A systematic review of children’s participation in child protection decision‐making: Tokenistic presence or not?

This systematic review examined how children experience participation in child protection decision-making across 12 peer-reviewed studies from 2006 to 2017. The research found that children typically had limited or no contact with their child protection workers, received little dialogue about their situations, and were often not informed about decisions affecting their lives. The review concludes that children's participation in the child protection system is often tokenistic rather than meaningful, with workers failing to build trusting relationships or engage children in genuine dialogue.

Key points

• Children's contact with child protection workers was limited or non-existent
• Child-worker interactions lacked dialogue, information sharing, and trust
• Children were not meaningfully engaged in decisions about their own lives
• Children reported not being informed of or understanding processes and decisions affecting them
• Little or no dialogue occurred between children and child protection workers

Limitations

The review does not specify which countries or regions the included studies covered, making it unclear whether findings apply globally or to specific contexts. The review summarises existing research but does not evaluate specific interventions designed to improve child participation.