What are learning points?
Learning points share what people have learned from their experience in regeneration - from people working or talking together, or from research into issues and evaluation of what is happening. Learning points can help people and organisations to improve their practice through identifying what works and what doesn't. The views described in learning points do not mean that the Scottish Centre for Regeneration or the Scottish Government necessarily support them.
What is this learning point about?
This learning point is about involving children as researchers to better inform policy and practice in community regeneration and tackling poverty in Scotland. John McKendrick of Glasgow Caledonian University and Fiona McHardy of the Poverty Alliance co-authored this paper. They reflect on the emerging practice of involving children and young people (hereafter, CYP) as researchers and on the specific experience of involving children as researchers in anti-poverty activity and community regeneration work in Scotland. The paper aims to assist practitioners to involve CYP in regeneration work in Scotland.
What are the main issues?
It has become commonplace to involve adults as service users and potential project beneficiaries in work taking place in regeneration areas and with people experiencing poverty. Consultation, in particular, has become routine. This commitment to a more participatory culture of delivery is often articulated in organisational aims. Participation has also been encouraged by a wide range of Scottish initiatives such as Community Planning Partnerships, the National Standards for Community Engagement and the Poverty Truth Commission.
There are key reasons why this participatory culture has developed in recent years:
- Legitimacy. At the very least, working with service users ensures that service providers are better able to demonstrate grassroots demand and necessity for their work.
- Success through ownership. The likelihood of project success may be greater if users and beneficiaries are more committed to the work; commitment is fostered through participation.
- Success through identifying priorities. Bringing service providers closer to everyday lived realities is more likely to ensure that the most appropriate interventions are delivered in the most appropriate way.
- Personal development. The very process of participation affords opportunities for skill enhancement.
- Enhancing well-being. The very process of participation challenges the perception that those in positions of power and responsibility do not respect or show interest in people living in regeneration areas or living in poverty.
- Rights perspective. In addition to each of the tangible, practical benefits of engagement, more fundamentally, it could be argued that it is people's basic right to be involved in matters that affect them.
Those who provide services directly to children have also fostered this participatory culture. Once again, this has been encouraged in a wide range of Scottish national initiatives such as the Scottish Commissioner for Children and Young People, the Having a Say at School project and the Scottish Youth Parliament.
However, facilitating the participation of CYP is less common when services are delivered at households or the wider community. Some organisations have attempted to specifically consult children on their particular experience of receiving services that are provided to all (e.g. NHS Scotland's Young People's Public Partnership Forum).
There are also examples of children being consulted as part of wider community interventions (e.g. see Annex B of the Government Advice Note, Engaging CYP in Community Planning for eleven examples). However, these examples are atypical.
There are many reasons why CYP are not consulted as widely as they might otherwise be in community regeneration work and anti-poverty activity:
- Adults know what children want. As their primary care-givers, it is reasonable to assume that parents/guardians know best what their children want and need. However, parents do not always know best - research on local play and leisure provision consistently finds differences between adults (preference for playgrounds and organised leisure) and children (preference to play more freely and widely in the neighbourhood)
- Children don't know about regeneration issues. Many key regeneration issues are only of marginal interest to children. However, these issues affect children, e.g. transport planning, public space specification, housing design and community provision. Children would be interested in these issues if presented to them in a way that focuses on the relevance of the issue to them.
- Children don't have the skills. Children are thought not to have the ability or capability to make substantial contributions to participatory activity. However, there are now so many examples of successful participation, that it is now clear that the skill-deficit (in as much as one truly exists) may owe more to service providers inability to engage children in appropriate ways.
- Children need to be protected. Children either lack awareness of their poverty which needs not to be brought to their attention, or are seen to be sensitive to their poverty and in need of protection from it. However, given the space to speak, children have been vocal in expressing their dissatisfaction with all manner of injustices that affect them and others in their local communities and the wider world alike.
- Children should be seen and not heard. Many adults subscribe to this more traditional understanding of children's role in society. However, Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, clearly articulates that children have the right to express their opinion and to have these taken into account in any matter that affects them.
- Children are the problem. In many communities, young people are perceived by adults to be the root cause of local problems! However, it may be more accurate to cast the problem as a lack of cross-generational understanding and engagement; engendering a meeting of minds across generations is likely to be a more effective means to address what is more likely to be the root problem.
- Never thought about it. Fair enough, but read on!
Promoting a wider culture of participation and engagement for CYP is a goal that would be worth pursuing for community regeneration practitioners and those concerned to tackle poverty. However, this learning point is concerned with one particular type of active research participation - facilitating interventions based on working with children as researchers.
There are three key reasons why consideration should be given to working with CYP as researchers to achieve better outcomes in community regeneration work and anti-poverty activity:
- Heightening the benefits of participation. As for adults, the general benefits of participation (listed above) are heightened (perhaps maximised), when participants adopt the role of researcher.
