Clare Hanbury

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:

Child Participation and Adults First! FREE training materials

This workshop report, Adults First was developed by a team in South East Asia and is a great resource for anyone planning to run training on children's participation. Its also a useful reminder that for children's participation to succeed we have to put the training and support of the adults involved FIRST. The structure of  the report is set out below - each of the numbers represents an activity conducted in the workshop:

Introduction

1. Understanding childhood

2. Expectation check, objectives and rule setting

Understanding children’s participation

3. Unfair treatment

4. Why involve children?

5. What is a child?

6. Proverbs about children

Defining children's participation

7. What is children’s participation?

8. A working definition of children’s participation

9. The right to participate

10. History of children’s rights and children’s participation

11. Discovery

Ways of involving children

12. Sharing experiences

13. Practice standards in children’s participation

14. What went wrong?

15. Designing workshops for capacity building on children’s participation

Appendices

• Some useful web sites
• Scenarios for some possible additional activities
• Handout on facilitation skills

Child Participation in Child Protection: A FREE Toolkit and Training Module

I spent a part of 2010 preparing two sets of materials on children's participation in child protection for The Child-to-Child Trust and The Keeping Children Safe Coalition:

1. A toolkit for adults working with children to involve them in their own protection; and

2. A module to support trainers of these adults to provide guidance in some of the key concepts and skills needed to do this work.

The project involved testing the toolkit and training module in Sierra Leone, with colleagues in a number of different organisations based throughout Africa. All these organisations are members of the Keeping Children Safe Coalition. The materials took almost a year to produce and after a few months (with rather a high price tag), I am delighted to say that you that online versions of both sets of materials can now be downloaded for FREE. The materials are also available in French and the Spanish version is coming soon. It is important to emphasise that while these materials aim to encourage children to get involved in child protection, it is the responsibility of adults to ensure children are safe.

Here is a bit more on the materials...

The Training Module on Child Participation in Child Protection is the 5th Module within the Keeping Children Safe Tool 3. You will need to download the entire Tool by clicking here. Module 5 is from pages 91 to 132 and is set out in the following way:

Module Five: Childrens’s Participation and Child Protection: A Guide for Training Adults

• Exercise 5.1: Children’s participation
• Exercise 5.2: Children taking action on child protection
• Exercise 5.3: Overcoming barriers against effective children‘s participation
• Exercise 5.4: Working with groups of children
• Exercise 5.5: Active Listening
• Exercise 5.6: Asking open questions

Tool 4 aims to provide adults working with children with exercises and activities that will get them started in learning about how to keep themselves and other children safer. Tool 4 can be downloaded by clicking here. Tool 4 is structured as set out below:

Introduction     

Module One: Children recognise what is child abuse           

• Exercise 1.1: Children’s rights
• Exercise 1.2: Feeling safe and
• Exercise 1.3: Understanding child abuse           

Module Two: Children keeping themselves and others safe

• Exercise 2.1: Talking about feelings
• Exercise 2.2: Decision-making
• Exercise 2.3: Children keeping children safe           

Module Three: Making organisations feel safe for children

• Exercise 3.1: Safe or Unsafe in communities, schools, and projects?
• Exercise 3.2: Listening and talking about feeling unsafe
• Exercise 3.3: Setting up children‘s groups to help keep children safe            

Module Four: A Resources Guide         

Over the next 2 months I will be writing a series of posts based on these materials. 

Several organisations have already conducted training using the toolkit notably SOS Children's Villages and Plan International. It would be wonderful to hear your ideas and experiences of using and adapting the materials and to have links to any exercises you have improved, added to or expanded. I would be very pleased to feature these experiences, ideas, comments and cases studies on the blog.

*I was commissioned to write the toolkit and module by the Keeping Children Safe Coalition and The Child-to-Child Trust with support from The Oak Foundation.

Distinctions: Training, Coaching, and Mentoring

In the last month, I have had cause to reflect on the distinctions between training, coaching and mentoring as my perceived (in)ability to coach and to mentor were judged on how I functioned (successfully) as a trainer - without those who made the judgements, sampling my coaching style! It was uncomfortable to be judged in this way and especially since I have spent the last 3 years studying how to become an effective mentor and coach! I have a deep belief in the power of coaching and mentoring  to really strengthen learning after training in work settings and have even co-authored a mentor training model.

It is my view that in many large group training events you cannot show up as a coach, you show up as a trainer. This is especially important if the aims of the training link to specific skills development where there is usually a better or worse way to do something and when you have been hired due to having specific expertise. In my field, I think sometimes we are shy of saying to peers that the way they are doing something is not as good as it needs to be and discuss how to improve it - (or will not meet the aims and objectives they aspire to). In the same way that two chefs with the same ingredients can produce very different results so too can facilitators of children's participation work. Its not about the theory its about the practice and I am interested in promoting excellent practice. Sometimes I achieve it and sometimes I don't and I am my worst critic.

There is a case for a trainer offering one to one or small group coaching sessions during training and this can work unless there is insufficient time to ensure those coming to the coaching are simply expecting one to one TRAINING inputs. If what you offer is coaching then you might have a frustrated client on your hands wanting your input and expertise and not getting it! My strategy in this case is to try to understand at the start of the coaching session what the client needs and wants and tailor my role to this and to the time available. Sometimes this means I show up in those meetings as a trainer and sometimes as a mentor and sometimes as a coach.

