Looking for childhood book reviewers

Childhood studies
A journal of global child research is looking for reviewers for a variety of books. Please contact Prof. Dr. Leena Alanen and ask for a list if you are interested in reviewing books. You are also invited to recommend other books of interest for reviewing in the journal – she’d be happy to contact their publishers and ask for copies to be added to the list. Books published in the Anglophone academic world practically make 100 % of books sent by publishers to the journal for reviewing. This is fairly obvious for a number of reasons: the language of the journal is English and publishers of books in other languages can hardly count on a big enough clientele for their publications in the English-language countries, and therefore do not offer their publications for reviewing. It would however be important also to make the non-English section of childhood studies available to the international readership of Childhood; otherwise it is the English-language research literature that unfortunately has to represent what is done in the field. Prof. Alanen would therefore especially like to encourage you who are readers of non-English childhood research as well as know of books on childhood published in other languages to come forward with suggestions of books for reviewing in Childhood.

Source: e-mail message from:
Leena Alanen, Professor (Early Childhood Education), Department of Educational Sciences, P.O.Box 35, FIN-40014 University of Jyväskylä, Finland, e-mail: lalanen@edu.jyu.fi

Children's voices in child protective proceedings - overview of 195 countries

Do you want to know whether children have the right to express their opinions in court proceedings in Azerbaijan or Kiribati? You can find it at a database of the Yale Law School, together with all the other countries you can think of. It is part of a survey, Representing Children Worldwide, conducted at the Yale Law School researching the legal provisions of 194 countries concerning how children's voices are heard in child protective proceedings in 2005.

The website has concise information about the law that relates to children's opinions in child protective proceedings in 195 countries together with relevant references. In many cases the information is provided in the original language with (sometimes unofficial) English translation.

The site also provides:

Country Category Chart

Which categorizes the countries by both mandatory and discretionary legal models.

Country by Country Chart

Which provides a brief description of each country's child protective proceedings, explaining the way that children convey their opinions, where applicable.

From the website:
"Representing Children Worldwide is a research project which compiles information and resources on how children's voices are heard in child protective proceedings around the country and around the world in the year 2005. The website provides a summary of the practices of the 194 signatories to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child (UNCRC) with respect to this question, as well as background information on the jurisdiction's child protective practices and web resources and contact information for further research in this field.

Our research focuses particularly on how different countries' practices relate to Article 12 of the CRC, which guarantees children's right to express views freely in all matters concerning them, and particularly to be heard in all judicial and administrative proceedings that concern them. "

Monitoring and evaluation of children’s participation in development projects

Publication:

Monitoring and evaluation of children’s participation in development projects.

By Gina Arnillas Traverso and Nelly Pauccar Meza (researchers) and Gina Solari and Blanca Nomura (coordinators). 2007, Lima: Save the Children Sweden, ISBN 978 9972 696 51 0

I promise you, this is not easy reading, even when your native tongue is Spanish, in which case you might as well read the original.... However, as soon as you have gone through the more conceptual and theoretical discourse this publication becomes surprisingly practical and to the point. Indicators for children's participation need to have a sound grounding and once you have sorted that out you can look at very concrete and useful evidence that helps you understand and measure the impact of children's involvement in project development, implementation and evaluation of its impact.

Another good thing about this publication is that the indicators have been identified and developed together with children, through a thorough process of consultation and validation.

Legislative History of the Convention on the Rights of the Child

Publication:
Legislative History of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Volumes I and II.
By: United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and Save the Children Sweden (SCS). 2007, New York and Geneva: United Nations

In addition to the travaux preparatoires of the Convention on the Rights of the Child - produced by Sharon Detrick (which, unfortunately, has only been available in hard copy) there now is an extensive compilation of the legislative history of the Convention on the Rights of the Child written by Simone Ek who has been involved in the 10 year long drafting process of the CRC right from the start. Simone Ek compiled the proceedings of the debates during 1979–1987, which form the basis for the Legislative History of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The publication can be a support for governments, Convention states, UN organs, international voluntary organisations and universities in their work to make the Convention on the Rights of the Child easier to understand. The aim has been to explain the thinking behind the decisions. It also illuminates the important part that non-governmental organisations have played in this work

Find all the discussions on children's participation rights at pages 437 - 471.

Download PDF from:
http://www.scslat.org/web/noticias_detalle.php?id=I&tip=P&cod=267&are=7&sare=23&rgc=&srgc=&ani=

A hard copy can be obtained at SCS in Stockholm for 349 SEK exclusive postage.
http://shop.rb.se/Product/Product.aspx?ItemId=4882937

Children's participation in events with adults

Publication:

Patricia del Pilar Horna Castro

Easier to say than to do. Children’s participation in events with adults.

2007, Lima: Save the Children Sweden Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean. ISBN 978-9972-696-50-3

This is a recent English translation of the Spanish original.

This is one of many downloadable publications by Save the Children Sweden in Latin America. They have an excellent, regularly updated, website with information in Spanish, English and Portuguese. I will post more information from this website shortly.

From the introduction to this book:

“Children’s participation is, without any doubt, a key issue in our societies. There is plenty and varied literature regarding children’s participation. The civil society and the States are now facing this global challenge. This guide, developed by Patricia Horna, is useful in many ways: it simultaneously introduces profound considerations, mandatory theoretical background, and above all, a friendly way to enhance the relationships between adults and children when they participate in the same activities.”