- Challenging the barriers to children's participation. The misperceptions that are a barrier to children's participation (listed above) are most effectively challenged when children are able to demonstrate that their contributions can be more than mere responses to the probed concerns of adults.
- Avoiding tokenism. According children more responsibility in community inquiry to tackle poverty and promote regeneration will heighten the value of this contribution and guard against any tendency toward tokenistic participation.
What do we know already?
Children have the right to be heard
In 1990 the UK formally adopted the UN Convention On The Rights Of The Child (UNCRC), which was introduced in 1989. The UNCRC is the most widely adopted piece of international legislation and can be credited with triggering a step-change in how children are regarded in wider society and how service providers engage with children.
Of particular interest to this learning point are Article 12 and Articles 26/27. As noted above, Article 12, clause 1 asserts that "States Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child". Article 26, clause 1 states that, "States Parties shall recognize for every child the right to benefit from social security, including social insurance, and shall take the necessary measures to achieve the full realization of this right in accordance with their national law", while Article 27, clause 1 assigns the right that, "States Parties recognize the right of every child to a standard of living adequate for the child's physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development".
Taken together, these clauses from the UNCRC assert the right of children living in poverty to have this challenged (e.g. through community regeneration) and to accord children the right to make an active contribution to this process.
The quality of children's participation must be assured
It is widely accepted that participation, per se, is not necessarily progressive. Rather, it is the nature of participation that matters. One widely used way of expressing this is through Roger Hart's ladder of participation, published in 1992 (See Figure 1).
Two points are of note from Hart's work. First, participation can actually be regressive in its worst forms. The bottom three rungs of Hart's ladder warn against participation that is tokenistic, or that in which young people are merely for decoration, or that in which young people are manipulated. In effect, what may appear to be participation may in fact be non-participation.
Second, participation is considered to be most effective when young people initiate action. Clearly, children as researchers - where children are finding out what matters to them and acting upon it - is envisaged as a key element in the most effective modes of participation.
Good practice is emerging in working with young people as researchers
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and Hart's widely-used framework for identifying best practice have stimulated practitioners - and Third Sector organisations in particular - to promote good practice in working with children as researchers. A further impetus has been provided by a shift within academia through which the 'new social studies of childhood' approach has promoted children as active agents, able and responsible for creating their own understandings of the world in which they live. Collectively and iteratively, a shared understanding of what constitutes good practice in young people as researchers has emerged:
- Expert Support. Research is a professional skill that should not be underestimated. CYP are able to research, but there is a need for a sustained and supportive framework of professional support to ensure that their research goals are realised. CYP-led research may not be the least expensive option.
- Training. A key element of research support is providing training to assist CYP at the different stages of a research project. Training should be interactive, participative and hands-on. Training should be provided for each of the key stages, e.g. project design, fieldwork planning, data collection, data analysis and dissemination.
- Methods. Less traditional and more participative methods of data collection are often better suited when working with CYP.
- Selection. A representative sample (or a random sample) of CYP should be sought. The validity of the research may be undermined by working only with those children selected by adult 'gatekeepers'.
- Establish ground rules. There is a need to convey what is acceptable behaviour through research.
- Design matters. CYP are likely to be keenly concerned with the design of end of project outputs. Specialist design support - in addition to the specialist research support - may be particularly welcome at this stage.
Care must be taken to ensure the ethical validity of research with young people
At the same time as wider society has shifted its stance to view children as having the capability and capacity to inform others of what matters most to them, there has also been growing concern to protect children more effectively from wider dangers that threaten them. This has found expression in Disclosure Scotland (to assure the suitability of those who work with children [and vulnerable adults]) and with the growing concern with children's physical and personal safety when out and about in public space. These concerns also find expression in research, and all researching involving children - whether as participants or researchers - should adhere to principles and practices of ethically sound research. Care should be taken to ensure that:
- Consent. The informed consent of all participating children should be given, and not assumed.
- Confidentiality. This must be assured and may only be breached to protect children from risk, exploitation or abuse (where breached, children must be informed in advance).
- Nature and Benefits of the Project. Both must be fully understood in advance.
- Commitment. The scale of what is involved must be fully understood in advance.
- Self awareness. Child researchers must be made aware of the impact that research can have on others and of the need to be sensitive researchers.
- Personal safety. This is of paramount importance and there is a need to ensure that child researchers are not exposed to undue risk through research.
- Feedback. The importance of providing feedback - in a form that meets the needs of the audience - should be understood.
What have we learned?