I came across the ideas below from www.wishfulthinking.org and I think it sets out the distinctions nicely. I have modified it a bit and left out the distinctions between coaching and counselling that you can find if you view the full article.

Coaching is not Training
While training and coaching both promote learning, they do so in different ways:

• Training is about teaching specific skills or knowledge vs Coaching is about facilitating someone else’s thinking and helping them learn on the job.

• Training usually takes place off-site or in dedicated classes vs Coaching takes place in the workplace and can be integrated into day-to-day workplace conversations.

• Training is more typically carried out in groups vs Coaching is usually a one-to-one or small group process, tailored to individual needs.

• Training is usually delivered by an external consultant or dedicated internal trainer vs Coaching can be delivered externally or by a manager trained in coaching.

Although they are distinct activities, these two approaches are complimentary. One classic obstacle encountered in training is the difficulty of transferring skills and enthusiasm from the trianing room to the workplace. Coaching is an excellent way of helping people apply what they learn from a course to their day-to-day work.

A research study found that post-course coaching had a dramatic effect on the effectiveness of one taught program. You can click on this here.

Coaching is not Mentoring
There are some superficial similarities between coaching and mentoring, as they are both typically one-to-one conversations aimed at facilitating professional development, but there are also significant differences: A Mentor is usually a more senior  or more experienced person who shares experience and advises a junior person working in the same field. A Coach is not necessarily senior to the person being coached, and not typically give advice or pass on experience; instead s/he uses questions and feedback to facilitate the other person’s thinking and practical learning.

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. 

Guest Post: Training Adults on Children's Participation in Protecting Themselves and Others from Abuse

I am delighted to host this fascinating guest post written by Barbara Lill Rastern in which she reflects on training adults on children's participation in protecting themselves and others from abuse. Barbara is a consultant who has conducted several training workshops in which she has been training practitioners and training trainers to take forward the ideas of children's participation in child protection in their organisations. She can be contacted at the following email address: [email protected]

When I was a young girl growing up in a sleepy Austrian hamlet,  I remember being given the rule to 'be wary of strangers, not to talk to them and not by any means enter their cars' because they can be dangerous. I had question marks in my head. After inquiring with my parents and other children. I dealt with the information that they (men, of course) 'can do bad things to your body'. The question marks in my head were only marginally smaller and still I stuck to the rule; although being encumbered by a kind of 'nebulous anxiety' along with it.

I was not given accompanying information or education in regard to sexual development, possible forms of abuse by adults or peers, child rights, child protection, let alone participation.

 

Some of the children I have worked with as a trainer and consultant for child participation and protection  unfortunately do know exactly what this means because they have either experienced abuse themselves or know of peers having suffered from it.

Children's Participation in Health Education and Health Promotion

I was very pleased to co-present a webinar yesterday to 19 of Save the Children's staff from their School Health and Nutrition team and to some of their Programme Managers. My presentation focused on Children's Participation in Health Education and Health Promotion and this was followed up by two excellent case studies from Mali and from Pakistan. It was thrilling to be show how an approach I co-created at The Child-to-Child Trust many years ago is now supporting the development of an exciting programme reaching thousands of children! I wanted to make the presentation available to this group and to you on this blog and I will be tackling some of the questions that arose from it over the coming weeks.

The presentation covers the following issues:

1. A definition of participation (as a starting point - it is ALWAYS useful to develop your own consensus about what children's participation means among key stakeholders)

2. Distinctions between health education and health promotion. (Children's participation in health combines health promotion activities as part of the process of teaching health education.)

3. Two examples of models that seek to set out levels of participation that are useful to use in a training setting to clarify the level that your project seeks to attain. These models help users understand the shift in power dynamics between adults and children as they undertake participatory projects.

4. Key points that come out of a story of an encounter I had with a child in Columbia that clearly demonstrates why it is beneficial for children to participate in health and development.

5. The modern context in which participation is practiced and promoted notably the Declaration of Primary Health Care at Alma Arta (1978) that includes participation as a key principle...

The people have the right and duty to participate individually and collectively in the planning and implementation of their health care.

...and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The internationally agreed framework underpinned by the principles of protection, provision and participation.

6. Extracts from selected documents of key players on the international development stage that set out the importance of children's participation

7. Three frameworks to use to understand and support the implementation of participation at field level.These include an approach based on the 6-step Child to Child approach, an approach called Design for Change and reference to an approach used to achieve Community/school Led Total Sanitation. As with the definition it is more useful to design and develop an approach that works for your project than to try to adopt an approach. Many of the approaches above have elements in common.

8. An example and demonstration of a tool I call, 'The Opportunities Chart' that has been used with groups of children, adults and mixed groups to initiate and/or deepen discussions about health priorities in families and communities and gather ideas about what children can do to contribute to solutions.

9. The presentation concludes with the description of a diagnostic tool I use to help analyse if a project or programme is not working smoothly.

Lastly there is a link to the toolbox on this blog as this has many practitioner resources and references that can be of interest to people working on participation related work.

Enjoy! Click the link here to download the presentation. For full notes on each slide please contact me.

Please send me any comments or questions either in the box below or on email. I woud love to hear from you!