Children's participation in the child protection system: Are young people from poor families less likely to be heard?. (February 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Lätsch, David; Quehenberger, Julia; Portmann, Rahel; Jud, Andreas
• Is Part Of: Children and youth services review. Volume 145(2023)
• Publication Date: 2023-02
• Subjects: Child protection -- Child abuse -- Child neglect -- Poverty -- Participation -- Child welfare; Social work with children -- Periodicals; Social work with youth -- Periodicals; Adolescent -- Periodicals; Child Welfare -- Periodicals; Social Work -- Periodicals; Service social aux enfants -- Périodiques; Service social à la jeunesse -- Périodiques; Electronic journals; 362.705
• DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2022.106762
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0190-7409

Abstract

Highlights: Case workers included young people's subjective views in about half of their assessment reports on child protection cases. Younger children were much less likely to have their views included than adolescents. Confirming our hypothesis, young people from poor families had a much smaller chance to have their views included than their peers. There is a strong need for improvement in the participation of children and youth in general, but specifically for younger children and offspring of impoverished families. Abstract: Decisions in child protection affect children's and young people's lives substantially and sustainably. For young people to participate in these decisions is an ethical requirement, prominently coded in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Although awareness of the importance of child participation and research thereon have grown, predictors of child participation have not been formalized in a conceptual model and studies on the topic have primarily relied on narrative accounts or fictional vignettes rather than actual case data. This article addresses the lack of conceptual modeling by presenting an approach that takes into account three domains of downstream predictors on the degree of child participation in the decision-making process of a child protection case: (a) External constraints; (b) professionals' willingness and ability to facilitate the child's participation; (c) the child's willingness and ability to participate. It further addresses the lack of actual case data in child participation research, focusing on the understudied predictor of family poverty. Analyses are based on a sample of case files of n = 264 children in five Swiss CPS agencies. Outcomes and predictors were extracted from case files with a predefined coding system. Findings suggest that the raised awareness has so far not fully trickled down to an increase in real-life opportunities of participation for young people: The child's subjective view was documented in the case worker's report half of the time (48.9 %). Corroborating previous evidence, adolescents were much more likely to have their views included than younger children ( OR = 3.715, p =.002). Case workers were less inclined to include the child's views if the child came from a poor family ( OR = 0.326, p =.003). We conclude by suggesting options for improving child participation, highlighting that protection of young people does not have to contradict participation.