We interview Tara Collins about her book, Children’s Rights in Professional Practices with Children And Youth
Our member, Prof. Tara Collins (Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada), talks about her new book, Children’s Rights in Professional Practices with Children and Youth (Edward Elgar, 2024).
Q: What is this book about?
This book provides an introduction to children’s rights in professional practices with children and youth in a global context. It considers why and how children’s rights are pertinent and valuable. Given the relevance and ongoing challenges to their implementation, specific attention is given to respecting the rights to non-discrimination and to participation.
Then the book proposes a relational child rights-based praxis to elaborate how children’s rights can be incorporated into professional practices. Professional identity is discussed with attention to how assumptions, biases, and roles may be influential.
Implementing this praxis is explored at community, national, regional, and global levels through the professional categories of: Research, Monitoring, and Evaluation; and Law, Policymaking and Reform, and Programming; Frontline Service Provision to Young People and Families; and Advocacy. The book’s conclusion summarizes the significance of children’s rights in professional practices.
Q: What made you write this book?
After working in the field of children’s rights in non-government, government, and academic domains since 1996, I have noticed that there are numerous resources to support formal government efforts to implement children’s rights and that their elaboration in international law has tended to relegate their interpretation and application to legal professionals. As such, there tends to be a gap in understanding children’s rights beyond the high-level formal political and legal spheres. It was intriguing to examine how children’s rights can influence professional relationships with children and youth not only within the legal sphere but beyond it.
Consequently, this book takes into account individual professionals, their organizations (e.g. national and global associations of social workers, teachers, early childhood educators, child and youth care practitioners, policy makers, advocates, international development and humanitarian workers, etc.), and their important roles and efforts in society. The diversities of contexts around the world as well as professional disciplines, tensions, and opportunities are acknowledged. The book’s aim is to advance how children’s rights can inform professional practices with children and youth.
All author proceeds are directed to honouring the legacy of the late Hon. Landon Pearson to support her Centre for the Study of Childhood and Children’s Rights (https://carleton.ca/landonpearsoncentre).
An excerpt from the introductory chapter (pp. 3-4):
Professionals are important contributors to the lives of children and youth, their families, and communities. This book encourages attention to their relationships with the human beings with whom they work. Professionals who work with children and youth usually have good intentions. However, lack of awareness, understanding, and/or training means that children’s rights tend to be disassociated from their efforts. As they focus on their specific tasks and responsibilities in their institutional contexts and realities, professionals influence young people in such ways as how they feel about themselves, and what decisions they make or do not make. As professional power and positions are often considerable, their impacts upon the past, present, and future choices and paths of children and youth and their families cannot be underestimated. Respect, support, and care are also important to realizing the human rights of these young people. As such, this book argues that children’s rights are relevant to professionals in their practices relevant to children and youth. Children’s rights can serve as the foundation for their professional relationships. Professional relationships matter not only to individual and groups of young people with whom they work, but also to social justice and society.
Professional relationships manifest and reinforce their attitudes about individual or groups of children and youth in their day-to-day approaches. Similarly, their professional behaviours reflect these attitudes and are indicative of how they understand children’s rights, whether engaging with young people, with colleagues, or within institutions and agencies. These attitudes and behaviours are revealed in their professional outcomes or results. What are the impacts for children and youth? How are they benefitting, and are there opportunities for professionals to buttress and improve?
It is argued that professionals have critical opportunities to realize their key roles in advancing a relational children’s rights-based praxis in their relationships with children, youth and their families, as Chapter 5 introduces and the subsequent chapters elaborate. In so doing, they can support sustainability and respect of children and youth and their communities. As such, it is essential that children’s rights are better appreciated. Through strong understandings and efforts, this foundation can stand firm to support children and youth, their families, and communities to better face the various challenges that arise both within countries and across them. As we live in a world of never-ending change, respect of children’s rights is more important than ever because children and youth are not simply our future, they are our present (Children’s Forum, 2002). This book is a step towards illuminating the relevance of children’s rights for professional practices because children’s rights provide a constructive foundation for sustainability over the long term.
There are ebbs and flows of what the world, its leaders, and the general public (including social media) deem to be important and where and how to put resources. Whether economic downturns, a global pandemic, natural disasters or armed conflict, or changes in government, a firm foundation is needed in society to support essential priorities and withstand the vagaries of society and life. Children’s rights provide the necessary foundation to weather those ebbs and flows and consistently support children, youth, and their families over time. The framework helps to ensure that children and youth are not ignored, forgotten, or disrespected in decision-making by authorities. Such power and influence are not restricted only to government leaders. Professionals who work with children, youth, and their families, or on issues that concern them, are part of this approach. Consequently, they should be engaged in efforts to provide this foundation. Children’s rights provide a fundamental framework so that the work of professionals within and across societies can be supported, respectful, and sustainable over time.
Access the full chapter here: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781802202359.00006, where it is also free to download.