Prioritising Children’s Autonomy is Prioritising their Best Interests

Dr Aoife Daly argues that when judges make decisions about children’s best interests in courts, they often think that they are protecting children by taking decision-making from them, but this fails to acknowledge that children are experts on their own lives.

In my recently-published book Children, Autonomy and the Courts: Beyond the Right to be Heard, I look at cases where courts decide children’s best interests (for example about parental contact) to see how much influence children themselves have on decisions. I examine cases from liberal democracies all over the world and 11 countries in detail, including Scotland, England and Wales.

It seems that children in these cases find their wishes easily overridden. Common decisions from around the world include children being forced into contact visits with estranged parents (sometimes with the threat that the police or court staff will physically force them). In one case a 16 year old was not allowed to give video testimony in care proceedings; and in another a 15 year old was compelled to have inoculations against her will because her father wanted it. Compare these scenarios to adult ones: adults are never forced into relationships or non-essential medical procedures ‘in their interests’.

The instinct of adults, including judges making best interest decisions, is to protect children. This approach is well-intentioned and it recognises rightly that children’s capacities are developing and that they are lacking in experience relative to adults. They may need time, support and information to form an opinion. Sometimes they might not want to give an opinion at all and that should be respected too.

Yet in many cases, children have unmistakable wishes about a situation. An inquest opened recently into the murder of Ellie Butler. The six year old had been living almost all of her life with her grandparents, but was sent by a family court in 2013 to live with her violent father though it seems that she had begged not to be returned. She was beaten to death by him within a year. Adults often ignore that children might well understand their own best interests. It can be very difficult for children to be taken seriously when their wishes incline against strong societal assumptions, such as the need to prioritise the position of birth parents. Younger children find it particularly challenging to get adults to take their views seriously.

I argue in 'Children, Autonomy and the Courts' that it is illogical and unjustifiable that children do not have greater influence in court decisions determining their best interests. In liberal democracies, autonomy is held as the most important characteristic for the individual. It is prioritised in medical law for example, and increasingly is upheld to the extent possible for adults with cognitive disability (which demonstrates that decreased ‘capacity’ need not prevent prioritisation of someone’s wishes). Yet judges can make decisions about children without having to prioritise autonomy. Children’s wishes can be treated as just another factor and overridden with ease.

In my book I argue that a ‘right to be heard’ does not go far enough for children. I propose that a children’s autonomy principle, respecting children’s wishes unless significant harm would likely result, would ensure greater support for children in proceedings, and greater obligations on adults to engage in transparent decision-making. It would also mean better best interest decisions, because it is only by giving appropriate priority to children’s own wishes that we can make good decisions on their behalf.


Dr Aoife Daly is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Law at The University of Liverpool. She has worked and researched widely on children's rights and has held a number of NGO and academic positions. She also has teaching and research interests in a number of other areas including family law and civil and political rights. She researches human rights issues through the lenses of social justice, gender and psychology.

Relationship-based practice with families in need

Hazel G Whitters, Senior Early Years/Child Protection Coordinator in a Glasgow Voluntary Organisation reflects on her experiences working with asylum seeking families.

===========================================================================

Jungle, asylum, war, removal, displacement, help… the daily descriptors that we are becoming used to reading in our newspapers or viewing on our televisions as we eat an evening meal.

Familiarity can breed complacency. A plan of responsive action and prioritising resources is easy to achieve from the perspective of our armchairs as we view the world through our screens. I have great respect for policy and decision-makers who examine, and respond to the current humanitarian crisis from a strategic perspective inter-mingled with personal stories of human atrocities and suffering. But at best the world is not yet ’Getting It Right for Every Child’.

It seems so much easier to be a practitioner. Traditionally, child care and education workers are used to embracing new ventures, stimulated by the challenges, sympathetic to the child’s needs regardless of the cause, and immune to the frenetic political communications. Play is our medium of interaction and care. Play is our therapy to heal the effect of adversities, and to promote achievement. Play is our world’s common language.

