Clare Hanbury

The RISKS of Participation to Children and Young People: The June focus of the Children's Participation Group

Here are notes from the last meeting of the Children's Participation Group. there are 8 of us in this group and all of us work in international development with a particular focus on the participation of children and young people. This month the topic we focused on was The Risks to Children and Young People from Participation.

We began the discussion by reminding ourselves of the tools that already exist to help guide organisations and individuals who wish to strengthen of develop participation of children and young people. Links to ethical guidelines (or participation resources containing ethical guidelines) can be found at the bottom of the note to this meeting.

Some of the ideas for keeping children and young people safe and reducing risk that may arise from participation are as follows:

• To ensure that organisations working with children and young people have policies and procedures relating to safeguarding and child protection in place and ensure that these are current, up to date and compressive enough to protect children and young people.

• We should ensure that children and young people are consulted on processes for keeping them safe in a way that allows their perspective the risks they feel they may face to be incorporated into procedures and along with their views on what could be done about it. A very practical example was given about children being consulted on the logistics of their journey to and accommodation at a participatory workshop. Some of the issues these children faced were risk of attack on the way to the event, the sleeping areas for boys and girls, adults and children.

• One of the blocks to promoting children’s participation is that adult say its too risky. Therefore it useful to get perspective from children on this. For example, consulting children on logistics or the participatory activities themselves. It sets the tone and expected practice.

•  The consultative process needs to be done in an age appropriate and careful way so as not to create anxiety. The impact of the type of questions and tools used to support children and young peoples participation needs to be thought through.

•  Children and young people need to be made aware of an organisations child protection policies. In addition, there needs to be an appointed child protection lead. Then children are encouraged to report to this person (or use the process outlined in the organisations procedures) if they have any concerns. The lead person needs to be  appropriately trained and gender issues taken into account.

•  A distinction needs to be made between safeguarding (creating safe environments/practice) and child protection (physical abuse, neglect).

•  We need to recognise that participation is a means to enhance children's self protection - children who have no voice can be targeted for abuse.

• Children and young people are not a homogenous group and what may work for one group may not work for others. We had an example of where young people felt hostile to work younger children were doing on conflict and conflict resolution.

• One problem about trying to understand the when’s of children’s participation is that developmental psychology theory has a different stance.  For example - Piaget, a central representative of 'childdevelopment' can be a start for discussion; main obstacle in his research is that the stages of development are quite fixed.

• There are many theories. However we thought that it may be useful if we could work together as a group to update theory on the evolving capacities of the child.

• We need to support children who are enabled within a workshop setting to consider how this enhanced skills or increased voice may have an in the ‘real’ world. We need to do this to ensure that they don’t put themselves at risk. This can be hard and especially for children who are especially vulnerable or marginalized and who could be left at grater risk as a result of a project and once the project has ended.

• Save the Children Sweden has explored the balance of protection and participation and risks involved. This is documented in an SCS report called 'CultivatingParticipation' available here: http://resourcecentre.savethechildren.se/content/library/documents/participation-virtue-must-be-cultivated.

• It’s also important to inform children and young how the information they generate will be used. Any information given to children must be in a child friendly format.

• These are sometimes ethical issues around adult agencies approaching children to get information and ideas from them, but lacking the willingness to respond to children’s own agenda.

• We talked about the potential to over consult with some groups of children – checks need to be made regarding who has worked with the children before and why and how this information was used.
• Check that CP is inclusive and the risks to vulnerable children if they are excluded. Risks can be straightforward or more complex e.g. risks to mental health, self-esteem etc. (sorry not sure i understand this and cant remember what we were talking about here)

•  Risk of overburdening children to participate and create a situation where due to social desirability children don't dare to refuse to participation.

• We need to prepare people to work with children. If working with teachers we need to build in an awareness on the distinctions between teaching and facilitating participatory work with children. A reelection that even when our colleagues KNOW what and how they should do – how easy it is to slip inadvertently into behaviour that they maybe inappropriate but which just come up.

