Child Agency and Voice in Therapy

New Ways of Working in the Arts Therapies

Phil Jones, Lynn Cedar, Alyson Coleman, Deborah Haythorne, Daniel Mercieca, Emma Ramsden

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367861650
• eBook ISBN: 9781000224207
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Art General
• Index: Psychology

Child Agency and Voice in Therapy offers innovatory ways of thinking about, and working with, children in therapy.

The book:

• considers different practices such as respecting the rights of the child in therapy and recognising and listening to children as 'active agents' and 'experts';
• features approaches that: access children's views of their therapy; engage with them as researchers or co-researchers; and that use play and arts-based methods;
• draws on arts therapies research in ways that enable insight and learning for all those engaged with children's therapy and wellbeing;
• considers how the contexts of the therapy, such as a school or counselling centre, relate to the ways children experience themselves and their therapy in relation to rights, agency and voice.

Child Agency and Voice in Therapy will be beneficial for all child therapists and is a good resource for courses concerning childhood welfare, therapy, education, wellbeing and mental health.

Part 1

Debates and key concepts

Chapter 1

Child agency, voice and the arts therapies

A new paradigm

Introduction

This book offers new insights into therapeutic work with children, exploring innovatory ideas and practices by creating dialogue between recent developments concerning child rights, agency, voice and the arts therapies. It contains an interdisciplinary exploration of theory, research and, ideas for practice to help explore new potentials such as how to recognise and listen to children as ‘experts’ in therapy, drawing on their insider knowledge to benefit the field. The chapters include insights from research which illuminate a more participatory therapeutic relationship with children to enable their rights, agency, and voice to be more effectively engaged with in areas such as service design, consent and assent, aims setting, research, and evaluation. One such example is from enquiry that engages with children as co-researchers, undertaking research into the nature, effectiveness and quality of their therapy. This, we will argue, is a way of respecting their rights, bringing children’s voices into the research process and of enriching therapeutic practice. Whilst the focus is upon research into the arts therapies, we intend our thinking and findings to be relevant to all therapy with children. We argue this by drawing on a framework of micro, meso and macro levels of analysis to explore individual, community and systemic implications of rights, agency and voice.

A new paradigm in therapeutic work with children

The book articulates a new paradigm for thinking about, and working with children in the arts therapies. It creates a theoretical exchange between different disciplines: children’s rights, the new sociology of childhood and therapeutic work with children and will draw on recent, innovative arts therapy research to help illustrate and analyse the new paradigm in thinking about, and practicing, therapy involving children.

This new paradigm can be defined as a different way of conceiving of children in therapy and a different kind of practice, connected to:

• respecting the rights of the child in therapy, as articulated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC, 1989) in relation to areas such as their participation, protection and provision rights;
• recognising and listening to children as ‘active agents’ and ‘experts’ in therapy, drawing on their insider knowledge to benefit other children and the approach of the field as a whole in its work;
• a more participatory therapeutic relationship with children to enable their ‘voice’ to be more effectively engaged with in areas such as service design, referral, consent and assent, aims setting, method choice and evaluating and communicating their views of changes to their wellbeing. Examples of this are children designing, with therapists, the referral process or the therapy room or space;
• research that engages with children as participants not as objects or subjects, involving them as researchers or co-researchers. For example, engaging children in reflecting on areas such as the nature and quality of their therapy – as a way of respecting their rights, bringing children’s voices into the research process and enriching therapeutic work with children.

