CHILDREN PARTICIPATION

Children Participation

Children Participation

Introduction

Children must be allowed to take part in decision-making as part of their rights (Plan, 2013). This paper is about the children's participation, which is comprised of importance of participation of children and how much it matters for them. The Children's participation is important in many ways that are explained further in discussion part. Importance of participation is explained with the use of 'Ladder of participation' model. In the end of the paper, seven standards have been defined to save the children practitioners who are working with children.

Discussion

Children's Participation

Children involvement in decisions, policies, programmes and processes actively that may have an effect on their lives is referred as participation (Global Movement for Children, 2013). United Nations motivates participation of children where UN convention on the Rights of Child has introduced article 12 on the Children's right to share their words in issues that might affect them (Davey, 2010. p.5).

Importance of Participation of Children

It is the duty of adult to allow children to take participation and respect the capacities of children for the involvement in decision making and consider them as their partners to develop meaningful participation. The adult has to drop the traditional relationship with the child that was built on the control and power of adult over children, which resulted in democratic partnerships. This traditional practice of participation of children is just tokenism that only allows the child to share his opinion, but he is unsure about the influence of the opinion whether how his involvement will be used.

Roger Hart has explained the essence of children's partition through the model of Ladder of participation that is comprised of eight stages (Hart, 1992). The 'Ladder of participation' includes:

Manipulation - Organization of children in a way that their participation in political demonstration carries political signs. If children do not understand the real problem and possess little to no understanding about their act, then it is considered as manipulation. It is the lowest level of non-participation or the model of ladder of participation. Often, this is the result of not understanding the abilities of children by the adults.

Decoration - Children takes participation and acts but they are unsure about the reason of their act. For example, children are wearing T-shirts for some cause and performing in wearing such dress, but children are not sure about the event or have very little idea about their act and what to say about the occasion.

Tokenism - Children are allowed to join the discussion but have no substantive preparation and have no discussion with peers. Sometimes, children with charming personality are invited to join the discussion panel, but they have little knowledge about the subject. However, this does not conclude that children should not participate in such events if they are comfortable with it then they must participate for the sake of experience.

Assigned but informed - Children are informed about the purpose about their work or act as they are organized to do it, and it allows the children ...