Hanita Kosher

Advances in Children's Rights and Children's Well-Being Measurement: Implications for School Psychologists.

Recent years have brought important changes to the profession of school psychology, influenced by larger social, scientific, and political trends. These trends include the emergence of childrens rights agenda and advances in childrens well-being measurement. During these years, a growing public attention and commitment to the notion of childrens rights has developed, which is best expressed in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Convention outlines the conditions necessary to ensure and promote childrens well-being and calls for the ongoing monitoring of childrens well-being for accountability purposes. We articulate advances in childrens rights and childrens well-being measurement in the context of childrens schooling experiences in general and for school psychology in particular. We highlight implications for the assessment roles of school psychologists, who occupy a unique position at the intersection of multiple subsystems of childrens overall ecosystems. We argue that the synergy between a rights-based agenda and advances in childrens well-being assessment methodology can provide valuable opportunities for school psychology. This synergy can help school communities establish perspective and goals for childrens well-being in rights respecting ways, using the most promising well-being assessment strategies.

What children think about their rights and their well-being: A cross-national comparison.

Recent years have brought a growing social and public commitment to the promotion of children’s rights and children’s well-being around the world, and these have become important goals of all those striving to improve children’s lives. In spite of the intimate ideological connection between the concepts of children’s rights and children’s well-being, they have evolved separately both theoretically and empirically. In the current article, we present a study exploring the empirical association between these 2 concepts based on data from the International Survey on Children’s Well-Being. This unique survey explores children’s own perspectives on their well-being (subjective well-being), their perceptions and knowledge of their rights, and their reports on their right to participation. It includes data from more than 54,000 children aged 8–12 from 16 countries around the world. Our results showed clear cross-national differences between children’s knowledge and perceptions of their rights and their reports on participation. Also, children’s participation in different contexts in their lives showed an association with their subjective well-being; a weaker association was found between children’s knowledge and perceptions of their rights. These results indicate that children’s right to participation and, to some degree, their knowledge and thinking about their rights is an indicator of their well-being.

Social Work and Children’s Rights: Implications for Practice

This chapter discusses implementing children’s rights in social work practice. The first part deals with the general idea of rights-based approaches for working with children, referring mainly to development work with children around the world. The second part deals directly with how a rights-based approach can be implemented in social work practice, both at the macro and the micro level. We focus on two main practices relevant to social work: child advocacy and child participation.

What Children and Parents Think about Children’s Right to Participation

Recent years have witnessed an increase in the global commitment to children’s rights in general and their rights to self-determination and participation in particular. This has been firmly expressed in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children, which recognises the right of children to participate in decisions about their own lives. The present study examined perceptions and attitudes regarding the concept of children’s right to participation among children and parents from Israel. The results indicate that children showed a tendency to support the right to participation to a greater extent than the parents. The results also revealed that the attitudes of children and parents varied by the context and situation in which the right to participation is realised (school, family, and public settings). Finally, children’s actual participation was found to be associated with children’s and parents’ attitudes towards children’s right to participation.

Hope, Material Resources, and Subjective Well-Being of 8- to 12-Year-Old Children in Israel

Few studies have examined the links among hope, material resources, and subjective well-being (SWB) of children from their own perspectives. The article examines lack of material resources as a risk factor, hope as a human strength, and a possible moderator regarding childrens SWB. The study employed a nationally representative sample of 2,977 Jewish and Arab Israeli children (ages 8-12). As predicted, there was a significant positive relation between hope and SWB, and a negative relation between lack of material resources and SWB. Hope was found to moderate the relation between lack of material resources and SWB. Furthermore, for 10- and 12-year olds, differences were found regarding the strength of the relations of the variables, suggesting a possible developmental trend.

Social Work and Children’s Rights: A Theoretical and Ethical View

We now review the history of social work with children, particularly its strong involvement with families and children. There are three approaches to the practice of social work with children: protection and provision, “every child matters” and children as autonomous persons. We show that the status of children in social work and society has been narrowly focused for many years and that the children’s rights perspective has, until recently, been overlooked. The second section of the chapter is devoted to social work and the child’s right to participation and autonomy. We discuss why the social work profession should be involved in children’s rights practice, particularly in children’s rights to participation. At the end of the chapter is an exercise box to help elaborate the connection of social work with the children’s rights agenda.

Social Work and Children’s Rights: Implications for Research

We now present the influence of children’s rights on research in social work, starting with an overall view of the subjects that have been studied in relation to children’s rights. We then discuss the implications of the child’s right to participation for research on children’s lives, particularly in social work research. Finally, we present several ways in which children’s participation in social work research can be expressed. At the end of the chapter is an exercise box, which directs readers how to analyze the place of children in research in social work.

The History of Children’s Rights

We now introduce the concept of children’s rights as a special case of human rights. The chapter explores the historical development of children’s status and rights by examining three periods in the development of perceptions of childhood: the pre-industrial period, the industrial period and from mid-20th century to the present. In each period society has articulated different attitudes towards children. We present popular typologies of children’s rights, i.e., categorized and clusters of children’s rights, to aid understanding which kind of rights children have or should have. At the end of the chapter is an exercise box to help readers further elaborate and explore the idea of children’s rights.

Social Work and Human Rights

This chapter discusses social work as a human rights profession. After a brief review of the concept of human rights, we describe the historical connection between social work and human rights, presenting core examples for how social work was extensively involved in human rights advocacy in its formative years. Specially mentioned are some of the central leaders and founders of social work who advocated for human rights around the world. The chapter also discusses the current connection between social work and human rights by showing how the principle of human rights is expressed in the ethics and values in social work around the world, making human rights a clear part of the social work mission. Finally, we present how the idea of human rights can be implemented in social work practice. At the end of the chapter is an exercise box to aid further discussion on these topics.