Disrupting the Child Welfare Participation Paradigm: A Contextual, Relational, Embedded and Pragmatic Approach

Child and parent participation is fundamental to effective child welfare practice. Legislative imperatives assert the right to participate, but in a child welfare context, participation is complex and risks becoming rhetorical. This paper, based on a conceptual synthesis built from second person action research and a narrative review, explores child and parent participation from a UNCRC rights-based perspective, adopting a critical reflexive approach to explore challenges and begin to disrupt entrenched and dichotomized child–parent participation practices. Our synthesis positions context and relationships as central to meaningful participation in child welfare, embeds participatory acts in the everyday mindsets and practices of professionals and positions participation as a skilled communication process. Psychoanalytic concepts and the Pragmatics of Human Communication are introduced as generative conceptual frames, offering an innovative reconceptualization of participation that is more inclusive, contextual, relational, embedded and pragmatic. We conclude with a call for participatory research involving children and parents that might offer new insights and mobilize practitioners into more attuned and epistemically and socially just participatory practices.