Reflections of a Guardian Ad Litem on the Participation of Looked-after Children in Public Law Proceedings

There is much debate about the rights of children relating to the nature and degree of their participation in Public Law Proceedings. Articles 12 (1) and 12 (2) of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989 emphasise that children should be involved in decision-making about their welfare; and children who are capable of expressing their views should be given an opportunity to be heard in legal proceedings. This article is based on the reflective experience of a Guardian Ad Litem regarding the participation of “looked-after children” in Public Law Proceedings. It considers the nature and extent of variation in the elicitation, interpretation and use of a child's views, including the various expectations and misconceptions that may arise due to a lack of understanding and appreciation about the way in which to “weight” and use respectfully a child's wishes and feelings. There appears to be considerable variation in the way in which a child's expression of their “wishes and feelings” is used in the decision-making process. For example, one approach perceives a child as having an unequivocal right to have their views considered as the primary factor in decisions about their welfare while another approach holds that the views of relevant adults relative to children's views should have prominence in the decision-making process. Whilst it is important and beneficial to elicit children's views, due attention and care needs to be given to informing children appropriately about the weight that will be given to the expression of their wishes and feelings in decisions about their welfare, including the possibility that a final decision may not concur with their views.     

Children and Parent Participation in Child Protection Conferences: A Study in One English Local Authority

The overall purpose of a child protection conference is to safeguard children. The conferences are multi-agency meetings that aim to ensure children's safety, promote children's health and development, and identify when a child is at continuing risk of significant harm. Law and policies in the United Kingdom highlight that parents and children should be involved in this process and that their wishes and feelings should be listened to and heard by professionals, yet several research studies show that this is not happening. This study also explores how much parents, children and young people understand about the purpose of child protection conferences and whether they feel actively involved in them. Twenty-three children and 26 corresponding parents were interviewed, all of whom are currently going through the child protection process and have children subject to a child protection plan. The ages of children interviewed were between eight and 18 years; all children were still living at home with at least one parent. This study concludes that children and young people's understanding of child protection conferences and their participation within them is minimal, highlighting that the methods used to engage children in this process are largely ineffective. Most parents felt unsupported throughout the child protection process and the majority did not find their social workers helpful, which could increase the likelihood of disengagement and may inhibit the cycle of change. Similar research studies conclude comparable results, yet practice within the child protection system does not seem to be developing in terms of improving service user participation.     

The Value of Family Welfare Conferencing within the Child Protection and Welfare System

The Family Welfare Conference (FWC) is a model used within the child protection and welfare services to address concerns about the needs of children and their family's ability to respond to these needs. The FWC model operates in partnership with family members, who participate in identifying both the issues of concern and potential responses to address these. The core premise of the FWC model involves greater engagement by family members in the process of responding to matters connected to their children's protection and welfare. This paper presents the findings of a research study on the value placed on the FWC model by social workers working in a statutory child protection and welfare department in the Republic of Ireland. A mixed-methods study was employed with social workers asked to complete an anonymous questionnaire and to participate in a face-to-face interview. The main findings highlight the value of the FWC as a model of relationship-based practice, with participation and partnership with family members viewed as crucial elements. The particular strengths identified in the model include the relationship that is established and developed between the FWC coordinator and the family members, the decision-making methods engaged in by families, and the increased understanding of the issues involved by virtue of participation within the FWC process. The place of the FWC within child protection and welfare services is considered in light of these findings, with an overall positive viewpoint presented.     

Foster Family Characteristics and Behavioral and Emotional Problems of Foster Children: A Narrative Review*

The purpose of this article is to review the literature on the foster family characteristics that are thought to contribute to the behavioral and emotional problems of foster children. The review is shaped by an understanding of the personal and familial factors associated with children's problem behaviors in the general population. These factors include parenting, the family home environment, family functioning, marital functioning, family demography, child temperament, parents' mental health, and social support. Limitations within the existing research on these foster family characteristics are noted, and suggestions for future research are provided.     