• Its important to realise that working with children in a participatory way can be a huge step for some adults who never experienced this as children or were taught how to practice it as adults.

•  Reflective practice for practitioners is an important place to start. In places where there are deep inequities the ideas that underpin participation are highly challenging to implement and needs developing over the medium/long term.

•  The best facilitators are often the younger people who have a natural rapport with children. Its important to be alert to natural talent and to nurture and support them with continues training, development and other professional support.
•  Maybe we need a checklist of criteria for people who are suitable of this work? Involving children in recruitment is useful where possible.

News from Children’s Participation Group Members

We are all doing such varied and interesting work. This includes:

•  Child participation in Health and SMS messaging
•  CYP participation in health service design and delivery
•  CP and how poverty/low income impacts on disabled children’s rights (mainly social, economic and cultural rights)
• Helping to set up a counselling group run by children for other children, http://www.crc15.org/
•  CP and M&E work – Oak foundation project – forthcoming seminars and developing ideas around creating a digital hub for M&E work in CP
• Involving CYP in design of organisational assessments using qualitative and quantitative approaches
•  Internal youth mapping
• Regional analysis on community based child protection mechanisms supported by Plan in Asia;
• Engaged in M&E of children's participation (Oak funded) pilots with forthcoming webinars;
• Preparing for global advocacy with and by children's and young people's representatives on children, youth and peace building in New York in early September;
• Preparing training modules on child rights governance and humanitarian practice.
• Working on a paper concerning a life cycle approach to children, adolescent and youth participation in peace building
• Looking into the world bank’s lifecycle approach 10 + years

Possible actions formulating from the group:

We seem to often return to a need for more clarity or tips on how to use in practice the evolving capacity of child framework and understand how this has changed over time and across cultures. We spoke about looking at reports developed by Bernard Van Leer, on materials that have been developed on peace building and relayed to this. We agreed it would be great to trace a theory of change with children and young people.

Links to ethical guides to children and  young people's participation

http://www.ecpat.net/ei/Publications/CYP/CYP_report_Ensuring_ENG.pdf

http://www.unicef.org/adolescence/cypguide/resourceguide_ethics.html

JOIN THE CONVERSATION

You might like to join the conversation by joining the Children For Health Linked in community group.

Children's Participation in Health: The October Focus of the Child Participation Group

Theme of main discussion: children’s participation in health – identifying and overcoming resistance.

 Within some child focused agencies there is often increased focus on children’s participation in child protection and education, but less focus in the health sector.  In the health sector and in emergency work there is often a tendency to see children’s participation as less relevant, especially in terms of a timely, fast response that is needed to save lives. Despite the existence of excellent resources on children’s participation in health, especially through 30 years of the child-to-child approach which is focused on children’s participation in health, many of these rich and useful child friendly health education materials are not known or used by health practitioners.

Reasons for this were reflected upon and include:

• The orientation of health practitioners is medical, so when you are looking at doctors or health workers they are looking at it from their own specialised knowledge. Doctors may be more influenced by other medical practitioners, thus we need to get other doctors on board to advocate and convince them about children’s participation in health.

• Health staff in many INGOs currently have a key focus on maternal and child health (MDG3) engaging with women and infants under the age of 5 years. Thus, in terms of participation many health practitioners suggest that children under the age of 5 years are too young to be involved.

• While elder siblings often spend significant time as caregivers for their younger siblings in many parts of the world, their caregiving role is often not acknowledged or valued in terms of the need to engage with children as caregivers when undertaking health awareness or health interventions. While it is seen as normal for children to help take care of their younger siblings, the children have no status as caregivers.

• The new generation of health workers may not be aware the effectiveness and relevance of engaging children in health campaigns and health activities at household (and other) levels.

