A Handbook of Children and Young People’s Participation

This new edition of A Handbook of Children and Young People’s Participation brings together work from research and practice to reflect on some of the key developments in the field since the first edition published in 2010.

Subtitled ‘Conversations for Transformational Change’, the collection focuses on both ongoing and new discourses that enable us to advance thinking and practice to better understand what it means for participation to be transformational. Featuring all new content, it explores the developments that have been achieved in theory and practice in the last decade as well as the challenges and, indeed, the limitations of dominant participation approaches with children and young people in achieving genuine societal transformation. A key feature of the Handbook is the inclusion of young people as co-authors in many of the chapters.

Foregrounding aspects of participation as experienced by diverse groups of children and young people, the book especially illuminates the experiences and perspectives of participation relating to groups of children who face particular challenges, such as displaced children and children living with disabilities and young people from indigenous groups in a range of contexts.

The broad spectrum of debates that the text covers will be invaluable in challenging and transforming thinking and practice for a wide range of scholars, practitioners, activists and young people themselves. It will additionally be suitable for use on a wide range of courses including childhood and youth studies, sociology, law, political studies, community development, development studies, children’s rights, citizenship studies, education and social work.

Barry Percy-Smith is Professor of Childhood, Youth and Participatory Practice and Director of the Just Futures Research Centre at University of Huddersfield, UK. He has extensive experience as a participatory action researcher and an international reputation for his work in child and youth participation. His main interests are in children and young people as active agents of change, participatory social learning and action inquiry approaches to learning and change in organisations and communities. He has published widely on these issues, including as co-editor of the first edition of A Handbook of Children and Young People’s Participation with Nigel Patrick Thomas.

Nigel Patrick Thomas is Professor Emeritus of Childhood and Youth at the University of Central Lancashire and founder of The Centre for Children and Young People’s Participation. He was previously a social work practitioner, manager and advisor and later a social work educator. His research interests are principally in child welfare, children’s rights, children and young people’s participation, and theories of childhood and intergenerational relations. His many publications include Children, Family and the State: Decision-Making and Child Participation (2000, 2002) and Children, Politics and Communication: Participation at the Margins (2009).

Claire O’Kane is a child rights practitioner and researcher with over 28 years of international experience working with nongovernment organisations, UN agencies and child-led organisations on children’s rights, participation, care, protection and peacebuilding in development and humanitarian contexts. She is a qualified social worker with a masters in applied social studies and a postgraduate diploma in social research and evaluation from UK universities. Claire works as an international child rights consultant and is a senior associate with Proteknôn. She is the author of more than 60 publications, including toolkits on child rights, protection and participation.

Afua Twum-Danso Imoh is Senior Lecturer in Global Childhoods and Welfare at the University of Bristol. Her research interests are centred around conceptualisations of childhood, parent-child relationships and the intersections between dominant global children’s rights discourses and social and cultural norms in West Africa. Afua is the lead co-editor of three other edited collections: Childhoods at the Intersection of the Global and the Local (2012), Children’s Lives in an Era of Children’s Rights: The Progress of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in Africa (Routledge 2013) and Global Childhoods Beyond the North-South Divide (2018).