Good practice in Scotland
Even a cursory review of community regeneration and anti-poverty work in Scotland identifies a wide range of projects and initiatives which have demonstrated the value - and added-value - of involving children as researchers. For example:
- Childhood in Possilpark Project. A local study programme co-ordinated by Barnardos' Children's Inclusion Partnership in 2001. Brought together adults and children to identify (i) the ingredients of a good childhood, (ii) the obstacles to a good childhood in Possilpark, and (iii) what must be done to overcome these barriers.
- EPIC 'YT Youthspace Research'. This research is part of the evidence stream of the BLF funded, Evidence Participation Change (EPIC) project. This participatory research is led by The Poverty Alliance, working in partnership with Stirling Youth Services, to explore experiences of transitions for young people post school. It identifies the barriers and challenges young people face in the transition to employment, training and education.
- Our Say project. An SCCYP project carried out in 2009 by young people which aimed to find out about young people's awareness and understanding of the Education Maintenance Allowance in Scotland.
However, there are many more community regeneration projects and consultations that make little attempt to involve children in matters that directly affect them, let alone involve them in ways that maximise the benefits that can accrue from this involvement.
Institutional support in Scotland
Not only are there good practice example from which practitioners can glean ideas and inspirations; there is also a range of institutional developments that encourage good practice and actively promote the development of children as active research participants. Of particular note are the following:
- Children as researchers. Authored by researchers from the University of Stirling and the Scottish Centre for Social Research, this report published by the Scottish Government in 2006 explores the possibility of incorporating a 'children as researchers' perspective in government social research in Scotland. Signposts recent projects, draws upon experiences from beyond Scotland, discusses practicalities and reflects on the role of children in research. Concludes that for the prospects to be realised, a mindset shift would be required; suggests practical steps to achieve this.
- Practical guidance on consulting, conducting research and working in participative ways with CYP, experiencing domestic abuse. Authored by The University of Edinburgh and NSPCC researchers, this report published by the Scottish Government in 2009 provides a resource bank and offers useful advice on the design, planning and methods of engagement for work with a vulnerable group of young people (those experiencing domestic abuse), methods of engagement.
- SCCYP. 'Skip" (Scotland's Commissioner for CYP) started in 2004, following a campaign to have an authoritative voice to represent, and work with, CYP in Scotland. SCCYP promotes, commissions and undertakes research on rights-related matters for CYP.
- Article 12 in Scotland. A Scottish network, led by young people, that aims to promote children's participation and right to information. Undertaking research to identify children's needs and concerns is one of the aims of the organisation. Currently working on a tool to provide young people with practical tools to develop and deliver peer-led projects. What next?
Progress is clearly being made in making best use of CYP in community regeneration work and anti-poverty activity in Scotland. However, participation falls far short of the point of saturation and there would be value in achieving a step-change toward embedding children's participation as researchers in regeneration work. This requires three actions.
First, there is a need to showcase good and best practice. There are now a range of examples of CYP undertaking research in Scotland. There are also helpful guides that discuss how to work with young people as researchers, which includes brief references to successful case studies. However, if a step-change in children as researchers is to be achieved, there is a need for a much more systematic appraisal of case studies.
Second, there is a particular need to demonstrate the added value of working with children as researchers to strengthen the case for greater involvement of working with CYP as researchers in community regeneration and tackling poverty activity. This 'added value' must be identified in terms of (i) the value to the researchers themselves, and to the wider population of CYP; and (ii) the value to the research output, appraising the extent to which having CYP as researchers substantively enriched the work.
Finally, there is need to raise awareness of the array of resources - many of which were generated here in Scotland - that are available to support these developments. To this end, this learning point concludes with some suggestions for further reading for working with children as researchers, engaging people living in poverty, and engaging children.
Resources
More information on the issues discussed in this learning point is readily and freely available:
Children as Researchers
Engaging People Living in Poverty
Engaging Children (with some insight into children as researchers)
Scottish Centre for Regeneration
This document is published by the Scottish Centre for Regeneration, which is part of the Scottish Government. We support our public, private and voluntary sector delivery partners to become more effective at:
- regenerating communities and tackling poverty
- developing more successful town centres and local high streets
- creating and managing mixed and sustainable communities
- making housing more energy efficient
- managing housing more efficiently and effectively
We do this through:
- coordinating learning networks which bring people together to identify the challenges they face and to support them to tackle these through events, networking and capacity building programmes
- identifying and sharing innovation and practice through publishing documents detailing examples of projects and programmes and highlighting lessons learned
- developing partnerships with key players in the housing and regeneration sector to ensure that our activities meet their needs and support their work
Scottish Centre for Regeneration
Scottish Government
Highlander House
58 Waterloo Street
Glasgow
G2 7DA
Tel: 0141 271 3736
Email: contactscr@scotland.gsi.gov.uk
Website: www.partnersinregeneration.com