Only children know the perspective of the child

Abstract

Changefactory is a Norwegian knowledge centre set up with one purpose – to find out how public services for children can be improved by directly asking children themselves. The knowledge centre has published around 50 reports with responses from over 14,000 children. Children and youth themselves, called “pros”, present the main findings of these reports to professionals, students, decision makers, and politicians. This perspective article uses the combined knowledge from these children to present demands to researchers undertaking research on public services for children. The demands originate from children’s lived experiences of public services that did not work optimally for them and their frustration over adult professionals’ uncritical faith in methods and programs on “how to help children”. How can adults know what works for children if children have not been directly involved in developing and evaluating services? Through Changefactory’s work, it has become evident that knowledge from children, presented on its own without interpretation and theorization from adults, is rare. It has also become clear that when this type of knowledge is not easily available public services lose out on chances to improve their quality.This perspective article addresses researchers and their role in changing this and puts forward the following 10 demands:1.Acknowledge that adults cannot take the perspective of a child.2.Realize that countries need knowledge from children.3.Involve children in deciding topics and questions to be researched.4.Do not do research on children without talking with children.5.Be careful in the way you select child informants.6.Realize that children must feel safe to give honest, in-depth answers.7.Ask children for advice and solutions, not just experiences.8.Separate what children say from what adults say.9.Be aware of adult informants’ backgrounds and biases.10.Acknowledge researchers’ responsibility to bring about change with and for children.Relevant and trustworthy scientific evidence should inform decisions about service improvement together with contextual knowledge, information on values and preferences, and insight from adultś professional expertise. However, this cannot replace the direct experience of children with first-hand knowledge of the services and systems. Policy, practice, and research can be improved by listening closely to the children themselves.