Government statistics tell us that in the UK 36,465 asylum applications were made in 2015-16. I always think it is useful and relevant to place statistics in a context of practice. The cause of human needs must influence the approach to intervention in current proactive response by services. Many years ago practitioners encouraged parents to forget childhood adversities and focus on the future - the premise being that out of sight = out of mind. Today, research (Whitters, 2015, 2016) has given us a greater understanding of human development, and the significant impact of historical influences upon our abilities to operate as successful individuals and effective contributors to society. A high level of human involvement in a learning environment can only be achieved if accompanied by emotional well-being. A plan which has goals, and a process to recognise success. Empowerment which is gained through decision-making for a life-plan is key for human beings to rehabilitate post-trauma.

The voluntary sector is well-placed to respond to these needs as service planning and delivery can incorporate responsive personalised care. A therapeutic approach to supporting the needs of people who are striving to create a different inner working model is essential: Healing of mind and body for people who are determined to forge a positive pathway through life, and who have decided to embrace the culture of another country as a source of support. Engaging with parents who are seeking asylum is straightforward in practice as language and cultural differences are certainly not barriers but provide focus for interaction. Our clumsy attempts to reproduce dialects prompt laughter and shared moments of partnership with parents.

Interactive guidance, in the form of supported play with parents and children, creates a learning environment for families which provides ample opportunity for the promotion of mental and physical good health for children and parents. Experience has shown me that human beings can identify positive aspects from childhood and adulthood. A young teenage mum, who spent time in the infamous jungle at Calais, told me of the community spirit which enabled her to walk tall and view the world with dignity. She talked about the creation of an athletic club in the camp which enabled her to demonstrate physical prowess, and to shine amidst the mud and misery. The resilience of human beings is legendary…

Politicians, strategic planners – good luck. Practitioners - continue what you do best - relationship-based practice with families in need – innovative intervention which helps us to learn and improve alongside families who are embracing life from a different perspective.

===========================================================================

Hazel G Whitters has worked in child protection for over 30 years and was awarded her PhD from the University of Strathclyde in 2015. Her thesis 'Perceptions of the influences upon the parent-professional relationship in a context of early intervention and child protection' is available online from the British Library
http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.655502

Whitters, H. G., (2016) The Parent-Professional Relationship in Child Protection. A WithScotland Briefing. pdf: withscotland.org/download/the-parent-professional-relationship-in-child-protection

Getting evidence into action: how can we understand what we already know?

Our Co-director, Dr Sarah Morton writes about the processes involved in setting up an Evidence Bank to support public and voluntary sector partners in accessing existing research evidence to help to inform decision making.

At the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships we have always valued working closely with non-academic partners. At the end of one particular research partnership with national family organisations (Cool with Change) we started a conversation about what other research the partnership might do together. Many of the topics our partners were interested in were areas where there was already a lot of research, but it was very difficult for these non-academic agencies to get a sense of what that research was. So we set out together to develop ways to make existing research more useful.

We explain the reviewing process we developed to address that issue in an article just published by the journal Evidence and Policy (Evidence synthesis for knowledge exchange: balancing responsiveness and quality in providing evidence for policy and practice). The process focussed on making sure that evidence was useful, timely and relevant, and could be put into action by people working in children and family services.

Why is evidence reviewing important?

Often people need to understand what we already know from research in order to develop services. Traditional systematic reviewing is time consuming and often doesn’t offer very accessible summaries. Our evidence bank process sought to address these issues.

What kinds of topics were reviewed?

We developed a range of ways of interrogating what partners wanted to know from research in order to define review topics. This involved visiting and revisiting questions like:

• What is the general topic area you are interested in? 
• What is the issue or problem you are trying to address? 
• What do you want to know about this issue? 

But we also explored the potential uses of the evidence through questions like:

• What do you plan to do with the data/report? 
• Who will the data/report be relevant to within and out with your organisation? 
• What difference do you hope that using the data/report will make?

In addition to spending time exploring what people wanted, we also created a scoping stage, where we would look at the literature in general terms, get a sense of its size and scope, and return back to a discussion of what the specific focus should be.

Through the process we looked at: Parenting Teenagers; Transitions to Primary school; How families have changed; and other topics.

What was different about the reviews?

As well as being tailored very specifically to real world practice issues, the reviews have a number of distinctive features:

• They explain how the topic review fits in with the wider literature and which subjects and disciplines it comes from, to give a sense of the ‘evidence landscape’ in which it sits.
• The scoping and final reports are peer reviewed by an academic and a user reviewer who has practical experience and knowledge of the field.
• The reports are edited by a knowledge exchange expert, written in plain language with a short summary. 
• Reviews contain ‘talking points’ that focus on the practical implications of the evidence presented, and aim to move thinking away from the idea that research can tell you what to do, towards the idea that research provides a framework to help decision-making. 
• They are conducted in a shorter time frame with involvement from partners throughout.