In terms of solutions to help convince health practitioners (doctors, health workers, health staff) about the relevance and importance of children’s participation and child centred approaches to health education and health promotion. Key strategies that are helpful include:

• Ensuring partnerships between health and education staff at every stage and at every single level  - this has been a key feature of child-to-child approaches to children’s participation in health education and health work. However, it can be difficult to bring two sectors together - e.g. education and health - we need to recognise this. It requires a lot of operational good will and efforts.

• Identifying champions – high level doctors and health workers who can advocate and influence their peers to value children’s participation and to involve children and young people in health initiatives.

• During training workshops on children’s participation in health draw upon medical practitioners’ expertise. In the process they also become exposed to potential that children and young people have.

• Use the 'like to like' principle – if you are advocating to the Ministry, you need to get someone from the Ministry involved to promote the idea.

• We need to identify ‘big hitters’ in terms of global health work who can advocate and champion.

• In the ‘Children investment fund’ and many other donors like The Gates Foundation there is a real focus on evidence based practice. We can look to see where entrance points may be for children to make a contribution to see how children's participation can be included. We can promote use of the framework on monitoring children’s participation to gather outcomes and evidence concerning children’s participation in health. For example, a project in Mozambique project will look at how school age children can have an impact on reducing chronic under-nutrition in under 5 years.  This focus is there as during the scoping assessments the staff involved recognised the role older children play in taking care of younger children, including feeding younger children and infants.

• We need to identify and/or support the development of powerful videos which clearly illustrates children’s role as caregivers of younger children.

• PRA tools such as a ‘day in the life of’... or ‘pie charts of time spent in daily activities’ were used more 15 years ago than now, but they remain useful tools to identify the different roles and responsibilities of different people in the household. Such tools can help family and community members really ‘see’ and recognise the roles that children are playing in caregiving of their younger siblings. Use of such PRA tools, and the revelations that it can lead to can be important entry points to further opportunities for children’s participation in health work.

• Identify issues that are at the heart of family and community life.  Nutrition-related issues uncovered during a recent assessment with children, teacher training students and in the community include the following:

• Myths and beliefs about food, what motivates food choices e.g. taste, price, availability, habit, and rituals.
• Power dynamics at meal times e.g.  – what male members of the household demand; recipes; habits; food combining; preparation; preservation; balance between snacks and meals; meal logistics and timings; food preparation; feeding practices; weaning; the introduction of weaning foods – timings and food used; the diet of breastfeeding mother; portion size;
• Community support to get knowledge about food; traditional birth attendants and grandmother’s role;
• Food allocation and gender issues; food serving; attending to eating during meals and portion size.

For children to be at the front line of improving nutrition for themselves and each other requires great sensitivity such that the roles of the parents are not undermined or challenged in ways that are inappropriate or potentially damaging. Each family’s circumstance and needs are unique and participatory methodologies are especially suited to meeting different needs. However it takes great skill and particular sensitivity to facilitate this process.

• A decade ago UNICEF’s creative communication (cartoons) ‘Meena’ (in Asia) and ‘Sarah’ (in Africa) were effective increasing awareness of the roles of girls, promoting child rights and non-discrimination.  Meena/ Sarah could be revived and/or newer modern versions can be developed and disseminated through social media and networking sites.

• It would be helpful to have the publication, ‘Children for Health’ online as a free supplementary resource for ‘Facts of Life’.

• A dynamic hub for sharing information, experiences and stories is needed. Stories of most significant change need to be documented and shared as they can inspire others, and others can learn from their experiences. For example, the story of the boy who helps prevent the spread of  cholera can inspire others to act and to support children’s participation in health.  There was a paediatrician who went to an orphanage during the Rwanda emergency where there were Rwanda children - acute case of cholera - he organised a competition with children on hand-washing and it had a significant effect on the cholera. He was staggered by what children could do and had achieved

• We can encourage child focused international agencies working on health to ensure that there national offices have access to child friendly health materials.

• One of the participants in this group is managing a project that distills 100 health messages for children to learn, collect and share  on 10 health tipics and that can be shared using mobile phones and the social media.

