Meanings and strategies of child participation in residential care centers: a theoretical reflection

This paper aims at offering a theoretical reflection on child participation’s meanings and strategies in Residential Care Centers (hereafter RCC). The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development intends on investing in children, viewing them as contributors to the construction of a more just, equitable, tolerant, open and socially inclusive world. The UN manifesto also emphasizes the need to strive for a nurturing environment in which children can fully realize their rights and capabilities [1]. Hence, it is vital to reflect on the meanings and strategies of child participation in alternative care settings [2] where children are more vulnerable by definition and often precluded from contributing to the decisions concerning their lives [3] [4], although mechanisms to ensure their participation have been implemented [5]. Ensuring children’s participation, especially younger children’s participation, in the child protection system is challenging for practitioners, as it requires balancing their institutional mandate as adults in charge of protecting the child (which entails dynamics of power and authority) with the need to competently foster the child’s own participation as a key form of intervention against violence, also institutional violence [6] Goffman [7], and as a form of prevention of, and a strategy for coping with, adverse childhood experiences. Hence, RCC practitioners require specific professional competence if they are to understand the meanings and value of child participation and encourage its practice, especially when dealing with younger children, in their educational relationship with the child. Thus, there is a need to identify forms and strategies of participation, sustainable both for practitioners (taking into account their institutional mandate and the associated constraints) and for children (in light of their particular stage of development and their specific life stories). The paper will present a reflection on the international policy framework on child participation, with a specific focus on participation in RCCs. At the heart of the paper a reflection on meanings, forms and strategies of child participation in RCCS.