Our approach draws on Bahramnezhad et al.’s (2015) consideration of the nature of ‘paradigm’ in the context of the helping professions. Drawing on Kuhn (1962), they situate a paradigm as interconnected ideas and concepts, rules and shared opinions (2015, p. 18), describing how, within a field such as health care or nursing, change occurs as a ‘new paradigm or a new conceptual model’ emerges. This new paradigm responds in ways that ‘can answer … previous unanswered questions’ within a profession and is communicated and tested as it emerges and becomes ‘supported by a community’ (2015, p. 18). They situate this process of change within notions of progress and as a way of responding to contact between disciplines that creates new questions or raises challenges to existing paradigms. This book’s relationship to these concepts of a ‘new paradigm’ reflects this notion of an emerging body of theory, research and professional practices that questions traditional ways of thinking, undertaking enquiry and conducting therapeutic practice with children. Within the disciplines of the new sociology of childhood, and children’s rights, changes have emerged in how childhood and children’s lives are conceived of. This book is an articulation of the possibilities of dialogue between these disciplines and therapy with children, particularly in relation to the arts therapies. The different chapters will demonstrate how recent thinking concerning children and childhood connects with theoretical debates and ideas about research and practice within arts therapeutic work to offer a new paradigm: new ideas, concepts and opinions. These will include changing how the practice of arts therapy is conceived of and implemented, including the therapeutic relationship between child and therapist.

The first part of the book offers a series of theoretical orientations concerning the relationship between child rights, agency, ‘voice’ and the arts therapies. The second part draws upon research to illustrate how this connects with therapeutic work and will offer insight into practice better to reflect children’s agency and voice.

The impetus for this book

A strong impetus for all the research in this book is the momentum created by recent developments concerning children’s rights. The concept of a child as a ‘rights holder’ has become increasingly influential in the formation of laws, policies and areas of professional practice over recent decades. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) has been described as the first piece of international legislation to assert that ‘children are subjects of rights rather than merely recipients of protection’ (Lansdown, 2001, p. 1). Freeman describes children’s rights as ‘just claims or entitlements that derive from moral and/or legal rules’ (2002, p. 6). One key aspect of this concerns legislation that develops as a response to conventions such as the UNCRC (1989) or the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR, 1953). The UNCRC has been ratified by most nations, for example. Ratification does not automatically mean that a nation is legally bound to legislate the rights in the UNCRC as domestic law:

Ratifying nations are legally bound to participate in the monitoring process spelled out in the Convention. They are bound to show that they are seriously trying to legally implement children’s rights, to file reports on their success in implementing those rights, to be examined by the UN Child Rights Committee, and to receive recommendations from the Committee. They are not legally bound to follow the recommendations or to actually pass domestic legislation (Butler, 2014, pp. 2–3).

The impetus created by child rights has resulted in the development of an infrastructure of law and policy, some of which has been directly caused by the ratification of the UNCRC or the ECHR, whilst others have been created in dialogue with them, or through the influence of their ideas. Morrow (2011) cites Melton, arguing that taken together, the UNCRC’s articles reflect ‘a new global consensus that, as soon as children are able to express a preference about a matter affecting them, they have the right to form an opinion, make it known to others and have it considered’ (Melton, 2006, p. 7, quoted in Morrow, 2011). Indeed, Hogan (2005, p. 35) suggests there is considerable consensus that the UNCRC reflects ‘an unprecedented value for the subjective worlds of children and for their right to be consulted and taken seriously’. Kirby et al. summarise this as a shift in emphasis and ‘requires working with children and young people rather than for them, understanding that acquiring responsibility for someone does not mean taking responsibility away from them’ (2003, p. 17).

The status and interpretation of child rights varies enormously between, and within, societies. The relationships formed by different domains, or areas of service and child rights are also varied and complex. Some domains, such as law, have responded to child rights actively, but others have been less effective or active in their response (Reynaert et al., 2009). This book addresses a gap in knowledge, in arts therapies’ theory and research into practice. Mercieca and Jones (2018) comment on the dearth of material on child rights in relation to therapy in general. Others identify absences in terms of the need for more development in terms of theory, or identify the limited degree of research concerning participation or protection rights in relation to therapy (Dittmann and Jensen, 2014; Henriksen, 2014). One example concerns the paucity of research on children’s perspectives on their experience of therapy (Dittmann and Jensen, 2014; Henriksen, 2014). Though there are some examples of attention in the arts therapies (Krüger and Stige, 2015; Leigh et al., 2012), in much literature there is an absence of attention and engagement with child rights, agency and voice. The book will offer both a theoretical rethinking of how children and adult-child relationships are conceived of (Part 1) and will draw on examples from empirical arts therapy research that illustrate the impact of such rethinking on practice and theory (Part 2). This examination will enable the reader to look at the ways in which arts therapy provision as a whole (for example, the design of therapy spaces, referral or consent) along with the therapeutic relationship and process (for example, within practice with individuals and groups) are understood, constructed and worked with. It will, therefore, include a rethinking of how services are designed and offered; the relationships between the therapy provision and the contexts it sits within (for example, education, social services and residential care); the ways in which therapists understand how they offer themselves and their practice to children within micro aspects of the therapeutic process – such as referral, consent and assent; the creation of goals; how we consider meaning-making during the therapy and in evaluation.

