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SCIE Guide 11: Involving children and young people in developing social care
Culture: 1
What 'culture' means
Culture refers to the ethos of an organisation. A culture of participation should demonstrate a commitment to the involvement of children and young people - shared by managers, practitioners, children and young people.
Why culture is important
Culture has frequently been identified as a barrier to participation. As Davies and Marken (1998) suggest 'our popular and official culture in deeply embedded ways defines young people as too uninformed, unreliable and untrustworthy to carry responsibility.'
There is a fear that somehow children are going to ask for terribly wrong things or say the wrong thing. On the one hand, you want to give them a voice, but on the other hand, you don't want them to say anything that goes against what the organisation believes in.
Practitioner
This issue may be particularly relevant for staff in health and social welfare services who have a statutory responsibility to safeguard children. In this context, the vulnerability - rather than the capacity and resilience of children and young people - may be emphasised. Hill et al (2004) suggest that one of the foremost barriers to participation is 'adults' perceptions, including their images of children's capacities, and their self-interest in maintaining their own position with respect to children'.
Traditionally social workers go into social work because they want to care and feel valued and depended upon. They have a notion that a service user is a client and they are professionals, rather than that they are entering into a partnership with them.
Practitioner
The challenge is to strike a balance between implementing a children's rights perspective, including the right to be heard and listened to, while continuing to offer appropriate care and protection. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) acknowledges the need for this balance by granting children the right to be protected as well as the right to participate (Hutton, 2004).
A growing body of literature also refers to the 'culture of disaffection' that exists among children and young people due to the 'government's failure to respond to their specific needs and by policies which have eroded rights which they have previously held' (Lansdown, 2001). Adults need to acknowledge that these feelings of disillusionment exist before they can move forward and develop a positive culture of participation within their organisations.
Increasing numbers of participation guides now acknowledge culture not just as a barrier but as a legitimate area for service development. This is reflected in the NSW Commission for Children and Young People's Guidance on Participation (2004), which states that 'for participation to be effective, it needs to be part of the belief system of the organisation.' A recent mapping of children and young people's participation in England (Oldfield and Fowler, 2004) found that, where respondents strongly agree that children and young people have a right to participate, they were more likely to acknowledge that children and young people 'have a great deal of influence in their organisation'. This finding suggests that, in many cases, an organisation's positive attitude and commitment towards the involvement of children and young people may, in turn, lead to participation that will effect greater change within that organisation.