[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the Emerging Minds Podcast.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Hi, I'm Nicole Rolbusch and welcome to the Emerging Minds Podcast. Before we start today's episode, we would like to pay respect to the traditional custodians of the land on which this podcast was recorded, the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains and the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We also pay respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, their ancestors and elders past, present and emerging from the different first nations across Australia. Australia, The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child highlights children's participation as a vital right for all children. However, it's still the case that children's voices can be invisible across the services that work with them and their families. When children are invited to be part of the process of research and practice, their sense of empowerment, control and self worth has been shown to increase.
Practitioners can play a vital role in creating safe and child focused processes for gathering children's voices and utilising their feedback to improve their experiences as well as services. On today's episode we're joined by Becca Allchin, clinical researcher at Eastern Health. With a background in occupational therapy, Becca is currently undertaking a research project that looks at processes for gathering and implementing feedback from children and young people on the programs that they are a part of. And in our episode today, we're speaking about Becca's experience of hearing children's voices and the ways she's been able to gather and implement their feedback. Becca provides some advice based on what she's learned for practitioners who are interested in incorporating children's voices into their own processes and practices.
[00:01:47] Speaker C: Well, thank you so much Becca for joining us today. It's really great to have you with us.
[00:01:54] Speaker A: Thank you for having me. It's a lovely opportunity to chat.
[00:01:58] Speaker C: So can you start by telling us a little bit about yourself and your work?
[00:02:02] Speaker A: I'm an occupational therapist and I work in mental health, which I have done for my whole working life and my focus has been actually around adults, which is a sort of irony of talking about children's voice. Throughout my career my focus has often been around families and, and their, and parenting, which then obviously includes children as well. And currently I have a role as a clinical researcher at Eastern Health doing some work to sort of explore the outcomes for the programs that we run, which is for families where parents have a mental illness and those programs are both child focused but also parent focused and whole or family focused. So in that work my work is, it's a co designed research and the idea of is to Hear what matters to children and their parents and their families, I guess.
[00:02:57] Speaker C: So you mentioned child voice before and that's what we're talking about today. But we do hear that term a bit.
So I wondered if you could provide a bit of a definition. What is it exactly that we are talking about today?
[00:03:09] Speaker A: Child voice is about the right of the child to be able to express their perspectives, their views, their feelings on things that matter to them which need to be acted on, I guess by adults, listened to and then acted on. It's more than their voice though. And it's a funny thing that we talk about voice because some children don't actually speak. And so it's also being able to pick up non verbal cues and things as well. Expressions through play or art or creating in other sort of ways, play based activities. I guess it's not just listening either.
Listening with intent to use it for change or for amplifying their voice or for having their voices being heard.
[00:03:58] Speaker C: I really appreciate that distinction you make. Like we say child voice. But there are many other ways that children can express their preferences and thoughts and feelings that doesn't have to be verbal. We're also really important to keep that in mind when thinking about these processes.
So why is it important for children to have the opportunity to share their perspectives?
[00:04:22] Speaker A: Well, I guess they have thoughts on things that matter to them and we should listen. They're people.
But probably, you know, underpinning the child voice work is the UN's rights of the child and which says that children have a right to, to have their voice and opinion heard and for that to be given weight that they have agency, I guess in things that they are involved in or they're, they're affected by. I guess from a sort of bottom line it's because they're people and they have a, they have a right for that. And therefore it sort of empowers them in that context. But probably also from a selfish perspective, they give fabulous ideas about what, what matters for them. And it means that we can align services for them in ways that more align with getting their engagement. I guess too. So the worst case is if you don't listen to them, you don't get very good engagement out of them in the things that matter to us. Perhaps it's a way of doing partnership in that context.
[00:05:33] Speaker C: Yes. So there's those benefits for children and the importance for children having their rights and having their voices heard. But also as from a service perspective, as you say, there's real importance of listening to that voice. So that we can increase engagement with children in our services as well. So what methods have you used or what processes have you used to bring child voice into your work?
[00:06:04] Speaker A: A part of why I'm doing this project is because our sort of ways of doing things in the past have probably not been very effective. So we've had lots of feedback forms and things where you get really spurious sort of information from it. And very contextually, you know, you don't have any context in it and so you get things like I didn't like the ducks and you don't actually have any idea about what that actually means. So we've done a lot of feedback forms and things and some of those are also, you know, picture based things and circling the faces though. So some of those things are helpful in that way. But I guess one of the best ways I find is through relationships. And so it's sort of workshop based or play based, activity based things, that sort of idea where you have parallel play and you having a conversation while you're doing something.
