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This paper examines the evidence of children's agency in research about infants, toddlers and technologies. It finds that an implicit reliance on technological determinism as a theoretical perspective for positioning technologies relative to young children's development tends to shape research in terms of understanding the impact of technologies on young children. Drawing on critical constructivism as a philosophical stance on technologies, this paper argues that children's agency with technologies may be further investigated in terms of practice architectures to better understand the social mediation of infant and toddler interactions and engagements with technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 40 years child protection systems in all Advanced Western Societies have been subject to high profile criticisms and regular major reviews. In many respects the Munro Review of Child Protection (2011) in England, is very different to those which have gone before. This paper summarises the main findings and recommendations of The Review and locates it in its immediate policy and practice contexts. The paper also begins to identify some of its possible gaps and challenges and argues that the success of The Review is likely to depend on cultural, political and economic factors well beyond its influence and outlines what these are.

Research from the Economic and Social Research Council programme on Pathways Into and Out of Crime prioritised young people's "voices" in exploring experiences of crime and a range of intervention services. Drawing on data from interviews with 110 young people, this paper explores their perspectives of professional assessment. Embedded within neo-liberal youth welfare policies are a number of contradictions. Policies encourage "individualisation", "responsiblisation" and "self-realisation" while also needing to maintain control and regulation of "risky" populations. This paper explores the implication of these contradictions through examining the experiences of young people being assessed in youth justice and education. The impact on their identities as neo-liberal citizens is discussed in the conclusion.

This paper reviews different perspectives of the changing nature of childhood, comparing these to state responses that seek to improve children's well-being. Unlike previous generations of children, children today spend much of their time under cover and under the watchful eyes of adults. It is likely that this change has had a negative impact on children's well-being. The paper explores possible styles of state intervention, arguing that a broader approach is needed in the UK than is currently being considered.

This paper addresses the issue of child protection protocols within research conducted with children. Based partly on primary data this paper raises questions about the role of ethics committees in defining the limits of confidentiality in relation to child protection protocols within research, the perceptions of both children and parents about the meanings of confidentiality and notions of "harm," and the role of the researcher in relation to legal and professional guidance about the protection of vulnerable people in society. We explore the concept of confidentiality within a research setting from a child protection perspective. In doing so we examine the legal and moral obligations of researchers to report child protection concerns, how children themselves perceive"harm," and the need for much clearer guidance to researchers, as well as child participants and parents, about the limitations of confidentiality.

This paper explores the relationships between low‐income single mothers and their adolescent and early adult children utilizing qualitative interview and focus group data with youth from three Canadian cities. The research explored youth provisioning roles in these families. Provisioning, a concept widely understood in the global south, refers to labour used to sustain low‐income families and includes emotional labour, care work, trade and exchange and paid labour. Findings from this study identified strong expressions of positive attachment and close relationships between youth and their family members. The paper queries whether positive attachment may be built through roles where youth see themselves as integral parts of a family team and where their contributions are acknowledged. These findings invite us to explore and perhaps challenge the oft‐reported correlations between living in a low‐income, lone mother‐led family and poor childhood outcomes and poor attachment. Can these outcomes be mediated and can the provisioning roles youth undertake possibly be such mediators? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we suggest that the ability and opportunity to play affords children a natural resource to meet intellectual and emotional challenge. Analysis of case studies focusing on interventions with children caught in the bombing of Beirut, children abandoned to the state system in Romania, and the street children in Rio de Janeiro and Cali is used to support this view. When resources are in deficit, challenge is more likely to become adversity. The impact of adversity is particular to context, but comparison across contexts also shows connections between children's disparate experiences. Analysis confirms that given the opportunity, children interact with and influence their environment through play and that this process provides a resource to meet the challenge of adversity. (Contains 1 figure and 2 tables.)

When viewed in the context of children's physical, social, and economic ecologies, children's work has both contextually specific benefits and consequences. This paper examines children's experiences of their economic activity using a theory of resilience as a contextually and culturally embedded phenomenon [British Journal of Social Work, 38 (2008) 218]. Though there is evidence that child labour is a potential threat to children's well-being, some forms of children's work may function as potential sources of health-enhancing resources associated with resilience, resulting in positive psychosocial development. Working children can find through their working experiences positive sources of efficacy and cohesion, strong identity, feelings of well-being, positive relationships, and access to material and social capital.

