Children's Rights

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Social Analysis SS2104 Question 5. Section B. (Catherine’s Section of paper) Identify and discuss the challenges that arise in realising children’s’ right to participation. Refer to Landsdown’s 2010 discussion of the issue. Children’s right to participation has been the subject of much research, discussion, programmes and review since the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989. Dr. Ruth Sinclair, a researcher who has a special interest in child-centred policies says Children’s participation is complex: it is undertaken for different purposes and is reflected in different levels of involvement, different contexts and different activities. (2004). Traditionally, decisions and choices about children’s activities in life have been made by the adults who care for them. There was a presumption that the adults responsible for these decisions would have the children’s best interest in mind when acting on behalf of them. In recent years we have begun to question this presumption and ask how competent the adults who take on this role are, and secondly how incompetent the child is to make their own decisions about their lives. This has been a welfare approach to children’s rights, and there has been evidence to show that this may have limitations. It has been shown that adults can and do abuse their power over children through physical abuse, sexual abuse and other abuses perpetrated in the home, schools and institutions. There have been many scandals involving the failure of adults to protect and promote the welfare of children. One of the most forceful lessons to emerge from the series of public inquiries into the abuse of children was the extent to which the children involved were denied any opportunity to challenge what was happening to them. Public policy often supports the rights and interests of parents ahead of those of children, even

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