Peer-reviewed article
Children’s participation in the child protection system: Are young people from poor families less likely to be heard?
David Lätsch, Julia Quehenberger, Rahel Portmann, Andreas Jud ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examined whether children from poor families have less chance of being heard in child protection decisions. Researchers reviewed 264 case files from Swiss child protection agencies and found that case workers were significantly less likely to document children's views when they came from poor families. While adolescents were more likely to be heard than younger children, overall only about half of children had their perspectives recorded in case worker reports. The findings show that despite growing awareness of child participation rights, real-world practice has not fully improved.
Key points
- Children's subjective views were documented in case worker reports only 48.9% of the time
- Adolescents were 3.7 times more likely to have their views included than younger children
- Case workers were significantly less inclined to include children's views if the child came from a poor family (odds ratio 0.326)
- The study used actual case file data rather than fictional scenarios, addressing a gap in participation research
- Findings suggest raised awareness of child participation has not fully translated into improved real-life practice
Limitations
The study is based only on Swiss case files from five agencies, so findings may not generalise to other countries or child protection systems. The research relies on documentation in case files, which may underestimate actual participation that occurred but was not recorded.
Abstract
Decisions in child protection affect children’s and young people’s lives substantially and sustainably. For young people to participate in these decisions is an ethical requirement, prominently coded in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Although awareness of the importance of child participation and research thereon have grown, predictors of child participation have not been formalized in a conceptual model and studies on the topic have primarily relied on narrative accounts or fictional vignettes rather than actual case data. This article addresses the lack of conceptual modeling by presenting an approach that takes into account three domains of downstream predictors on the degree of child participation in the decision-making process of a child protection case: (a) External constraints; (b) professionals’ willingness and ability to facilitate the child’s participation; (c) the child’s willingness and ability to participate. It further addresses the lack of actual case data in child participation research, focusing on the understudied predictor of family poverty. Analyses are based on a sample of case files of n = 264 children in five Swiss CPS agencies. Outcomes and predictors were extracted from case files with a predefined coding system. Findings suggest that the raised awareness has so far not fully trickled down to an increase in real-life opportunities of participation for young people: The child’s subjective view was documented in the case worker’s report half of the time (48.9 %). Corroborating previous evidence, adolescents were much more likely to have their views included than younger children (OR = 3.715, p =.002). Case workers were less inclined to include the child’s views if the child came from a poor family (OR = 0.326, p =.003). We conclude by suggesting options for improving child participation, highlighting that protection of young people does not have to contradict participation.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- Improved documentation and facilitation of child participation in child protection case decision-making processes
- Population
- Children aged 0-18 involved in child protection cases in Swiss child protection agencies
Key finding
Child's views documented in case worker reports 48.9% of the time