Sibling relationships and foster care placements for young children 1

There are a variety of ways in which the evolving knowledge base related to children's sibling relationships applies to the practice of social work with young children. This article¹ explores the implications of sibling relationships literature for the foster care placement of young children. The author discusses attachment, kinship, socialization, caretaking, and cultural diversity issues along with both intentional and unintentional sibling segregation concerns.

     

Implementing Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in Child Protection Decision-Making: a Critical Analysis of the Challenges and Opportunities for Social Work

One of the most frequently cited principles in the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is Article 12. This article provides a critical analysis of the challenges that child protection social work faces when implementing Article 12 in social work decision-making whilst simultaneously keeping children safe. The article begins with an outline of the general reasons for involving children in decisions that affect them but argues that despite being beneficial, implementing Article 12 has proved to be problematic due to theoretical, practical and ethical challenges within social work which will be examined. The article continues by arguing that it is possible to overcome these obstacles using Lundy’s model of conceptualising Article 12 as a real-world tool that offers practical solutions to help social work/workers overcome rather than avoid the identified challenges. It is intended that these suggestions will help empower social work/workers to discharge their legal obligation to enable children to be heard in decisions that affect them. The article concludes by arguing for a more empowering approach to children’s involvement in social work decision-making with some reflections on the future of Article 12 within the social work paradigm.     

The SOS Children's Villages : School Achievement of Subjects reared in a permanent Foster Care

This paper reports the long term effects of maternal deprivation and of a foster family care for siblings. In a permanent placement (children's villages) a single housemother cares for siblings until adulthood and receives the help of a psycho‐educative team. Investigation on school achievement and on level of education was made on all the subjects reared in a voluntary association of children's villages. It proves to be better compared with children in traditional foster care and children brought up by their parents from very disadvantaged backgrounds. A large part of school failure is lessened for children admitted before 6.     

Using music to promote children's thinking and enhance their literacy development

In an effort to understand how children's literacy is affected by their life experiences, this article analyses the natural disposition of children to engage in musical activities that connect them to previous experiences and allow them to build new thoughts. Music is inherent to children's experiences and is related to sounds heard everyday, which facilitate mental imagery. This article focuses on the use of music as a tool that is instrumental in engaging children in thinking activities that promote literacy development. The author shows evidence of how music serves as a scaffold to foster thinking, self‐expression and cultural awareness in children, including second‐language learners, based on findings from an action research project conducted with pre‐kindergarten to second‐grade children and their teachers. The project used their explorations with music and soundscapes (sounds that characterise the environment) to promote thinking and enhance their creative writing.     

Familiarity or Not: Children’s Choice of Interviewer in a Study of Substitute Care

This article is based on a study of children's experiences of being in care in which children were given the opportunity to choose either their own social worker or an outside researcher to interview them for the purposes of the research. We examine here how the children (N?=?15) describe their choice of interviewer and also explore how the social workers (N?=?8) experience their role as research interviewers. The findings highlight that there is no single reason for children to choose either a social worker or a researcher to be the interviewer. Familiarity, in particular, can either be a motivation or an obstacle. The dual positions of children as research interviewees and as clients as well as the dual positions of social workers both supported and hindered the interviews. Social workers reported new insights into their knowledge about children’s views as a result of the research interview experience. It is argued that the choice of the interviewer may be an option for some children to have their voice heard in research. Ethical balancing and critical dialogue are also suggested as having a role.     

