Practice Standards in Children’s Participation

Summary

This publication presents a set of practice standards developed by Save the Children on the basis of its experience in children’s participation in countries across the world. Although prepared for use by Save the Children staff, it is hoped they will have a much wider application and will be of interest to other child-focused agencies, NGOs and service providers.

They provide operationalguidance on such issues as:
• an ethical approach to children’s participation
• the incorporation of child protection concerns into participatory practice
• the creation of child-friendly environments where all children can participate
• the importance of follow-up and evaluation.
The practice standards can be used in a variety of ways:
• to help understand what ‘meaningful participation’ looks like
• to improve individual or organisational performance in children’s participation
• to assess the quality of participation as part of a retrospective evaluation
• to identify skills or knowledge gaps and develop appropriate training.