• We need to build capacity building on children’s participation into emergency preparedness for different sector staff, including health and nutrition staff.

For any readers interested in engaging with this discussion please ask to join this 'Linked in' Discussion Group - Children For Health..

Children's Participation Group: April focus on Training in Children's Participation

The monthly post that distills the notes from our Children's Participation Group meeting. This post focuses on training in children's participation. (This post was written and edited by two other members of the CP group)

Welcome!

The April meeting saw us with a new member. Welcome Lisa! You’ve already enriched the group and it is great to have you on board.  The group is now what we think is a maximum size for the format which is a monthly meeting and sharing over skype.  The decision to limit discussion to one topic per session and to extend the session to an hour and 15 minutes was wise as was the decision to spend the last 15 minutes sharing what we were all up to, relating to children’s participation or not.  We also all endorsed the putting up of our discussion on a blog because we think it is great to capture key points and to share - it furthers reflection, sharing and learning. So those of you who may be reading this but were not a part of the skype discussion please feel free to add/comment/challenge the ideas and notions here.  We’ll be happy to hear from you and to widen the sharing pool.

THE DISCUSSION

The focus of the meeting was the question...When we are conducting a training in children's participation what are we training our participants to- know, be able to do and to feel? (Are there core components?)

That this is a burning issue that all those involved in CP are grappling with is evidenced by the fact that we talked about this to some extent last month but yet felt that much remained to be explored.

On training:

The issues that CP training raises are diverse and include:

Barriers, both with respect to individual attitudes (don’t believe in CP) and organisational constraints (who sometimes insist on it as a core element in the programmes run, but do not embed it within their own organisational practices and /or think they do it already).  The barriers need to be:

• Anticipated and pre-empted where possible
• Dealt with at the outset of any training programme (see ‘training strategies’ and ‘tools’ for suggestions on how)
• Shifted a little through ‘evidence’ of good CP in practice, often through a video (the group offered a rich range of links which are grouped at the end of this note for ease of access). The attitudinal ones are the most difficult to shift when perspectives are entrenched.  A leaf from coaching work might help here.  Acute and attentive listening, a ‘listening with all your senses’ is key.  We need to ascertain where participants are ‘coming from’ and, in particular, what strengths they already bring that might be built on may help them and us, see this as a ‘journey’ rather than a ‘training’ scenario.

What those of us engaged in CP need to get across, and it is debatable whether the training alone can do this, is the value in practice of CP.  And it is crucial to link CP with action in the community: action on health or education or another social aspect of childhood and life in the community.  However, there is a wider social agenda as well, as we discussed later.

The organisational barriers are equally challenging.   The participants need to be equipped with strong advocacy and communication skills to get their organisations to see either that they need to practice what they preach or, indeed to review their own policies and practices and not assume that they automatically child inclusive.   We really need to support opportunities to apply CP in practice, to reflect on practice, and to learn based on experience.  We also need to equip ‘returning’ participants with the skills to persuade or shift their organisations’ work, policies and attitude regarding the practice of CP within the organisation itself. 

So the training needs to:

Children's Participation Group: March Meeting

Children’s Participation Group Meeting (March)
 

The Children’s Participation Group has grown!

Welcome Hannah Mehta, the children’s participation adviser from Save the Children UK, Claire O’Kane, a freelance consultant whose specialist interests include children’s participation and Sonal Zaveri, a consultant based in India who has  experience and interests in promoting children’s participation and who is also a monitoring and evaluation specialist.  Sarah Huxley could not join us for the meeting but sent a useful link that is included in the notes.

Having grown quickly we have decided on keeping the group to the size we are now and adopting a ‘one topic’ strategy for forthcoming monthly get-togethers. It’s also important that we leave enough time in our meeting for sharing news and any other tips and ideas.  Clare is creating a ‘waiting list’ for associates who may like to join us if one of our members steps away.  But please don’t wait till then to begin talking to us. We welcome our friends and associates to add comments, contribute guest blogs etc.- right away.  In addition, any associate (or anyone else for that matter!) is encouraged to start up a ‘sister’ group with whom this group could exchange. All ideas and comments on these ideas are welcome.