Life in Government Care: The Connection of Youth to Family

The purpose of this paper is to examine the family attachments of youth who have lived in foster care. Though young people are the primary recipients of services in the child welfare system, their voices are seldom heard both in research and their own plans of care. Data was gathered through a questionnaire distributed to youth aged 17–24 years. Youth named siblings more frequently than any other family member with whom they now have contact, and identified their birth family as their primary object of attachment, despite the birth family being identified the least often as those to whom the youth turn when they are sick or who they talk to about their feelings. Youth who lived in many foster homes stated they do not feel part of any family. Many youth stated that they did not feel listened to by their social workers. Support for co-operative relationships between foster parents and birth parents and alternate dispute resolution are discussed as ways of preventing young people from severing their vital family connections. This article documents a research project about how the experiences of youth’ in government care, including both foster care and group home care, affect their sense of belonging and connection to “family”. It reports findings that show that as the number of foster placements increase the “feeling of being part of a family” diminishes among youth. The research participants, twenty youth aged 17–23 years, most often identify siblings as family members with whom they still have contact, and the birth family is considered to be their most salient attachment. Many youth state that they did not feel listened to or understood by their social workers. Recommendations for social policy and child and youth care practice are discussed.     

Investigating the Effectiveness of the Incredible Years Basic Parenting Programme for Foster Carers in Northern Ireland

Children who are looked after experience significantly higher levels of social, emotional and behavioural difficulties than children who live with their family of origin. Such difficulties tend to be pervasive and can have detrimental consequences for placement stability, and ultimately for the child's ability to reach their potential. Government documents such as Care matters highlight the importance of providing ongoing training and support to foster carers to equip them with the necessary skills to manage the complex needs presented by children who are looked after. The nature of this training and support is often debated. With this in mind, Barnardo's Professional Fostering Service piloted the Incredible Years Basic Parenting Programme with 13 foster carers. The 12-week programme was evaluated using the Eyberg Child Behaviour Inventory pre and post intervention. Results provide a promising insight into the potential of the Incredible Years Basic Parenting Programme as a method of training and supporting foster carers.     

Validation of the CHORES: a measure of school-aged children's participation in household tasks

The CHORES (Children Helping Out: Responsibilities, Expectations, and Supports) is a clinical and research tool that measures school-aged children's participation in household tasks. Separate performance and assistance scores enable examination of changes in children's responsibilities for household tasks as they mature and the work of families to promote their participation. The Self-Care and Family-Care subscales afford study of cultural aspects of household tasks that may influence children's participation and opportunities for learning. Thirty-two parents from diverse backgrounds participated in the first part of the study. Twenty-one of these parents participated in the test–retest study. The sample was culturally diverse and included parents of 6- to 11-year-old children with and without disabilities who have average or above intellect. Results from the psychometric analyses show that the CHORES has strong reliability and validity. The variance in children's task performance and overall levels of assistance supports the utility of this measure for capturing differences among children in the extent of their participation. Stability of parents’ responses over time is strong both for performance (ICC, r=0.88) and for assistance (ICC, r=0.92) scores. The validity of the CHORES is supported by the parents’ judgments of the importance of involving their children in household tasks. The CHORES is easy to complete, considers the parent's perspective, and provides a way to collect information on children's participation in household tasks. The CHORES provides a mechanism to learn more about factors that influence children's participation in household tasks, changes in their responsibilities over time, and outcomes from their participation in these tasks.     

Voices From the System: A Qualitative Study of Foster Children's Stories

This project qualitatively analyzed the stories that 23 preadolescent foster children told about their lives. An ecological framework in conjunction with the social constructionist understanding of stories guided the ethnographic semistructured interviews. These stories contained both common and unique features and provided insight into the lives of foster children whose environments involved poverty, drugs, crime, violence, and racism. Research domains included confusion, social ambivalence, anger, loss, and aids to resiliency. This study highlights the importance of these stories for the children who create them and those who will work with them.     

Social welfare reform in Israel: Social workers’ views on change,participation and professional values

In recent years, many western welfare states have undergone reforms in their social services. These reforms are intended to influence the work of social workers in the public sector, and depend largely upon workers’ ability and willingness to implement them. The research presented in this article addresses the reform in Israeli Departments of Social Services through the perspective of the social workers tasked with its implementation. Drawing on recent developments of the Knowledge‐Power‐Politics Triad model, the relationship between aspects of social workers’ support for the reform and their perceived and actual involvement in reform policy making, general attitude towards change, and professional inclinations was examined. Our sample consisted of 180 social workers employed in departments currently implementing the reform. The study's results emphasise the vital role employee participation plays in forming support for reforms' goals, and at the same time expose the complex interplay between developing a ‘sense’ of participation and participation's actual realisation. They offer several insights into the way social workers’ support for reform is constructed, and not less so, regarding aspects of examining such support.     

