Children’s Rights to Participation and Protection: Examining Child and Youth Care College Curricula in Ontario

Abstract

Within child and youth care (CYC) education, supporting and implementing the rights of children and youth requires more than simple identification of these rights. It is also vital to explore issues such as how young people’s rights to participation and protection influence CYC education, and how to constructively move forward with child and youth participation in CYC college curricula. In 2018, a small study was conducted in the Canadian province of Ontario, guided by child and youth advisory committees, with data collection involving young people, CYC educators and practitioners. The findings verified that young people can play valuable roles in supporting the understandings and learnings of emerging CYC practitioners. Child and youth participation is an important but generally unappreciated element of CYC education and its role in advancing children’s rights to protection.

Keywords:

• Child and youth care education
• child and youth participation
• child protection
• children’s rights

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the following who helped shape this research: the valued project partner of the then Office of the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth, closed on May 1, 2019 (especially Fred Matthews, Irwin Elman, and Laura Arndt), Heather Snell, Julie Jaglowitz, Paul Rutherford, Sheldon Caruana, Richard Marcano, Javita Narang, Hyun Ju Shin, and Hailey Kavanagh. The authors also deeply appreciate the contributions of the children, young people and adult professionals who participated in the research. The project was undertaken by the International and Canadian Child Rights Partnership. The partnership’s Child and Youth Advisory Committee advised the project (Asiphe-isipho Dywili, Zukhanye Mjilana, Cleyton Costa Lima, Mayara Costa, Haley Marion Mclean, Jessica Travers, Reshma Shiwcharran, Ola Rzeszutek, and two Chinese young people). Local Child and Youth Advisory Committees advised the in-depth studies respectively in Brazil, China, Canada (Ontario and New Brunswick), and South Africa. The partnership is also made up of scholars and practitioners from Ryerson University (Tara Collins, Reah (Hyun Ju) Shin, Vanessa Zufelt and Amanda Mayhew), the University of Cape Town (Lucy Jamieson and Natasha Hendricks, Children’s Institute), the University of Edinburgh (Kay Tisdall, Mary Ann Powell and Javita Narang, Childhood & Youth Studies Research Group), the International Institute for Child Rights and Development (Laura Wright), Lakehead University (Sonja Grover), McGill University (Mónica Ruiz-Casares) and Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (Irene Rizzini).

Ethical approval & Informed Consent

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional Research Ethics Committee (institution name blinded to support blind peer review) in research ethics amendment (#2016-362, November 25, 2017) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. All participants provided written informed consent before contributing to this research study and as part of this process, have consented to dissemination of the study results.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada under the Partnership Development Grant [number 890-2015-0109, 2016].