Poverty, Child Protection and Parents' Participation

2026-07-22

The proposed project aims to promote innovative, poverty-aware forms of parents' participation and family inclusion practices in child protection policy and practice. More specifically, it intends to strengthen the connection between three bodies of knowledge—poverty, child protection, and parent participation. Parent advocacy programmes, that are gradually developed to support family inclusion and parents' participation at the practice and policy levels, are demonstrating positive outcomes, both in terms of proximal and distal outcomes. Even though, current programmes are mainly based outside of Europe and tend to lack a firm theoretical and ethical base that informs practice in ways that address poverty, other social inequalities, and child protection practice. Given the increasing numbers of children living in socio-economic hardship in more than two thirds of the OECD countries, alongside rising numbers of children involved in the child protection and court systems in various EU countries, developing such practices is a necessity for promoting the well-being and rights of children and Therefore the study aims are:(1) To map, describe, and conceptualize the development and application of parent advocacy programmes in England. (2) To explore the experiences and perspectives of all stakeholders who participate in parent advocacy programmes (3) To examine and theorize the relevance of poverty-aware approaches to parent advocacy programmes. (4) To empirically enrich and further develop the complex relationship between poverty and maltreatment. The research project will employ a qualitative in-depth case study approach that will involve a preliminary survey of all existing advocacy initiatives in England and in-depth inquiry of 4-6 parent advocacy programs. The case studies will include various qualitative methods and the analysis of the data will include thematic analysis and participatory data analysis.

United Kingdom (UK)

2026-02-15