Since the 1970s, interagency training has been considered crucial for developing effective collaborative practice, initially in relation to child protection, and latterly, to safeguarding children's welfare. Charting the history of interagency training in England, this paper aims to demonstrate how, despite limited attention being paid to its evaluation, the role of training has expanded in terms of both content and target audience. This raises questions about the evidence base upon which investment in interagency training is founded. Drawing on the limited literature and experiences of interagency trainers, the authors question whether this investment is an act of faith or reason. They conclude that a belief in the value of training different disciplines together persists, despite little being known about the way in which interagency training improves practice.

An overview of child trafficking in the UK explores the nature and methods of this abuse, as well as the treatment and protection afforded to these particularly vulnerable children. It highlights the shortcomings and inconsistent standards of local authorities, the lack of specialist protection and the uncertainty of a trafficked child's immigration status, combining to make these children vulnerable to further harm and at risk from the influence of their traffickers. A stark consequence of this has been the disappearance without trace of many children from local authority care and the mental health issues of trafficked children going undetected and untreated. For the sake of clarity some of the terms used in this paper are defined as: (i) child: the definition of a child is of someone up to 18 years of age as set down by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989 and UK legislation including the Children Act, 1989 and 2004. (ii) separated child: this term is used instead of "unaccompanied asylum-seeking minor/child". A separated child is one separated from her/his parents or primary guardian. This definition is more useful because not all trafficked children who seek asylum are unaccompanied on arrival and not all trafficked children apply for asylum.

Child trafficking activity often draws on formal administrative and legal resources. Formalisation implies considerable cooperation between public functionaries, lawyers and external actors. I argue that child rights advocates are forceful policy formulators who tend to ignore the public-external link because they focus on the external profit-seeking actors. The danger of this focus is a continuing production of inadequate policies, regulations and laws which are weak instruments in the control of a serious social and moral problem. I exemplify this by cases of irregularities in international adoption from Ecuador from the 1990s onwards.

A key characteristic of debates on caring for children has been the distinction made between the public and the private or formal and informal sector of care. In particular, the impact on adult relationships of the material, emotional and moral dimensions of this division has been highlighted. What are the implications for children, however, of regarding the child care arrangements made by adults as private affairs between parent and provider? This paper reviews research on childminding registration to assess whether a similar system would regulate private fostering arrangements and thereby protect a hitherto neglected group of vulnerable children, private foster children.

This paper examines the case of community daycares for undocumented children of asylum‐seeking families in Israel named the 'Babysitters'. It explores how lack of support and national solutions for childcare leads to temporal and unregulated childcare solutions that may risk children's lives and development. Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory is utilized in this paper to explore the challenges and opportunities of early childhood education for young children in asylum‐seeking families. The analysis reveals how the lack of clear policies, absence of national responsibilities, and existing societal barriers to early childhood education compelled asylum‐seeking parents in Israel to use the 'Babysitters' community daycares for infants and toddlers. Putative solutions that require policy change could help address youngsters' early childhood education needs in asylum‐seeking families and align with human rights and international treaties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political sphere is typically reserved for adults in contemporary nation‐states, leaving limited opportunities for children's participation in democratic processes. This holds even more true for unaccompanied asylum‐seeking children who are politically unrepresented and often find themselves in a precarious position due to their immigrant status. The article aims to overcome this gap by presenting their experiences of Slovenian reception and asylum procedures as a framework for child‐informed policy. The child‐centred approach as presented in this paper starts from the principles of children's rights, particularly from the right to express views (Article 12 of the CRC) and the use of children's viewpoints as a way of interpreting how reception and asylum procedures should be. In this way, the paper highlights key factors that affect unaccompanied asylum‐seeking children's well‐being and participation rights, including being able to stay with family and friends, having adequate material conditions, having good relationships with institutional staff, having access to information and legal advice, having trained interviewers, translators and decision‐makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines some reasons for the failure to protect young people in England and Wales from sexual abuse inherent in prostitution. Identifies characteristics of the child protection system which fit poorly for work with these youth. Argues that lasting improvement of these children's well-being depends on the creation of "joined-up," integrated, interdisciplinary services addressing the range of their needs. (Author/KB)