The March Meeting
Our March meeting aimed to share ideas and resources on four child participation related topics: 

• Mapping training needs ;
• The use of mentoring to support post training activities;
• The use of active learning methods and the distinction between active learning and activity in workshop-based training; and
• The importance of communicating information visually.

Topic 1: Mapping training needs

Resources:
The first question we set out to explore was: what tools were out there to use as a pre-training workshop assessment? And linked to this, how we might assess how a particular training event was likely to be regarded by trainees and how followed up once completed. I had been hunting for tools but I had not found much of interest. This pre-workshop training needs assessment was suggested by one of the group members and can  be usefully adapted. We were also reminded of the Oak Foundation pilot project in Monitoring and Evaluating CP and the matrices of indicators in the framework document and the tools. Click here for the link to these. A power point overview on the pilot of this can be uploaded here.  All this is good material to use when designing training needs assessment – depending on the aims of the training or workshop event. Do others reading this have tools they can recommend or ideas to share on mapping? Please tell us more if you do.

Issues we discussed re: Mapping training needs at the organisational level:

• The importance of understanding the ‘buy in’ and ‘support’ that already exists (and lack of it as well) is crucial for those designing training. Without sufficient ‘buy in’ from managers and country directors it is unlikely training will have impact after it is completed.
• If we want participants to actually initiate or enhance children’s participation, not just in the programmes they implement but in their organisations as well – and this is central to ensuring sustainability of CP – then we need to ensure we know enough about the organisations who are nparticipating in the training as well as the organization who has commissioned it.
• Managers often have less experience than others both on the theory and the practice of children’s participation and thus the training itself can be a vehicle for advocating the ideas and approaches.

The importance of trying to go ‘below the radar’ on child participation and using our experience, anticipate what the challenges and opportunities might be at both an individual and organizational level. An understanding of this can help feed the design of training activities/session that  ensure participants feel happy with the aims of the training from the start. 

CP is often regarded as a cross cutting theme and as such a candidate for mainstreaming within organizations. Thus when mapping training needs there is a need to understand where CP stands in terms of mainstreaming CP? In the organization itself (e.g. is it in job descriptions?). It may feature and be strong/weak in some surprising places that may not be immediately obvious. (Within the organization itself, within programming, aligned to individual values among key staff etc.)

Unpacking terms:

• Prior to mapping – there is a need for unpacking/consensus building as to what CP actually is/is not.
• ‘Child rights’ also needs re-visiting CP may be culturally defined and varies in different contexts and culture.
• The point of mapping training needs is to understand and then build upon the conditions for participation work to thrive after the training. is this repeat now?
• Training needs to be tailored to the needs of different groups within an origination so that some  sessions may need to be adapted for managers. It is difficult and often unnecessary for managers to attend the whole training, but they do need some orientation at the same time as their staff so that there is a dialogue prior to the end of the training to actually look at the opportunities and barriers for increasing CP in the organization itself
•  It can be useful to include young facilitators in the training.

Ethical principles

The Oak Foundation project above uses the  general requirements set out in the CRC General comment on Article 12 as indicators to monitor and evaluate quality participation. These include attention to  ethical practice of CP. An ethical approach needs to be embedded at the beginning. We reflected on how the more experienced people are the more they are aware of and are able to discuss ethical issues and that a question about ethical issues or standards in children’s participation is a useful tool to understand how trainees have an existing grasp of how to ‘do’ children’s participation!)

Topic 2: Mentoring

The use of mentoring to strengthen training in children’s participation was also discussed. Mentoring is usually done on a one to one basis (phone/skype or face to face) and can be used at an individual level after training to deepen learning.  It is especially suited to a dynamic where an individual has to make practical changes in their approach and within a challenging environment.