Sometimes using things like the St. Luke's sets of cards, like the bear cards or the strength based cards, but there's other ones which just have pictures. And then children can tell you they picked that one because of some something and then so it's not prescriptive but you then get more emergent sort of ideas, brainstorming things like putting stickers on things where you, you know, you might have the different activities that we've done in this program and which were. You've got three stickers, you put your three stickers on the ones that the most that you enjoyed the most or you thought was the best. You can hear, you know, gather those sorts of things in that sort of participatory sort of active ways of doing things which can still be a little bit anonymous in terms of. They don't have to say I didn't like X. Sometimes you can do it through giving options. So, you know, we've got these things that we're going to do today. Which way would you like to, you know, give feedback or which would you rather do first? Children often have a lot to say, it's just often embedded if they feel safe to do so often embedded in all sorts of other conversations. So you sort of have to sort of listen for longer periods of time or do it while you're playing alongside.
[00:08:17] Speaker C: Yeah, so as you mentioned at the beginning, you're really describing like relational relationship based processes that are not just sort of, here's a feedback form to fill out at the end of the program. And that's kind of it. There's. Yeah, there can be a lot more to it and quite purposeful. What is what I'm hearing as well that it's sort of after this program we're going to, you know, perhaps run a workshop, a feedback workshop.
[00:08:44] Speaker A: So our current, you know, set of research project has got a number of different activity based workshops where the whole family comes and then we break into groups with age groups, so primary, secondary and parents. So the children have got an opportunity to talk a bit more freely by themselves, but also maybe more safely with their family. So there's sort of different things that they might say in different spaces in different ways. So I think that thing of giving a breadth of opportunities to hear means that you might hear more different voices in that context as well. We sent away children with like Instamatic cameras and asked them to take photos of things that mattered to them at. Or that were, you know, it was about a particular, you know, what makes them feel, what do they enjoy in the things that they do at home or what makes family a safe place or.
And then they take photos and then you sort of get them processed and then they tell you the story about that as well. So that's something called photo voice. So that it has to be. It's none of those things are on their own. They're quite sort of like the photo doesn't speak for itself. The photo needs their interpretation as well. And that's the same with drawing. So children will often draw you pictures of things, but it's them asking them about what that drawing means and why, you know, what does that look like and tell me about more about it, you know, what's going on here or those sorts of things which aren't so much leading questions but give them an opportunity to tell you what's in their head. It can't be too far away from when they did the thing because they're thinking like they're much more immediate. And so, you know, having a photo and then, you know, five weeks later you're asking them why did they take it? And they might not remember, but also the context might be different and they might have a different meaning to why they took it then. So I guess it's that sort of immediacy, wanting to make sure you have space to unpack things at the same time that they're doing things.
[00:10:49] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great point and tip for practitioners who are maybe wanting to embed this a bit more in their work.
Well, I was Wondering about. You mentioned safety before. And I think that we need to create safe spaces for children to feel like they can share what's happening for them, what they're thinking, what they're feeling and what their perspective is. So how do you purposely create safety for these processes to happen within?
[00:11:19] Speaker A: It's really important for children to have choice. I guess, like all of us, we prefer to have. That's some of the things that make us all feel safe is having choice about how you respond or how you participate or whether you participate. And so in that.
That's the part of the establishing the relationships that is really important, which I think we talked about before as well. So relationships are part of what makes engagement sort of.
And some of that might be the relationship with me, or it might be the relationship with the team, or it might be the relationship with the parent or a caregiver who comes to you. So sometimes that is, you know, giving, you know, children choice about how they engage and who they want to come with it. Sometimes it's about having things in familiar spaces. So a space that's known to them. So we do some of our workshops at a workplace where we've also done some of the group programs. So something where they've come before, they might know something about that. I think overtly asking for their consent. So permission to. To be engaged, like, did you want to come today? And this is what we're doing so that they understand that they have a choice as well. To not participate is part of safety. Younger children, it's often things like being on their level, watching, offering that serve and return. You're sort of offering a sort of space and waiting for them to respond before you then sort of launch into doing X, Y or Z. So some of that is about time as well. So creating space that you can work at their time and they're letting them take the lead, I guess, in that context. So there are some of the things we do about safety and I think
[00:13:10] Speaker C: something that I reflect on as well, and you mentioned this at the beginning was around. It's not just about gathering the feedback and it's not just about listening, but it's about action as well. And I think that sort of links to safety in the sense that you know, when you're giving feedback and it's not going anywhere, that can feel quite challenging, but to know that it's actually being used in a way that can improve services.