Examines the development and operation of sponsored day care services in 12 English local authorities within the context of current policy developments. Suggests that provision for children in need is at risk for marginalization by current emphases on early education/child care for working parents. Highlights importance of developing services for such children within an overall strategy for children's services. (Author/KB)

Discusses the role and definition of children's rights since the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Suggests ways to build upon the Convention by concentrating on: neglected groups of children, including disabled, gay, minority, and girl children; reforming the rights of children; and strengthening the implementation mechanisms. (JPB)

Examines children's participation in public life in relation to the tension between control and self-realization found in late modernity. Argues that social tension is created through the conflict between recognition of children as persons in their own right and public policy marked by intensification of control of children creating a view of children as human capital. (JPB)

Examines the increasing demands on social workers to provide services to children in state care and the need for policy and service delivery changes in this area. Suggests changes in government and agency initiatives to improve staffing levels, renewed training, and adequate support for social work services to children in state care. (JPB)

Discusses changes in pediatric knowledge and practice necessary to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. Considers the importance of the "new morbidity" training for pediatricians to include advocacy, public health, adolescence, health promotion, parenting and family dynamics, health and social inequalities, and social influences. (JPB)

Questions the extent to which New Zealand children have benefited from New Right economic policies and argues that the invisibility of children, the role of public concern about children, and the social construction of childhood are factors which have facilitated implementation of these changes. Examines how personal and political spheres intersect in children's lives. (Author)

Examines social and economic inequalities in the United Kingdom. Demonstrates how children's welfare and family functioning are crucially dependent upon locally available social support. Argues that building social capital in poor communities is more effective in promoting children's welfare than is present emphasis on formal child-protection and family-support services and efforts to increase parenting skills and responsibilities. (Author)

Highlights a national study of projects in England and Wales working with young people leaving foster care, and analyzes national initiatives since the 1989 Children Act. Examines implications for local and national policy and practice. Argues that, despite a new commitment by government to this leaving-care group, sustained solutions remain complex and have been long in coming. (Author)

This paper examines how children from immigrant background experience and negotiate power relations with family and social workers in the context of child protection services (CPS) in Norway. Using the interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) methodology, 11 children from Pakistani background were interviewed about their lived experiences with CPS. Analysis of the data highlights that children have to negotiate and navigate generational and gendered power relations both within the families and the CPS to exercise their agency. The analysis contributes to a limited research field focusing on immigrant children's multidimensional lived realities in the context of CPS, where children's voices are largely missing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quality early care and education (ECE) presents an unparalleled opportunity to avert disadvantage and promote children's development. Mealtimes are essential daily routines, yet are often overlooked in research on ECE quality. This paper crystallises a composite case study of ECE mealtimes in highly disadvantaged communities by combining Departing Radically in Academic Writing (DRAW) methodology with parent surveys, scorings of educator‐child interactions (inCLASS), and field notes. Poverty is perpetuated in these centres: children do not have enough food, and educator‐dictated feeding practices restrict children's opportunities to exercise their agency and learn. Systemic policy action is needed to address poverty in ECE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces theme issue on assessing outcomes in children's services, based on presentations given at a conference in September 1997. Articles in Part 1 deal with assessing outcomes for services to all children in need. Articles in Part 2 focus on initiatives in Britain and elsewhere related to the Looking After Children project, dealing with children in out-of-home care. (KB)

Discusses issues related to measuring outcomes of social-work interventions with children. Emphasizes the need for regular, carefully timed assessments. Argues that approach and perspective differences obscure relationships between program and child outcomes and that assessing family-services outcomes raises accountability questions. Suggests that information collected through the Looking After Children project should enhance the realization of some outcomes. (Author/KB)

Discusses the presence of children's voices within three types of writing on childhood, and outlines the ethics, roles, and tools employed to discover these voices. Suggests that researchers can discover a variety of children's voices by employing reflexive techniques to ensure that interpretations are not influenced by personal prejudice or the ethics, tools, roles, and theories of professional paradigms. (Author/LPP)

