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Professionals’ attitudes to children’s participation in decision‐making: dichotomous accounts and doctrinal contests
Author(s) -
Shemmings
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
child and family social work
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.912
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1365-2206
pISSN - 1356-7500
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2206.2000.00160.x
Subject(s) - viewpoints , perspective (graphical) , psychology , qualitative research , health professionals , social psychology , child protection , public relations , medicine , nursing , sociology , political science , health care , social science , art , artificial intelligence , computer science , law , visual arts
The attitude of professionals to the involvement of children in decision‐making is unclear. This paper discusses a recent research study that utilized qualitative and quantitative methods to explore the views of professionals working in family support and child protection about two different aspects of children’s participation in decision‐making: the age at which children should make decisions and whether or not they should be involved in child protection conferences. The results showed that social workers tended to favour one of two diametrically opposed viewpoints about the age at which young people should make decisions and then in discussions with colleagues they sought to persuade others to change their perspective. Social workers who believed that young people should not make decisions until much older nevertheless thought that they should be involved in conferences whereas non‐social workers did not make this distinction: for them, children who were not old enough to make decisions for themselves should not be involved in conferences. The results are discussed in the light of some of the implications for practice. The paper concludes by outlining how the results informed the design of a training pack commissioned by the Department of Health concerning the involvement of young people.