ABSTRACT
Programmes that meet the needs of children are one of the spaces in which the experience of poor and vulnerable children is located. By drawing examples from select programmes, this chapter explores how different support programmes construct children's needs, rights, and identity. This is not an account of how well these organizations are meeting children's needs (or rights). Instead, this chapter unpacks how children's needs and rights are represented and the interactions of these representations with the identity, self-hood and material situation of children. It approaches the understanding of children's needs as a site for struggle where groups with unequal discursive (and non-discursive) resources compete to establish their interpretations as powerful. Seen this way, those with an authoritative voice strive to present their interpretations as powerful. These interpretations are also contested or appropriated by children and caregivers with contradictory outcomes.