Claims that Britain's policy and practice on delinquency rides roughshod over welfare needs of children and negates their claims to justice, and that representation of children as "really persistent nasty little juveniles" by officials has served to legitimize harsh excesses of government responses. Challenges such "legitimacy" and calls for fundamental change in policy and practice for children in trouble. (EV)

An introduction to the journal is presented that addresses various groups of children in developing and developed countries that are characterised by wars and conflicts and children who grow up in stable and democratic states, including irregular adoption practices in Chile, the experiences of children in Norway who collaborated with the Germans during the occupation of Norway from 1940 to 1945, and comparison of two trials of the International Court where children were born of sexual violence.

There is widespread discourse and policy on children's participation in decision‐making. This is not matched with an equal level of implementation in practice. This qualitative research explores the policy to practice gap with senior decision makers in the child protection system in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Their reflections on the challenges associated with translating the participation principles into practice are deconstructed to understand the complex and overlapping ways in which participation is perceived. The research data indicate there are competing understandings of participation at play, depending on the actor, their role and organisation. This paper suggests that genuine participation in practice relies on bridging the epistemic differences and interests of different stakeholder groups who are all critical to achieving children's participation in service decision‐making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the objectives of the newly adopted European Child Guarantee is to ensure effective and free access to at least one healthy meal each school day for all children at risk of poverty and social exclusion in Europe. However, little is known about the starting point of Member States in terms of school meal provision. This paper aims to fill this information gap. It maps the current free school meal provision in the 27 Member States, reviews existing relevant evidence to illustrate the expected impact and presents estimates of the public budget needed to meet the Child Guarantee's objective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are two key questions consistently raised by children and youth since the onset of the school strikes for climate in 2018 in the Global North: Why study for a future, which may not be there? Why spend a lot of effort to become educated, when our governments are not listening to the educated? (conf. fridaysforfuture.org, n.d). While the same questions are shared by young climate activists from the Global South, there are other interrelated economic realities that echo the disappointment, anger, disillusionment, desperation, and frustration driving those utterances in their socio‐political contexts. Comparative insights from so‐called 'developing' countries disclose that institutionalized schooling, commonly confused with education, manipulates the aspirations of younger generations and their wider societies. Contemporary global schooling is one of the key propellers of global economic agendas geared towards producing human capital that is 'employable' in the future job market. The paradox of a global education agenda geared towards generating human capital employable on a job market is that most of those jobs (if at all they will be there) continue serving the very economic system that is threatening the right to life, health, culture (especially for indigenous communities) and the best interests of future generations on this planet. As young climate activists from various countries collectively argue within the framework of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child, major economies are failing to protect the basic human rights of children and future generations. I suggest that the various interrelated crises evident through the key questions raised by young climate activists must be considered as part of a North–South continuum. In this paper, I reflect upon these interrelated crises by developing a decolonial childist approach to education—understood as an intergenerational relationship, implying an effort on part of present adults becoming good ancestors of the future, in the present. Such efforts require larger structural shifts which I consider by means of the four strategies I discuss building upon previous co‐reflections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's right to participate has been one of the most challenging rights to implement due to dominant norms which position children under adults' authority. Notably, this has more negatively impacted girls than boys due to traditional gender norms and practices that often restrict girls' agency and are reproduced and unchallenged in many societies. To contest these struggles, young female activists (13–17 years) in Sierra Leone, who are the focus of this paper, engaged in direct actions to influence public decision‐making and prevent girls from being married during childhood. Drawing upon empirical evidence exploring the girls' activism experiences, this article explore, young female activists' practical work is an example of what intersectionality as praxis means by connecting social categories to inequalities and highlights that they saw themselves as social actors with the ability to negotiate power, take part in community‐based activism to end child marriage and network with others to seek justice for practices and attitudes they perceived to be abusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented which discusses various reports published within the issue, including one on the interlinked discourses of children's rights and children's potential as human capital and social investment, one on young people's perspectives and experiences of schooling in Andhra Pradesh, India, and another on childhood as a site for social investment.