Key concepts

The book articulates a series of key concepts that will act as innovative, interdisciplinary threads running through its chapters. They will feature in different ways within the specific chapters, but will form a conceptual framework in the following ways:

• In developing theory within Part 1
• In informing the analysis of research into practice in Part 2
• In articulating the ‘implications’ in Part 3

The key concepts are: ‘Childhood as constructed’, ‘Children as rights holders in therapy’, ‘Children’s agency in therapy’, ‘Children’s voice and therapy’ and ‘Childhood, the arts and therapy’.

Key concept: Childhood as constructed

How can the concept that childhood is constructed enable critical insight and new possibilities for therapeutic work with children?

The chapters will critically examine recent thinking in relation to childhood being theorised as a cultural construction. The book’s interdisciplinary innovation will involve exploring how these ideas relate to child therapy, particularly the arts therapies. This will include critiquing the way therapeutic services conceive of, offer and conduct their practice with children. We will argue that traditional constructions of childhood, which tended to view children through negative stereotypes (Jones and Welch, 2018; Lansdown, 2011; Morrow, 2011), have had an unhelpful impact on therapeutic work with children. Our book will draw on recent thinking that has made these visible and has developed new ways of conceiving of children that aim better to serve children and the adults who live and work with them. These ‘new ways’ connect to the arts therapies by:

• drawing on concepts of children’s agency and voice to help reframe how children are seen, understood and engaged with in therapy;
• emphasising a position that views children as capable, as active decision makers with opinions that matter and who make decisions of worth;
• seeing and working with each child by engaging with their own sense of their capacities and desires, not in terms of deficits with adult functioning as a norm or goal, or as futurities based on adult set outcomes or judgments of what their needs are.

Key concept: Children as rights holders in therapy

How can the impetus created by children’s rights help therapy to serve children more effectively?

The formally agreed articles of the UNCRC are often considered in relation to three overarching areas: provision rights (to necessary goods, services and resources), protection rights (from neglect, abuse, exploitation and discrimination) and participation rights (whereby children are respected as active members of their family, community and society) (Alderson, 2008). The following provides a sample of the UNCRC (see Appendix 1 for a summary of the UNCRC):

Article 1. Everyone under 18 years of age has all the rights of the Convention.

Article 4. Governments should make these rights available to children.

Article 12. Children have the right to say what they think should happen, when adults are making decisions that affect them, and to have their opinions taken into account.

Article 19. Governments should ensure that children are properly cared for, and protect them from violence, abuse and neglect by their parents, or anyone else who looks after them.

Article 24. State Parties recognise the right of the child to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health and to facilities for the treatment of illness and rehabilitation of health. States Parties shall strive to ensure that no child is deprived of his or her right of access to such health care services.

Article 31. All children have a right to relax and play and to join in a wide range of activities.

If every child, regardless of their sex, ethnic origin, social status, language, age, nationality or religion has these rights, then they also have a responsibility to respect each other in a humane way (UNCRC, 1989).

The rights within the UNCRC can be seen as indivisible: that they are interconnected (Lansdown, 2011; Lundy, 2007). A 2017 scoping review by the Northern Irelan...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• Authors
• Forewords
• Introduction
• Glossary
• Part 1 Debates and key concepts
• Part 2 Research
• Appendices
• Index