A Handbook of Children and Young People’s Participation

A Handbook of Children and Young People’s Participation brings
together key thinkers and practitioners from diverse contexts across
the globe to provide an authoritative overview of contemporary theory
and practice around children’s participation.
Promoting the participation of children and young people - in
decision-making and policy development, and as active contributors
to everyday family and community life - has become a central part of
policy and programme initiatives in both majority and minority worlds.
This book presents the most useful recent work in children’s
participation as a resource for academics, students and practitioners
in childhood studies, children’s rights and welfare, child and family
social work, youth and community work, governance, aid and
development programmes.
The book introduces key concepts and debates, and presents a rich
collection of accounts of the diverse ways in which children’s
participation is understood and enacted around the world,
interspersed with reflective commentaries from adults and young
people. It concludes with a number of substantial theoretical
contributions that aim to take forward our understanding of children’s
participation.
The emphasis throughout the text is on learning from the complexity
of children’s participation in practice to improve our theoretical
understanding, and on using those theoretical insights to challenge
practice, with the aim of realising children’s rights and citizenship
more fully.