Supporting the Participation Rights of Children in a Sensitive Research Project: The Case of Young Road Traffic Victims

Abstract

AbstractThis article addresses the participation rights in research of potentially vulnerable children, in this case children who have survived a serious traffic accident. Children's involvement in research is generally thought to be a balancing act between their welfare rights and their participation rights. However, the general view that children are vulnerable, incompetent, and lack power, makes adults consider that first and foremost it is their duty to protect them. As a result their welfare rights are overemphasized. To leave this dichotomist thinking behind us, we took a relational ethics approach in our research project and this from the very first phase when we were recruiting children to participate. We will focus in detail on the call for participation, the personal communication with participants, the importance of visualising one's message, the boundaries of conventional informed consent, and the multidirectional care provisions.