From a Culture of Silence to Successful Participation in Child Protection

Using original audio recordings of children from biographical narrative interviews, we will explore the children’s lived world from their perspective: What do the children say? How can their words be understood? What strengths, resources, vulnerabilities, and challenges do the children describe? The workshop aims to help participants listen very closely to children and formulate interpretations based on their statements.

In our workshop, we’ll work together to explore what participation can look like and what conditions are necessary for it—above all, attention and trust.
We’ll examine what care leavers and care recipients—as well as professionals—need to build and maintain trust.
Conversely, we’ll ask the following questions: Does participation perhaps even create a trusting atmosphere in the first place? And how do you really listen attentively?

In this workshop, we’ll explore the ambivalence of protection concepts: On the one hand, manypractical approaches have been carefully thought out—yet on the other hand, we often observein practice that these concepts are little known and not very effective. The goal is to focus specifically on this transition from concept to practice: What causes protection policies to remain on the shelf and fail to be as effective as they should be? We’ll explore this through a role-playing exercise: One group will attempt to describe a protection concept in terms of everyday practices and structures that enable children or adolescents whose boundaries have been crossed to feel confident enough to speak up—and ensure that staff members, as well as other children and adolescents, listen to those affected, take them seriously, and work together to find solutions. A second group attempts to develop a protection plan that looks good only on paper—but which does not actually encourage those affected to speak up or ensures that speaking up has no consequences. A third group, acting as a jury, tries to develop questions to distinguish the fake policy from the effective one. Experience shows that this often fails. We’re curious to see whether the jury will be swayed by the fake concept this time as well. The workshop is based on an exemplary protection plan that can be found in this or a similar form in many institutions and that actually meets all legal requirements.

How can the active participation of younger children be successfully achieved when their limited verbal expression, developmental stage, and protection needs place special demands on professionals?

The workshop addresses the question of how to structure the participation of younger children in the context of child protection and support planning. The “Box,” a practical concept developed by the City of Münster’s Youth Welfare Office, the child and youth welfare provider Outlaw gGmbH, and the Institute for Social Work (ISA) e. V., will be presented. It contains seven modules designed to facilitate children’s active participation in child protection and support planning, fostering dialogue and strengthening children’s perception of the situation, their ability to have a say, and their sense of self-efficacy.

In addition, experiences from educational support services—particularly from family-like settings—are drawn upon. Alongside successful practical examples, the workshop also addresses challenges and areas of tension that arise when involving younger children in everyday educational practice.

The goal of the workshop is to understand participation as a central protective factor, to reflect on professional perspectives, and to take away concrete ideas for child-centered and participation-oriented practice.

The workshop explores the concept of “safety-oriented practice,” which is based on the “Signs of Safety” approach. The focus is on the active participation of children and adolescents as active agents. They should be given the opportunity to voice their wishes, needs, and concerns and to actively help shape the support process.

Through collaborative working groups, the workshop explores various methods of safety-oriented practice. The goal is to open up new perspectives for participants’ own work and to provide inspiration for participatory collaboration with service recipients.

Participation is legally enshrined in child and youth services and is largely uncontested as a professional standard. However, with the establishment of complaint procedures as a specific form of institutionalized participation, ambivalences come to light that point to the limits and contradictions of participatory claims.

Complaint procedures give children and youth the opportunity to voice criticism, challenge decisions, and address professional conduct. They can lead to a strengthening of participation rights and a shift in established power dynamics. At the same time, in practice, they often encounter reservations and resistance. Professionals sometimes perceive complaint procedures as an expression of mistrust, as an additional burden, or as a challenge to established practices.

The workshop takes these tensions as its starting point to discuss complaint procedures as a particularly conflict-prone form of participation. The focus is on questions regarding which professional, organizational, and power-related dynamics are expressed in resistance to complaint procedures, what challenges arise during their implementation, and what these ambivalences reveal about the limits and contradictions of participatory claims in child and youth welfare. The goal is to view complaint procedures not only as instruments of participation, but also as focal points for professional negotiation processes and institutional power relations.