How have the reviews been used?

We worked closely with partners to explore how to make the reviews useful. We tried and tested a number of approaches, from large forums, communities of practice, and linking with improvement approaches. They have led to some specific actions, for example:

• In West Lothian a review of transitions to primary school was used to test and embed new approaches to supporting children and families.
• One of the partners from the About Families programme used the evidence to develop new ways of including parents in the design and delivery of services. 
• In What Works Scotland a review of partnership working has been used by local authorities to reflect on and improve the effectiveness of partnerships for public service delivery.

What next?

The Evidence Bank review process has been taken into What Works Scotland and is being used there for a number of reviews. 

Novel approaches to delivering knowledge exchange for academic research - what might be effective for the social sciences?

Ever thought about delivering the results of research through a play based on the first-hand experiences of the study’s subjects? Or how useful might it be to prepare a report for policymakers using a narrative borrowed from crime fiction, that grabs the reader through their “discovering the body” [of evidence] in a piece of research in a way similar to how characters in a murder mystery might discover a corpse?

These were some of the possibilities considered by the CRFR reading group when we recently read Communicating social research findings more effectively: what can we learn from other fields? This publication examines a raft of novel and impactful approaches for conveying outputs from (predominantly non-social science) research to target audiences, which go beyond merely “information telling”.

The challenge of changing minds…
The paper begins with a background section on why it is important for social science research to inform policy and practice agendas and delivery. Many of us found the “Knowing” pathway (adapted from Ekblom, 2002) – shown below – to be a useful summary of the processes and stages involved in successfully formulating and conveying research so that it achieves an impact within the policy/practice arena.

• Know why action is required, for example the relationship between basic values, beliefs and assumptions and future policy decision;
• Know about problems, for example the nature, formation, natural history and interrelations of health and social problems in context;
• Know what works, that is what policies, strategies or specific interventions will bring about desired outcomes, at acceptable costs and with few-enough wanted consequences;
• Know how to put it into practice: knowing what should be done is not the same as being able to do it effectively - knowledge about effective programme implementation is also needed;
• Know who to involve: such knowledge covers estimates of client needs as well as information on key stakeholders necessary for potential solutions and mechanisms for building alliances for action.

As the authors of the paper point out, knowledge exchange needs to be “as much about changing minds and mental models as about supporting specific decisions.”

 

Communicating social research findings more effectively?

Having established the context that, in order to maximise impact from social research, it might be necessary to move beyond “information telling”, the rest of the paper considers a range of knowledge exchange approaches used by “influencers” in fields outside the social sciences. These were divided into six categories:

• Narratives and stories: fiction, faction and persuasion – moving from the use of logic, data and evidence in the promotion of knowledge, to instead generating empathy through emotions, values and imagination;
• Language choice and metaphor diversity; employing more creative use of language as means to more effectively communicate social research;
• Advertising and marketing - using the persuasive and creative skills developed by these disciplines to effectively communicate with, and potentially influence, key knowledge users;
• Journeying together: co-producing knowledge – deploying collaborative models of research production that involve and engage knowledge users throughout the lifecycle of a research project;
• Immersion and experimental learning – moving from seeking to describe the lived experiences identified by qualitative and ethnographic research to seeking to replicate these very experiences first hand; and
• Creativity and the arts – employing art, music and drama as channels through which: knowledge can be exchanged; fostering of practice development can occur, and potentially tools through which research itself can be progressed can be developed.

There was agreement that some of the approaches - such as the co-production of knowledge - were certainly relatively novel in relation to social science research. However, the group identified several examples of social science research projects that utilised a number of novel approaches to promote knowledge exchange. These included:

 

Exploring the lives of people living with alcohol related brain damage (ARBD) using photography. The project culminated in the public exhibition of the photographs, amongst other creative outputs.

