A Handbook of Children and Young Peoples Participation

A Handbook of Children and Young Peoples Participation brings together key thinkers and practitioners from diverse contexts across the globe to provide an authoritative overview of contemporary theory and practice around childrens 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 childrens participation as a resource for academics, students and practitioners in childhood studies, childrens 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 childrens 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 childrens participation. The emphasis throughout the text is on learning from the complexity of childrens participation in practice to improve our theoretical understanding, and on using those theoretical insights to challenge practice, with the aim of realising childrens rights and citizenship more fully.