Five key practice shifts to transform your work with children

Emerging Minds’ Five practice perspective shifts will provide your with a valuable guide for your work with children. They will help you place the voice of the child at the centre of your interactions together and privilege their agency. The shifts are based on the understanding that children are active participants in their lives and the work they do with you, and they prioritise children’s personality, values, relationships, ecology and rights.

A passive-to-active stance assumes that every action demonstrates the child’s preferences, communicating how they are feeling about the professional interaction – thus honouring the child’s knowledge, experience and voice. The passive-to-active practitioner shift supports you to help the child make sense of events in their life, enlisting the help of parents to support the child’s experience, when possible. Things to consider:

• the array of skills and know-how that children draw on to navigate their circumstances
• children’s creativity and imagination which can create all sorts of possibilities in dealing with life’s twists and turns
• that children’s skills and know-how are drawn from communities, cultures and relationships that surround them
• acknowledging that children are active in making meaning of their life experiences, holding an assortment of values, beliefs, ethics and hopes that can guide their actions.

Many children come into a service believing they have nothing to offer when it comes to solving their problems; and parents often feel powerless in the face of the problem. A naive-to-knowledgeable stance helps children to reflect on the strengths and know-how they possess, and invites parents or family members to contribute to understandings of these strengths. Things to consider:

• children possess knowledge about the issues they are facing and can define and describe these problems through drawing on their own understandings
• taking care to privilege the language and meaning-making of the child and position them as the potential experts about their problems and solutions
• being interested in the forms of knowledge held by children that can be performed or embodied, rather than expressed in language.

From the very first engagement with a child, there are many ways that services and practitioners can show them they are interested in what they have to say. This can be done simply by asking questions rather than making statements; by being transparent about what you know about why they are meeting with you; or by asking children and parents about the relationships, routines or interests that are important to them. Things to consider:

• Children can join with adults to share their perspectives and co-generate knowledge that can potentially help others as well as themselves.

Shifting your perspective from categories-to-context means being open-minded and curious when working with a child and their parent(s). This will help you to look behind and beyond behaviour, to better understand what you are seeing and hearing from the family. Moving away from categorising the child might help them to engage with you and to develop their own voice in describing the broader context of their life. Things to consider:

• showing a delight for and honouring of children’s inventive and diverse ways that are not captured by categorical thinking.

Through a shift from top-down to bottom-up accountability, you can suspend expectations of children and instead ask what you can do to help the child get the support they need. This shift places the emphasis on what the child and parents need, rather than what practitioners expect from them. Things to consider:

• showing approaches that are accountable and answerable to the child, as well as their parents and other concerned adults.