This article aims to explore the legal consciousness of migrant children in transit at the France–UK border. Based on secondary analysis of legal measures to help ensure child protection, and on ethnographic fieldwork in Calais, this paper shows that the legal consciousness of migrant children is shaped by several factors such as their experience of migration, their previous interactions with public institutions in Europe, their living conditions in transit areas, the police's harassment strategy, the influence of migrant peers and by their own migration plans. We will show that these factors have a deep impact on the legal consciousness of unaccompanied minors and consequently on both their (non‐)claim of protection and (non‐)use of legal tools. By mobilizing biographical sets of data, we will also show that their legal consciousness results from the combination of these contextual factors with their individual experiences and sociological characteristics (education, origin, ...). From a methodological point of view, this contribution provides evidence of the importance of adopting a child‐centred approach in ethnographic research. This approach highlights discrepancies between policy aims and children's needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conceptualizations about children and childhoods enrich our understanding of adult–child interactions, educational practice, policy and child‐welfare interventions. This study explored 42 cultural metaphors drawn from diverse socio‐economic, geographical and linguistic settings to construct Indian childhoods. The paper reports an interpretative analysis of reconstructions leading to a typology of metaphors‐in‐use. The conceptual‐analytical exercise helped unpack nuances and contextual meanings of metaphors. The paper argues for richness and subtlety in theorising childhoods, which is multilayered, situated and intertwined with contextual issues and tensions. The study offers methodological, pedagogical and conceptual insights and proposes possibilities for using cultural tools into inquiring childhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By June 2021, children and young people had experienced two periods of lockdown and home learning in Northern Ireland. The detrimental impact of these periods of indefinite confinement is wider reaching than reported educational stagnation, with the fundamental rights of childhood: play; rest; and leisure; all adversely implicated. Autistic children's experiences of Covid‐19 have been largely absent from current crisis and recovery discourse. This is the first published study to directly and specifically involve autistic children both as research advisors and as research participants in a rights‐based participatory study relating to the pandemic. Drawing on concepts of ableist childism and epistemic injustice, this article presents, through Photovoice, the emotional, social and educational experiences of post‐ primary aged autistic young people in Northern Ireland during the first 2020 lockdown of the Covid‐19 pandemic. The project was grounded in a child rights‐based approach and was guided by a group of four autistic young advisors aged 11–15. The paper concludes by arguing that government responses to the pandemic, as experienced by autistic young people, act as forms of oppression that prioritises and further embeds normative non‐autistic structures and responses under the guise of public health necessity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children entering secure accommodation, also known as 'secure care', are prevented from exercising free choice over most aspects of everyday life. This paper focuses on the relationship between agency and violence during transference to and early time in secure accommodation. Sharing interview extracts from 11 young people with experience of secure care as children, we explore how the routine processes of 'suppressing' children's agency supports the emergence of violence. We argue that the manner of transfer to secure accommodation creates a violent encounter that forces children's emotion and agency to redirect and intensify onto the self and others as further violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews 26 reports into deaths and serious abuse of children in families who were subject to the No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) rule. Our analysis illustrates vulnerabilities caused by exclusionary policies, exacerbating social deprivation and isolation experienced by the children and families and making it more difficult for professionals to respond in ways which safeguarded children's welfare. Drawing upon a social model for protecting children that requires recognition of the social determinants of harm and the economic, social and cultural barriers faced by families, we examine the experiences of children and families with NRPF who were the subject of a serious case review, and the responses of agencies responsible for safeguarding child welfare. We conclude with recommendations for practices aimed at promoting the rights and well‐being of children and families subject to NRPF rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including the study of children growing up in poverty in Ethiopia; the research on the corrosive effect of rising inequalities in children's identities; and the feature on how children have become social and economic actors despite the constraints in their marginality.

This paper explores an NGO‐based non‐formal education (NFE) intervention in Pakistan from the perspective of its recipients, children in street situations. Recognizing children as agential beings, we draw on participant observation and in‐depth semi‐structured interviews with 20 children, aged 10–19 years. Young people discussed the impact of the intervention on their self‐worth and future aspirations. They also reflected on their growing awareness of civic issues and citizenship rights. The study emphasizes the importance of NFE in providing opportunities to the most marginalized and those without adequate documentation, particularly in a context when state support can be lacking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]