(Alejandro Cussianovich, p.7)

The book provides a review on the different approaches, conceptions and myths on children and adult participation in training workshops, seminars, discussion roundtables, etc.

“It is addressed to adults who have understood that they cannot speak about what children feel or think without considering and incorporating their very voices. And, of course, it will also be useful for children to keep watch so conditions in these events meet the conditions for a “real and effective” participation, just as they have demanded.

This material wants to contribute precisely to what many adults frequently hear, read, and say: children have a right to express themselves freely in every aspect which affects them —in other words, they have a right to participate.”

……….

“….the book is divided in three chapters which are, at the same time, the three big steps we are proposing to follow. The first one displays the current approaches and ideas on children’s participation; the second refers to the myths around children’s participation in events with adults, and the third chapter provides guidelines, ideas and suggestions which will render conditions for an effective and active participation.”

(p.11)

Geographical Information Systems use in research with children

An exciting project is ongoing in Finland where researchers use GIS in a very interactive, creative and fun way to do research with children on the quality of their living environment. Children can identify their own neighbourhood, their own houses and schools and indicate things such as how they spend their free time, what they consider to be safe or dangerous places, and how they make use of and perceive their environment. They can also answer questions in relation to their wellbeing.

See and try it out here!

For more information visit SoftGIS in Finland, or get in touch with the leading researcher:

Marketta Kytta
Centre for urban and regional studies
Helsinki University of Technology
marketta.kytta@tkk.fi

For the academically inclined, view her dissertation "Children in Outdoor Contexts - Affordances and Independent Mobility in the Assessment of Environmental Child Friendliness"

Children's involvement in local budgeting

Publication:
Children and young people in action, participating in budget work
Editors: Margarida Maria Marques, Neiara de Morais Bezerra, Renato Roseno de Oliveira,Talita de Araujo Maciel. The Ceará Centre for Protection of Children and Adolescents – CEDECA-Ceará, Brazil, November 2005. ISBN: 0-620-35519-0.

This document describes the process of the involvement of a group of young people in the monitoring of the public budget of Fortaleza, in Brazil.

In 1999 CEDECA-CEARÁ initiated its programme of monitoring the Fortaleza city budget. This was done from the understanding that the struggle for the human rights of children and young people has to be conducted through the discussion of public policies that give effect to these rights, by knowing about the allocation of public resources to implement those policies and through social control in the allocation and spending of public resources.

Brazilian society has managed, through a process of broad social mobilisation, to have written into the 1988 Federal Constitution that children and young people have rights and that these need to be fully protected as a matter of absolute priority. Further, the Children and Adolescents Act (ECA) stipulates that meeting this priority envisages children having first call on public resources. Unfortunately, the democratic culture of the country does not fully recognise the rights of children and young people nor does it allow for the exercising of social control of public budgets.

Therefore, taking as a main objective the promotion of social control of policies and public budgets, the programme uses three complementary strategies: the empowerment of organised groups within civil society; the provision of technical subsidies for intervention in the drafting and implementation of budgetary legislation; and support during active mobilization and lobbying for the development of public policies for children and young people.

During the first three years, our principal partners were NGOs, forums and networks for the protection of the rights of children and young people. These were important partnerships, as the most significant networking among children’s rights organizations today includes a focus on budgetary issues in the city and in the State of Ceará. One example is the case of the DCA-Ceará Forum (a Forum of Non-governmental Organisations for the Protection of Children and Young People), which took the matter of budget allocations directly to the State, the Commission for the Protection of the Right to Education and the Forum Against Sexual Violence of Children and Adolescents.

Nevertheless, the perception that there were organised groups of young people in our city, discussing rights and public policies, but that they were absent from the decision-making processes on these same policies, led us to reconsider our project. Why had these groups not yet achieved the right to be heard? This question and the meeting with our partner, Save the Children Sweden, for whom direct participation is a fundamental principle of work focusing on rights, led us to the conviction that one cannot speak of democracy while excluding such a significant group within the population, even more so when the subject is precisely the policies targeting that very group. The story told here is that of the first experience of empowering and supporting groups of young people to intervene in the public budgeting process. In this narrative we describe the phases of that empowerment as well as the involvement of these young people in pressure groups for the development of budgetary legislation.

We are not dealing with a methodology created by or exclusive to CEDECA-Ceará, but rather formulated during the first year of the project with the active participation of the young people involved. The approach was adapted to daily events and the reality in which we found ourselves, taking into account the diversity of the young people, with the CEDECA team not only filling the role of educator, but also that of apprentice. Daily practices were revised and adjusted to respond to the problems and difficulties that we confronted during the project.

If certain doubts remained regarding the relevance of a project to align the public budget with the promotion of the right to participation, these doubts have been replaced by the certainty that participation is something quite necessary, not only for the young people, but also for the city.

For CEDECA-Ceará, promoting the exercise of the right to participate is about more than protecting that right; it is also a strategy to strengthen the protection of all the human rights of children and young people.

As posted on IDASA website. IDASA, in South Africa, has a children's budget unit, more about that later.

Hard copies can be ordered at:
Save the Children Sweden
Regional Office for Southern Africa
PO Box 13993
Hatfi eld, 0028
Tel: +27 (0)12 342 0222
Fax: +27 (0)12 342 0305
E-mail: postmaster@za.rb.se
Web: http://www.rb.se