“Is this ‘minor time’ now? My time?” - Voice versus knowledge in child neglect proceedings, lessons from the guardian ad litem role in Israeli juvenile courtrooms

Abstract

Background

Child Protection Legal Systems around the world work to toe the line between protecting children from possible harms and avoiding inflicting further harm by mistreating or misrecognizing the problems the children in question are facing. Despite growing efforts to enhance children's participation in child protection proceedings, there is still a lot of criticism from families and children directed at the state and the legal system.

Objective

This inquiry attempts to locate at least one of the reasons for such criticism – the feeling of being excluded from the decision-making process.

Participants and setting

6 juvenile courts were visited by the researcher, sitting in 30 court hearings and at the courts’ area before and after hearings.

Method

Observations were transcribed by researcher and analyzed using atlas.ti, extracting themes and recurring ideas.

Results

The article analyses the matrix of different child-participation modes – which permit children's voices to be heard in the courtroom to varying degrees – and specifically different roles currently played by the guardians ad litem. The article frames the findings within the theory of epistemic injustice, identifying the places where the children's place as knowers and knowledge-producers is being denied.

Conclusion

Despite – or in fact, because - the emphasis on participation and voice, there is still a long way to go before children are provided real epistemic power in the courtroom. Based on the inquiry findings, a policy recommendation is made: to incorporate the epistemic perspective from the poverty-informed paradigm, into the specialized training guardians go through, allowing for an epistemic rearrangement of the children's voices as knowledge-producers.