A Handbook of Children and Young People’s Participation brings
together key thinkers and practitioners from diverse contexts across
the globe to provide an authoritative overview of contemporary theory
and practice around children’s participation.
Promoting the participation of children and young people - in
decision-making and policy development, and as active contributors
to everyday family and community life - has become a central part of
policy and programme initiatives in both majority and minority worlds.
This book presents the most useful recent work in children’s
participation as a resource for academics, students and practitioners
in childhood studies, children’s rights and welfare, child and family
social work, youth and community work, governance, aid and
development programmes.
The book introduces key concepts and debates, and presents a rich
collection of accounts of the diverse ways in which children’s
participation is understood and enacted around the world,
interspersed with reflective commentaries from adults and young
people. It concludes with a number of substantial theoretical
contributions that aim to take forward our understanding of children’s
participation.
The emphasis throughout the text is on learning from the complexity
of children’s participation in practice to improve our theoretical
understanding, and on using those theoretical insights to challenge
practice, with the aim of realising children’s rights and citizenship
more fully.
Barry Percy-Smith is Professor of Childhood, Youth and Participatory Practice and Director of the Centre for Applied Child, Youth and Family Research at the University of Huddersfield, UK. He has extensive experience as a participatory action researcher in research, evaluation and development projects with children, young people and practitioners in a wide range of organisational, public sector and community contexts. He has undertaken numerous studies concerning the theory and practice of child and youth participation and youth transitions for national and international partners including Evaluation of children’s participation across all EU member states, EU H2020 PARTISPACE project (with Thomas) and projects for UNICEF and World Bank. He has published widely on these issues including the first edition of A Handbook of Children and Young People’s Participation: Perspectives from Theory and Practice (co-edited with Nigel Patrick Thomas, Routledge 2010). Nigel Patrick Thomas is Professor Emeritus of Childhood and Youth at the University of Central Lancashire, and Associate Director of The Centre for Children and Young People’s Participation. Since publication of the first edition he has authored or co-authored 30 articles in peer reviewed journals and 10 book chapters, most of them on aspects of children and young people’s participation, and one book (Westwood et al., Participation, Citizenship and Intergenerational Relations in Children and Young People’s Lives, Palgrave Macmillan 2014). During this period he has also worked on three major projects led by Southern Cross University and funded by the Australian Research Council, and one (together with Percy-Smith) led by the Goethe University in Frankfurt and funded by the European Commission, as well as leading two projects for the Children’s Commissioner for England and a major international conference for the International Childhood and Youth Research Network. He is an editor of the Palgrave series Studies in Childhood and Youth, and chairs the Editorial Board of the the journal Children & Society.