The group reflected on the following issues:

• Does someone need to be trained as a mentor? What are the distinctive skills and can they be acquired in a training? Are there some who are just naturally better mentors than others?  We also  know that  experts do not always make good mentors.
• What a good mentor needs most of all is coaching skills that elicit the ideas and potential of the mentor partner. The term is used advisedly because the relationship should not imply a dominant and an apprentice relationship but rather a partnership of near equals. 
• A paradox about mentoring is that, in real life, mentors or role models are not ‘allocated’ to others: they are chosen, often unknown to themselves, by others who consider them mentors. How then, do we transfer this naturally occurring phenomenon into a more openly articulated relationship and create a framework within which to operate it, while remaining true to its origins?
• Organisations can set up mentor training. One of the members of the group has co-developed a model for mentor training in INGO’s. She is happy to share this privately with those interested.
• An important feature of good mentoring (like children’s participation!) is an enabling environment for the mentee.
•  It is difficult to get organisations to ‘buy’ mentor training and none of us know of organisations who currently use mentoring after training in a formal and strategic way.  Is this something we may want to explore and/or develop further as a post-training strategy?
• Do we need to rephrase ‘mentoring’ and call it instead something like ‘supportive supervision and link it closely to monitoring?’
• A group such as this is a group where we are mentoring and supporting each other to deepen our work and do it better so – maybe there are different systems of mentoring? And again, this group came together in a relationship of ‘equal, but different’ and an understanding that for us, diversity is strength.  So the paradox of mentoring lives on.
• Maybe we need to clarify/identify the skills that are the linchpins around which mentoring operates.  Do others have thoughts they want to contribute to this?
• We all agreed that in our work we switch roles from a directive style facilitator (useful for skills development where a way of doing something can be right or wrong) to a more empowering style of facilitation where the expertise is shared, to mentoring where the mentor partner is the one who is at the center of their own solutions.
• In mentoring the Mentor will be learning a great deal from the mentor partner.
• Internal and external mentors are both useful and fulfill different functions.
• One of the groups had the experience of a professional life coach supporting the organisation and helping individuals to solve problems. She found it amazing and really helpful.
• In a way children's participation IS about becoming a mentor and a coach to the children vs. being a teacher and this should be modeled all the way up.
  

Topic 3: Active Learning for Adults in Training Workshops on Children’s Participation

We need to model active learning and thinking in our training if we want participants to learn and use it in their participatory work with other adults and children. We wanted to share more about our experience of participatory training workshops and the strategies we use to ensure they are not just an overdose of unsatisfactory group activities and group work which do not achieve the objectives of the session or the aims of the workshop. What we aim for can be called ‘serious fun’! The problem with active learning for adults, as indeed for children, is that the ‘activity’ can take over and become an end in itself. It is frustrating when that happens and when the reflection that should accompany an activity is simply lost in the activity itself.  So participants are so focused on the presentation that the learning is left behind and the problem is ours. The topic came up because of that.  There are a number of strategies that we need to re-visit and some new ones to get at this ‘active learning’ for adults.

The jig saw classroom where each group takes and learns about a different piece of the jigsaw. Attention to feedback is heightened as the participants groups are all doing something different. This would require very carefully planning by the facilitator and clear direction – especially if they’re as scope for groups to underperform when the rest of the group relied on their colleagues for this ‘piece of the jigsaw’. There is more on the steps to setting up the jigsaw classroom here.