•  The appointment of a writer in residence to catalogue the experiences of nurses throughout Scotland, as well as encouraging them to compose their own stories focusing upon their work.
• Working with young people to explore their thoughts and attitudes to self-harm and how this might relate to drug and alcohol use. One of the project's key outputs is the production of an animated film on these issues, produced by young people, for young people.
• The Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas, a strand of the Edinburgh Festival that allows academics to debate, sometimes controversial, research with a public audience in a cabaret-style format.
• Practitioner Research: Older People: a series of small-scale research projects led by practitioners involved in delivering care for older people with support from Centre for Research on Families and Relationships (CRFR) and IRISS

Discussions about these, and other examples of novel engagement initiatives, prompted debate over the possible resultant blurring of boundaries between research activity, knowledge exchange and art.

 

Our deliberations concluded with there being a consensus that the paper was thought provoking in highlighting examples of how non-conventional channels and tools can be used to bring about knowledge exchange and associated impact for the social sciences. However, it's also important to consider that these should be used as part of a comprehensive KE strategy that seeks to engage target audiences in a way that is relevant to their needs and behaviours. To draw an appropriate analogy - given that one of the approaches highlighted in the paper is marketing - there is little point in running an advertising campaign on Facebook, if the majority of its intended target audience is not connected to the internet...

 

Chris Berry

KE and Impact Officer

School of Social and Political Science

 

References

Davies, Huw T.O.; Powell, Alison E. (2012) Communicating social research findings more effectively: what can we learn from other fields? Evidence & Policy: A Journal of Research, Debate and Practice, Volume 8, Number 2, May 2012, pp. 213-233(21).

 

Ekblom, P (2002) "From the source to the mainstream is uphill: The challenge of transferring knowledge of crime prevention through replication, innovation and anticipation", in N. Tilley (ed) Analysis for crime prevention: Crime prevention studies, volume 13, Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press.

Creating Good Lives and Decent Societies

GLADS - Good Lives and Decent Societies, is one of five projects funded under the 2014 Scottish Universities Insight Institute wellbeing programme. A collaboration between academics, policy makers and practitioners, here Marie-Amelie Viatte and Christine McMellon take time to describe what is being discussed.

Development has historically focused on reducing poverty and gaining financial wealth, as measured by GDP. This, however, raises questions about what it is that makes life worth living and presents several problems:

• It implies that acquiring wealth will necessarily improve people's quality of life, and yet there is extensive evidence that, at least after basic needs are met, money is not necessarily one of the key determinants of happiness.
• Economic growth can have a directly negative impact on wellbeing as it often leads to pollution and the depletion of resources.
• Events which can have a negative impact on wellbeing - such as natural disasters, crime and divorce, can sometimes increase GDP.

The GLADS seminar series provides an opportunity to take stock of what has been said on wellbeing, what has been said about measuring wellbeing, and what it means for policy and practice. Wellbeing is an important concept across disciplines, but meaningful conversations can be challenging and it is important to be clear about whether we are referring to the same things when we use terms such as 'wellbeing', 'quality of life' and 'happiness'. Wellbeing is related to both individual lives and broader social issues. It is relevant across time and is at the core of many of the issues, such as education, health, and governance, being addressed in policy and practice settings. GLADS is focusing on three themes: health; place and space; and welfare and employment.

The Scottish Government, like other countries, is trying to move away from from a narrow, GPD-based definition of development, to a more holistic approach - setting indicators within a National Performance Framework, Scotland Performs, to measure the progress of Government in 'creating a more successful country'. GLADS is facilitating discussion around these issues, bringing together key people to look at the connections between these issues and explore strategies to tackle them.

The first event took place in February 2014, to define wellbeing and open up discussion on how to assess wellbeing. It attracted presentations from The University of Edinburgh, Scottish Government, The Office for National Statistics, OECD and Oxfam Scotland. Copies of the presentations are available on the website.

The second event is taking place on 14 and 15 May. It focuses on the practice promoting wellbeing. If you are interested in being part of the discussion and contributing to GLADS please take a look at the website and register online. 

Read the GLADS blog and follow us on twitter @ScotGLADS #gladsmay

Journal Club: Is that clear?

Relevance, access, collaboration, timeliness – magic words in the world of knowledge exchange. They were also key factors, helpfully identified by Oliver et al in their systematic review of studies of barriers and facilitators in using evidence. Taking the lead from Research Impact’s Journal Club, the CRFR Knowledge Exchange reading group ‘Practice what you preach’ met to discuss the review and reflect on our own experience of working in the field of evidence-use. We have captured our thoughts here, with links to some examples.

