely used to engage adults and young people in help-seeking behaviours, can be considered as part of a children's rights-centred approach to policy and practice with young people experiencing CSE.