This volume covers a broad spectrum of current research findings concerning the participation of young people in foster families and residential living groups in Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland as well as cross-nationals perspective on children and young people’s participation in foster and residential care placements in Great Britain and France.

Autistic children's experiences of COVID-19 have been largely absent from current crisis and recovery discourse. This is the first published study to directly and specifically involve autistic children both as research advisors and as research participants in a rights-based participatory study relating to the pandemic. 

This article analyses the accounts of children’s spokespersons in Norway, whose mandate is to speak with and forward children’s views in care proceedings. The analyses show how constructions of loyalty, family interdependence, and individualism may inform spokespersons’ interpretations of children’s views, and thereby their exploratory practices in their conversations with the children.

In order to understand the issues faced by the children and young people who get in touch with child helplines, Child Helpline International interviews members around the world every year to gather information about the contacts they receive. This report provides an overview of the information recieved for 2021. 

This chapter examines practical insight from research conducted across the UK and elsewhere in Europe of the contexts that children were experiencing, the pre-existing causes of some of the challenges and examples of children providing evidence about their experiences and insights into how policy and services could better respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This practical manual was designed for practitioners and service managers who want to build their knowledge and skills on meaningful participation.

This paper presents the findings of a study in the Australian state of Victoria where a group of lived experience consultants (LECs) were employed to consult on the results of a broader survey of the attitudes of professionals, carers and care leavers regarding the educational experiences of children in out-of-home care.

This handbook was made for children to read and write in. You’ll learn about why families are important and why they are the best place for children to grow up. There is also plenty of space for children to write down their thoughts and feelings about what they have read. 

This toolkit was developed with and for philanthropic funders who want to better understand how to support child and youth participation. It builds on an ECFG study published in 2021, Shifting the Field: Philanthropy’s Role in Strengthening Child- and Youth-Led Community Rooted Groups, which maps current practices in philanthropic support for child- and youth-led work at the community level and provides strategic advice to donors on how to strengthen their funding modalities through participatory approaches.

Putting Children and Young People at the Heart of Care Reform is an introductory manual aimed at practitioners. The manual provides a comprehensive overview of how to meaningfully engage children and young people in care reform. It covers the legal and theoretic framework, the basics in how to engage with children and young people, how to be inclusive and practical ways to engage children and young people in monitoring and evaluation. It also has an extensive chapter on how children and young people can and should be involved throughout care reform, from making decisions about their own care, right up to engaging in global policy decisions. It will challenge readers to increase participation in their own work and equip them with tools to do so in a safe and meaningful way.