Children & Society最新文献

Youth participation has become an important mechanism in many aspects of society, research and democratic institutions and in urban planning specifically. Yet, the ideal of participation often collides with the realities of planning as practice. In this article, we outline the halting process of transforming an old villa owned by the municipality into a youth house, and how youth trained as co-researchers transitioned from being invited participants to becoming uninvited activists wanting to hold decision-makers accountable for the delay. The empirical findings from Oslo, Norway highlight the complex processes of ‘thick’ participation practices to strengthen local democracy building.

Using a qualitative multi-methods approach, this study explored the offence, survivor and perpetrator characteristics, and the lived experiences of child and adolescent survivors of child sexual abuse (CSA) in Ghana. We analysed the contents of local media reports of CSA cases from January 2015 to December 2020 in Ghana, after which we conducted semi-structured interviews involving five female child and adolescent survivors of CSA. The media content analysis identified 529 eligible reports involving female (n = 516) and male (n = 13) survivors aged 11–18 years who knew the perpetrators. The perpetrators were all-male youth and middle-aged adults employed in low-income status occupations. Defilement was the most reported sexual offence; the survivors were more likely to come from single-parent families experiencing poverty and economic hardship. The perpetrators employed multiple methods to coerce and elicit compliance from their victims: confidence approaches, violence (blitz methods) and gifts. Content analysis showed that most of the survivors attributed their victimisation to family poverty and dysfunctional parent–child relationships. These findings underscore a need to develop prevention strategies that empower young females and males to identify, escape or avoid (potential) sexual predators and encourage reporting and disclosure of CSA victimisation to formal support institutions.

This paper explores how the COVID-19 pandemic affected care leavers in Quebec, a social group already facing obstacles to social integration. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 48 participants and analysed through Castel's zones of vulnerability model. Results suggest that youth who entered the pandemic with more vulnerabilities were more affected by it in all dimensions of their lives. However, results also suggest that the presence of a strong social support network protects even the most vulnerable ones from being overly afflicted, highlighting the importance of interventions that reinforce care leaver's social support network during times of crisis.

This article explores the ethics and transformative potential of youth participatory action research (yPAR) using data from a 2-year school-based yPAR study at an elite, independent school in Toronto, Canada. I use discourse analysis to show how school-based yPAR with racialized girls intensified their experiences of gendered racism, shaping the research in a circular fashion. I demonstrate how youth researchers' strategies for counteracting this intensification contradicted the project's critical race feminist investments. This study concludes that yPAR facilitators must address the potential/actual harm of youth researchers' involvement in yPAR as part of the research process.

Children learn through interaction with their surroundings, meaning that their experiences of place directly contribute to their personal development. Despite this, the needs of the youth are rarely factored into development plans. This is a major obstacle to the sustainable and inclusive development of places. Examining potential pathways to correct this issue, this paper presents the findings of research conducted with young people from the Market area of Belfast. The research engaged with two groups (n = 11) in a participatory investigation of how young people engage with the built environment. Using several participatory methods, including narrative walkabouts, mapping exercises and semi-structured group interviews, the children engaged as co-researchers. We link to idea of ‘third places’ to frame our analysis, demonstrating how children in the Market community have strong opinions of how space is, and should be, designed and managed. We reveal interesting dynamics regarding the children's perceived exclusion from the city centre and concerns about how poor planning is harming their community's public health. We conclude by reflecting upon some of the children's proposed solutions, as well as by presenting two outcomes of our study that hint at the potential future role of young people in co-designing the built environment.

This article explains how participatory approaches can promote civic engagement among young people, resulting from their active involvement in the research process, namely identifying their communities' priorities and problems. Five project-building sessions were held with young people from five contexts located in the border regions of mainland Portugal. The data supporting this article were collected during sessions dedicated to identifying and exploring community-based problems and priorities and designing projects to address those local challenges. The results show the importance of contextualising young people's experiences and priorities, here related to their own community and its well-being and development. It is here that using participatory methodologies can create opportunities for young people to participate in processes of community change.

The purpose of this scoping review was to identify and map knowledge on different types of transitional support interventions currently available to support transition to independent living for care leavers. An extensive search using four research databases was undertaken, resulting in 36 relevant articles for inclusion. Findings were organised thematically into four broad areas: (1) Extended care; (2) A Helping Relationship; (3) Family; and (4) Employment, Education and Training. Findings show that offering a combination of targeted interventions can contribute to a more successful transition. Effective relationship-based practices are critical to the success of transitional support interventions.

This study attempts to determine whether the increasing need for parental assistance with schooling and the improved options for this owing to remote work had an impact on fathers' involvement in childcare, children's education and housework during the COVID-19 lockdown. We make use of information from a May 2020 online poll of 1359 Russian mothers. Using binary logistic regression, we examine the links between fathers' work schedules, the need for additional school support for children and an increase in father involvement. We compare father involvement in children's education and childcare before and during the lockdown. Our findings partially corroborate the ‘needs exposure’ theory, which holds that greater awareness of family needs can boost fathers' engagement. Furthermore, they emphasize that, given the high likelihood of upcoming pandemics and other crises affecting family life, considerable steps should be taken to promote gender equality in the family and the workplace. Such actions might be advantageous for the health of both parents and children.