Other ideas that the group shared included:

• The debate approach (even adults get very attached to their ‘position’ even if this is the opposite of what the group consensus is and this can be funny.) For example, debating the issue: By introducing children’s participation we are going to ruin our project.
• We can ask adults to read and prepare before training (although some will and some won’t).  they are adults after all and a bit of advanced reading would not hurt but we have been taught to shy away from all of that in our ‘bitesize’ world.
• We can also use different forms of quizzes
• Recognise the value of the lecture method when used well. We reflected on the fame and effectiveness of the inspiring Reith Lectures and the TED talks.
• We touched on the ideas around adult learning styles and the theory of multiple intelligences. The main point we draw is that we need to pass on the need for understanding your own learning style and then any teaching or training we do need to find a balance in the techniques we use. There is a lot online on this and here’s a place to start.
• Most of us have used a system of reflecting learning styles and techniques used openly, explicitly and throughout training ( keeping a running list). In this way participants analyse what you the facilitator is doing while they are experiencing it.  Anise has a few strategies that she put down on paper and is happy to share with others if they feel they want more on this.

The importance of communicating information visually

This topic was introduced by a useful web link to a way in which information is being visualized for learning. Here is an example: provided by one of the group. The work of Hans Rosling is amazing. Have a look at how he is mapping health. At the Street Child World Cup children’s rights conference in Durban (March 2010) a ‘wordle’ was used to visualize the key words children came up with as an outcome of a participatory activity to introduce sessions on children’s perceptions of home, violence and access to health and education. The wordle also sorts out ranking. The results were amazing. The children found them empowering, uniting and beautiful. And here is the wordle site.  Does anyone else have any thoughts or resources to share?

I feel this was a pretty good outcome from a 60 minute meeting!

Children's Participation Group: February Meeting

Training Practitioners in Children’s Participation: Issues and Challenges

This post has been co-created by four people who are practitioners and trainers in children’s participation. It is the outcome of a meeting on Skype on Wednesday 2nd Feb to (begin to) discuss the topic, ‘training practitioners in children’s participation’. The meeting was interesting, useful and inspiring. It was great to share ideas.

We plan to meet on Skype once a month for just an hour, to keep in touch with each others’ work, to discuss an agreed topic large or small, broad or deep, to share ideas and resources and to be a group that can support each other at times when our own creativity and courage is taking a bit of a dip! Please get in touch if you would like to join the group.

During the one hour meeting we all wrote notes on the communal board. I did the first edit on these notes (this time), Anise checked over the draft (and tidied it up!) and the other two then checked the final draft so the result comes from the four of us. Please feel free to comment and add to the conversation either in the comment box below or privately on the email.  

Thanks!

Clare Hanbury, Sarah Huxley, Barbara Lil Rastern and Anise Waljee

Training in children’s participation:

The training process came under scrutiny both with respect to process and broader issues that we, as trainers, struggle with.  Reflecting on our own experiences as both trainers and participants we found that:

• The most common type of training event is a 5 day workshop. However, it is not realistic to train practitioners or trainers with limited experience in 5 days. It may be enough to transmit ideas but it’s not enough to embed them deeply enough build competencies, to change attitudes and practice and to give the participants the necessary confidence to go out and do similar training. There is a need to practice or to co-train with a more experienced trainer who has enough practice in their background before venturing to train alone.
• It is easier to manage a group when the participants have similar needs but it can also be powerful to train a mixed group that include policymakers, academics and practitioners in different sectors as this helps to bring new dimensions to the training, It builds bridges and creates a supportive structure. Maybe the ideal is to do some work with groups who have similar needs and then mix them. The different needs to be tied to the objectives of the training and the aim of the training event. Each session needs clear objectives. It’s about how we manage the mix. Any thoughts/experiences or lessons learnt that you/others want to share on this?

 A new thought on the training process

• On a process note we also have to be careful how we use ‘activities’ in these workshops, Sometimes and probably because its about participation there is a danger that we go overboard with the jumping around and waving our arms bit.  This can get as boring as lectures! Badly managed group work is awful and when it is overused it is ineffective. Every training method needs to be selected and adapted to suit time constraints, the group and the objectives of the session and aim of the workshop. Some of us have found giving participants individual silent time within the workshop very helpful and powerful too. Luckily for us, achieving this balance and making the subtle adjustments is a highly skilled job! Are there others/ who have/have you tried this or other strategies that could enrich the training?

