Childrens Participation free essay sample

Participation in relation to children’s rights is concerned with encouraging the child’s voice to be heard, recognising their views as important and involving them in the planning of activities and other areas of their lives. We have lived in an adult-dominated world where children’s views and opinions have been suppressed. Adults have held all the power in decision making and had control over access to information. This can limit and stifle children and young people and can be a barrier to them achieving their full potential. With the introduction of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child attitudes are slowly beginning to change. This convention contains a number of articles relating to participation which aim to provide a supportive environment for children to gain the confidence and self-belief along with the knowledge and understanding to enable them to contribute positively to society, now and in the future. Article 12, in particular, requires that every child capable of forming his or her own views must be given the right to express those views in all matters affecting them and that their views will be ‘given due weight in accordance with the child’s age and maturity’. Participation is a process requiring planning, consideration and evaluation. Many adults are reluctant to involve children and young people in decision making. They believe, as they have more experience or qualifications, that they should be the ones in control. Adults can be seen as â€Å"gatekeepers† to information. They may not consider the information to be appropriate for the child or that the child would not understand it. The balance of power needs to be shifted more in the direction of the children to enable shared decision making. Models of participation are useful for highlighting different approaches to projects involving children and exposing bad practice. The Ladder of Participation was developed by Roger Hart (1992) as a way to measure the level of the participation of children in particular projects. It serves as a good way to distinguish between participation and non-participation. There are eight rungs on the ladder with Manipulation at the bottom and Child-initiated, shared decisions with adults at the top. The bottom three rungs Manipulation, Decoration and Tokenism involve very limited participation. Children are manipulated when they are involved in promoting an issue, but have no understanding of what their actions are for or about. Decoration involves using children to bolster an issue. Tokenism takes place when children are apparently given a voice, but in fact they have little or no choice about the subject or how they communicate it, and little or no opportunity to form their own opinions. The remaining five rungs of the ladder represent increasing levels of participation. For a project to be fully participatory the children should understand the intention of the project, be aware of who made the decisions concerning their involvement and why, have a meaningful rather than simply decorative role and have volunteered to participate in the project after it was fully explained to them. Children can be assigned but informed where the aims of a project remain defined by adults and children are given specific roles in the project and understand their tasks and the aim of the project. Children can also be consulted and informed where a project is designed and run by adults, but children understand the process and their opinions are treated seriously. The three highest levels of participation are the most difficult to achieve partly because of the responsibilities of adults and partly because of the tendency of adults to take command of situations. These levels involve situations where decisions are genuinely shared with children and where children initiate projects. As a practitioner it is my role to facilitate. Children should be provided with the opportunity to participate and actively encouraged to do so. They will require a welcoming environment and for me to be approachable. Their views should be listened to and supported and they should be involved in the decision making process. As an adult I may be more aware of practical or financial constraints which may affect a particular idea but this should be clearly explained to the child to enable them to make more informed decisions. I should be there to observe and to make sure every child gets to have their say. The Curriculum for Excellence supports the right for children and young people to participate in matters affecting them. The four capacities to enable children to become Successful Learners, Confident Individuals, Effective Contributors and Responsible Citizens and the attributes and capabilities which sit beneath the capacities set a clear expectation of children’s active involvement in the learning process. In order ‘to develop and communicate their own beliefs and view of the world’, ‘take the initiative’, and ‘make informed choices and decisions’, the child’s voice must be heard and developed. The curriculum design principles place children and young people at the centre of their learning. These principles recognise the need to shape the curriculum to meet the needs of children and young people, to listen to their views, to involve them as far as possible in shaping their learning and to involve them in promoting their own learning, progress and achievement. In education, Circle Time is widely used to encourage the children to express their feelings and opinions and is valuable in helping children develop social awareness and communication skills. When done well children’s participation can help to build their confidence and ability to participate in more sophisticated decision making in the future. They become aware of their roles and the responsibilities that go with it. Barriers are broken down between generations as adults begin to understand children better.