childhood participation

Order Description
To complete an essay on the following question:

Should all children be able to participate in the design and delivery of the services they use? Critically analyse how different children can be enabled to participate effectively.

Cut-off date 8 December 2016
Word limit 2000 words (only 5% allowance 100 words)
Guidance:
The main source for this assignment is Learning Guide 5 Participation but you are likely to already be able to draw upon several parts of the earlier Learning Guides, particularly Learning Guide 4, Child–adult relations. In this essay you should demonstrate that you have understood the background to and importance of children’s participation and that you now have knowledge of how to enable all children to participate. So the essay should be a critical discussion of why children should participate in both the design and delivery of services and if you think there are limits to participation you need to discuss why you think that is the case. You should also consider whether participation is equally applicable to all children, or whether there are any significant differences. Points from part one of the essay should inform your answer to the second part of the essay which is asking you to relate the idea of participation to practice. ‘Different’ groups of children could, for example, refer to age, disability, gender or ethnicity, etcetera. Make sure that you cover several groups of children. Your examples can relate to any setting in children’s services.
The main discussion of participation is in Leverett S. (2008) ‘Children’s participation’ in Foley, P. and Leverett, S. (eds) Connecting with Children (Bristol, Policy Press/Milton Keynes, The Open University) although there is also relevant material from the earlier chapters, particularly Foley (2008) ‘Listening across generations’, also in Connecting with Children).
Through your work in Learning Guide 5, you will already have explored some of these issues. The audio-visual material in Activities 5.2 and 5.3 and the examples in Activities 5.5 and 5.6 and in online tutorial A all explore participation. In this essay you should explicitly address the issue of the diversity of children and their lives. You should aim to include, where possible and relevant, the views and perspectives of children.
A valuable way of checking whether you have included the right material and taken the right approach (‘relevance’ and ‘content’ in marking criteria) is to compare your essay plan first with the question (have you covered everything?) and second with the learning outcomes (see below – have you taken the right approach?).
Children’s participation has been the focus of online tutorial A ‘Participation in practice’. Up to an additional five marks will be given to those students who have contributed to and participated in online tutorial A. You can also use relevant material from that discussion in TMA 01.

Learning Outcomes:
1.3 the range of complex issues relating to child–adult relations and their implications for work with children, including how these impact on effective communication and engagement with children
1.4 the interrelationship of theoretical perspectives, values and ethics and services and practices for children and understand the importance of children’s voices and perspectives to work with children
1.5 the principles underlying a rights and participation approach to childhood issues and how these may be applied to a variety of situations within different contexts
2.1 understand and analyse the contributions of different approaches to the study of children, childhood and families and recognise the potential for uncertainty, ambiguity and limits to knowledge of the subject
2.4 identify and re?ect on own values and positions and those of others, and assess their relationships to policy and practice
3.1 organise, synthesise and interrogate opinions and arguments associated with issues related to children and childhood
3.2 communicate accurately and clearly in styles adapted to the purpose and context
3.4 re?ect upon and learn from personal experience and apply it to theoretical and practical issues
4.2 develop a skilled and ethical approach to working with children
4.3 develop communication and engagement skills that could be applied to work with children.