 

Oliver, K., Innvar, S., Lorenc, T., Woodman, J and Thomas, T. (2014). A systematic review of barriers to and facilitators of the use of evidence by policymakers, BMC Health Services Research, 14:2

Stop talking about dissemination

• Is it time to move beyond the concept of dissemination[i]? Dissemination was a key term in many of the papers in this systematic review. Research needs to get out there, but this one-way concept isn’t going to achieve results in getting policy makers engaged with research. We, along with the rest of the academic community, talk more about engagement, impact, and collaboration. It is important to plan, from the outset, how different audiences will be able to access and use research.
• It is a shame that the report authors grouped ‘access to research’ with ‘dissemination’ in their factor analysis. They are two very distinct issues – does it mean access to primary research, and/or research being made accessible through translation? A breakdown of these terms would have provided a clearer understanding of the barriers and facilitators for policy-makers.

How clear is clear?

• It would have been helpful if the authors had unpacked what was meant by 'clarity of research findings' within the studies they analysed. Were they referring to research which was written clearly and easy to understand, or were they referring to research which had clear recommendations and proposals? Research rarely provides clear recommendations of potential actions even though that is often what policy-makers and practitioners want.
• Knowledge exchange and mobilisation work means working with the available evidence to help shape what might happen next. We explored this in our CRFR briefing ‘Claiming an evidence base for services and interventions’. We are constantly working in this terrain as knowledge brokers for example:
• Growing Up in Scotland (GUS) – practitioners often ask for more information about how to use study research findings in practice. 
• About Families project and Evidence Request Bank development project– we often explain that research doesn’t provide direct answers, it poses questions and helps service professionals reflect on practice and share understandings with colleagues
• So we need to separate out ideas of knowledge exchange and implementation, as Melanie Barwick, who is running a KE training course here in Edinburgh in May says:

  “Knowledge translation and implementation are complimentary but different constructs. Knowledge translation involves helping others to understand the evidence; implementation involves supporting them to make the changes needed to apply the evidence. Impact means capturing that people knew what to do with the knowledge you shared.”

What are people doing?

• We noted that most studies included in the review were based on researcher’s or policy-makers perceptions of evidence use. There is a big difference between what people think they or others do, and what those people actually do. Sarah Morton’s forthcoming publication in Evidence and Policy will explore exactly what research-users do to apply research to policy or practice.
• The research-policy gap still appears as a barrier to evidence use within this review. Lack of policymaker research skills was also highlighted as a barrier, and we wondered, given the sheer amount of policy-relevant research that is produced, whether these two factors were linked. The issue of a research skills gap in local policy-making has been highlighted elsewhere[ii].
• So does more need to be done to present research in formats that can be easily digested into the policy environment? We have been working on this…
• GUS briefing in partnership with the Scottish Childcare and Protection Network, ‘What can research do for you?’ 
• GUS Briefing from Scottish Government Community Regeneration and Tackling Poverty Learning Network Learning Point 50 ‘GUS: Using evidence in practice’
• GUS Briefing for the Improvement Service ‘Key Messages from Growing Up in Scotland – Briefing for elected members no.13’
• Evidence Request Bank and About Families project - produces and shares appraised summaries of evidence in direct response to practice needs.
• We facilitated a meeting with Scottish Government policy staff to help inform the development of the Parenting Strategy, highlighting research from several of our Directors.

Improving collaboration

• In our experience collaboration and access are closely linked. Close collaborations between policy-makers and researchers increases access to research surely?
• There is general recognition of the importance of relationships between policy and research sectors, and issues are now more about nurturing a collaborative approach where both parties are active participants.
• We were also pleased to see that comparing the previous review with this one, mistrust is less of an issue. It seems a success of those working within the broad knowledge exchange field that the various audiences are at least recognising the role each other plays.

Tactical evidence

• We noted that the article didn’t refer to tactical or political use of evidence; that is when evidence is used or presented in a certain way to provide a desired answer. We felt that it must have been mentioned in some of the research included in the review.

[i] http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/promoting-change-through-research-impact-research-local-government  http://www.alliance4usefulevidence.org/publication/squaring-the-circle/
[ii] http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2013/08/19/is-it-time-to-ban-the-term-dissemination/