Managing training is not just about the participants. It is a longer, more inclusive process and so some thoughts on how to think about training include these outlined below:

Who are we really training?

• Experienced trainers in children’s participation such as ourselves need to get clearer to those commissioning the training about the STEPS to becoming an effective practitioner and then they could have a realistic idea of how the training fits. Training would only be one of these steps to creating participatory processes to both programmes and institutions.

• We also need to get clear on the criteria for selecting participants and the conditions needed for training. One of these might be the involvement of children AT the training.

• The experience for practitioners and policymakers becomes MUCH more powerful when we involve children. This has to be managed carefully so the children participating get something too. Very often having adults listen to them is an amazing and empowering experience for them.
  

Training is a formal as well as an informal, continuous process:

• Training is also more powerful when people are journaling and reflecting after the training. The problem is that people go back to overflowing in-boxes after the training. So maybe its about being clear again that a step in the  training is for the participants to be given space by their line managers after the training to do journaling, reflecting and even conduct a mentored case study i.e. practice. Training is on a continuum and does not begin or end with the specific workshop or course.  There is ‘on-site’ work that the institution needs to do after the formal training. This would be part of the training and not framed as a judgment on how well that person had done in the training! So line managers have to set up the process such that there is a period of learning after the training before the application. An outcome of the case study could be the brown bag lunch idea of feedback to colleagues. Is this something we can work with or is it, at this stage, an ‘in the future’ idea? Any comments?

So we train people as well as getting organisations to reflect on themselves

• We need to look at training more broadly and more strategically. An organisation interested in children’s participation needs to map where they are with children’s participation and where they want to go with it and then how training fits in. It is up to us experienced trainers to make suggestions about the other pieces that will strengthen and deepen the experience for all those involved. And make the investment in training worth it for the organisations spending money on it.
• The participants too could have an interactive workbook that they fill in so they could see how the training fits with their work and that the training is just one step. – Not the be all and end all and how their current activity (training) links back to a mandate or strategy which is institutional and emanates from the organisations they work with or for.
•  In this way we trainers are doing institutional capacity building alongside personal and professional capacity building of individuals. We would hope that this would also lead to a more supportive environment for the practitioners to then be able to do their fieldwork. Again, is this too ambitious? Yet what is the point of training practionners if they are sent back to an unchanging organization? Who owns the training process and the ‘products’ it generates in terms of further training and actual participation by children? Again a debate would be welcome.

Who else could be involved?

• The other idea to bring into the steps or the mapping is the phased approach and to give practitioners an idea of where they can start and how to build their skills. Mentoring is a useful way to then bring them on.
• A big question to ponder is how much mentors needs to be trained or if some people just are built to be good mentors. Often a manger is not a good mentor!
• On a broader question - Generally in the field we are not good at communicating the benefits of involving children – we need to get better at this even in small scale projects – doing little tests e.g. trying x strategy here and y strategy that involved children there and then comparing results. We need these types of examples to give participants stretch and courage and insights for themselves. It is linked to the ‘marketing’ of this idea – even internally it’s important and gives status to the idea for those working with it.
• The ‘getting ready for school’ participation project is an example of this. It’s a project where older children are preparing younger ones for school. The most powerful element of the training was to get participants to experience how good the older children (11 year olds) were at working with the younger ones (5/6 years). The 11 year olds surprised the participants who were all teachers and who said ‘They are doing this better than us!’. It was only then that the trainers realized both the baggage that the participants had still carried into the training and the very welcome knowledge that, now, having seen it in action, they actually believed in the 11 year olds and the programme as a whole. This raises the issue of how do we know as trainers that we are preparing those we train to really engage with the work. 

By this time, our hour was up and we had to close. We agreed that before our next meeting we would follow up on one aspect of the conversation that we had found especially interesting (or challenging!) And to come back in the next meeting with 5 minutes on our topic.  But we are equally happy to take up anything that strikes others/you in the conversation so please send in suggestions, thoughts, comments, critiques.