The relationship between Developmental Co‐ordination Disorders,child's perceived self‐efficacy and preference to participate in daily activities

Background Developmental Co‐ordination Disorder (DCD) may negatively impact children's self‐efficacy and limit their performance and participation in school as well as in leisure activities performed after school hours. However, a lack of information exists regarding the relationships between DCD, child's self‐efficacy and participation. Moreover, the literature about the way children with DCD experience these limitations and report about them is scarce. This study aimed to compare the perceived self‐efficacy and the preference to participate in leisure activities of children with DCD and typical peers and to illuminate the relationship between self‐efficacy, activity preference and DCD severity. Methods Participants were 37 children with DCD and 37 typical peers, aged 5.08–9.83 years. All children performed the Movement Assessment Battery for Children, the Perceived Efficacy and Goal Setting System and the Preference for Activities of Children. Results The scores of the Movement Assessment Battery for Children confirmed the motor gaps between the two groups. Children with DCD scored significantly lower in self‐efficacy on all the Perceived Efficacy and Goal Setting System subscales and demonstrated a lower preference to participate in leisure activities according to all scales of the Preference for Activities of Children. The lower their self‐efficacy, the lower their motor performance and their preference to participate in activities. Conclusions Children's preference to participate in activities may be limited by motor difficulties, but further hindered by low self‐efficacy. Early identification of DCD and associated negative outcomes, also based on child's self‐reports, should receive special attention in intervention programmes in order to enhance children's self‐confidence, feelings of belonging, optimal development and participation in daily activities.     

La Ciudad de las Niñas y los Niños de Huesca,una oportunidad en el diseño de entornos y políticas públicas saludables

The City of Girls and Boys of Huesca (Spain) is an international project that seeks to foster children's autonomy and full participation in the construction of the city. Following its formal approval at the City Council of Huesca, the Girls and Boys Board and the City Laboratory were created, both of which include children from all the schools of Huesca. To highlightthe work on health, activities such as “Healthy School Paths”, in which the asset mapping technique is used, were incorporated. Besides the interdisciplinary work among different areas of the city council, professionals from education (schools and university), health and social services, effects on the urban physical environment, with one street, park and square remodelled; and on the children's lifestyles, with more children walking to school alone, have been observed.     

The SOS Children's Villages: Behaviour of Children reared in a Permanent Foster Care

The present study has investigated the behavioural development of 157 children aged 7‐15 reared in a long term placement. They had been in a SOS children's village for 4 and a half years. All school results and questionnaires from teachers scale were collected. Family backgrounds, parental alcoholism and number of previous placements have important long‐term effects on children's development. Some behavioural problems appear when 2 or 3 groups of siblings are reared together. The proportion of behaviour problems for such children reared in a mono‐parental foster care is equivalent to those of children reared in working‐class‐families whether adopted quite early or remaining in their natural families.     

Play and theory of mind in early childhood: a Hong Kong perspective

The study seeks to understand the relation between preschool children's mode of participation and negotiation strategies during play and their theory of mind (ToM) development in the Hong Kong context. Forty-two 5-year-old children were recruited. Their emotional and cognitive ToMs were assessed along with expressive language ability. Children's play was observed twice in naturalistic and laboratory settings. Parents completed a questionnaire on their child's emotional and cognitive ToM development, including demographic information and social economic status indexes. The results showed that 5-year-old Hong Kong children mostly engaged in associative and cooperative play and employed two-way, reciprocal strategies in their play. Parent report of emotional ToM predicted children's play strategy in both naturalistic and laboratory settings. Child measure of cognitive ToM predicted their play strategy in the laboratory setting. The study advocates more play time in kindergarten in order to foster an empathetic generation.