So how do you action the feedback once it's been received?
[00:13:39] Speaker A: It's really important. It's important Too, to be clear about what you can and can't do. Like, you know, I guess, you know, we're not going to change the world with this little piece of information today. But also maybe asking them what they would like to be done with that as well. So. And then troubleshooting whether or not that's possible as well. We'll often when we collect information, we then feed it back in our newsletter about these are the things that people said was X, Y or Z or that they liked. And we may, sometimes we'll be writing up a report, but we then do a sort of family friendly or a child friendly sort of version of that, summary of that so that it can go back to the families who heard in this project. One of the things we're doing is also checking back with them. So when we've gathered something, making sure before it goes on to the next thing, we feed back and make sure that that's what their intention was in terms of communicating to make sure we've, you know, we haven't missed something really important to them or we've misinterpreted, which can happen quite easily through our different worldviews. Yeah. And being clear at the beginning about any engagement, you know, what are we going to do with this? We're doing it for a purpose rather than just, you know, taking up their time. So in this context where we'd be writing reports, we'll be presenting at conferences, we'll be writing papers probably and then thinking around how much they might want to be part of that as well. So in the past when we've done some stuff with young people, they've come with us to some of the conferences and presented the information as a way of sort of helping, you know, this is part of their journey, our journey and their journey together rather than it being something we're doing and they were the participants, whatever. So it's sort of more a partnership, I guess in that context.
[00:15:35] Speaker C: I think that would also help create that sense of safety, knowing what the parameters around things are. Like this is what we are doing, this is what we can do, this is what we can't do. And that sense checking along the way, it's not just one thing happens and we gather your feedback and then you don't hear anything about it afterwards.
I really like that kind of that you're keeping everybody informed along the way and as you said, even involving some young people in those sort of end processes of presenting what's been gathered as well.
[00:16:08] Speaker A: I mean in participatory sort of Research. There's commonly some sort of celebration process at the end too. Like this is the end and we've done this and there's sort of a finishing to that. And at that point sort of also saying, well, you know, this is perhaps the beginning of the next phase rather than it's not the end as well. I think that's probably one of the challenges is that the time frame of this sort of work is slow. And if you want to create change, using their voices to create change, there might be teenagers or adults by the time that change actually happens and sort of being real about that, the cogs, you know, even though, you know, it's really important and it's really important that to have, for them to have a voice, knowing that some things might not actually change within. In the time frame that they're of their childhood is both a challenge and important to. For them to know and understand. I guess. Yes.
[00:17:07] Speaker C: That they may be contributing to things that change for children in the future. And what about some of the benefits that you've seen in, you know, all of these processes? You're sort of describing some of the benefits for children and for services as well because we kind of established that there are those benefits for both in undertaking these processes.
[00:17:30] Speaker A: Children are always very chuffed that they're. Sometimes we've done little video things and had them on our program and stuff and you know, they're really pleased to be there and showing others about what they've done and that we're participating in. So it can be really empowering for young people to know that their voice matters and that their voice is heard, particularly in contexts where, you know, they often don't feel like they have much control and in many parts of their life they don't really. So yeah, that's important and that's a real great benefit. It benefits the relationship too, I guess, the engagement in that process. Because together we. We have better. We know more about what each other's thinking is in that context. But I'm also like. I think one of the biggest benefits is that they just have so many out of the box ideas that adults don't have already sort of not thought about that from that perspective. So it's the idea that they come with quite novel things, novel solutions as well. Always amazed at. At how they see things, I think. And that's a. Listening to children's voices is. Creates this sort of energy I guess in that space that perhaps can lose sight of if once you've become old.
[00:18:56] Speaker C: Yeah, I love that that I Often, yeah. I'm amazed when children will come up with something and you just think, oh, wow, I never. I didn't think about it that way or I didn't see it that way. And you're right. It's because, yeah, we grow up and then we have our own ideas as adults that children can have such wonderful ideas.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: I think we often underestimate how much children know and see about the things around them as well. So we often don't ask about all sorts of things for children because we don't think that they will have seen or known or understood that. So I think we. Yeah, it's sort of a general thing that we're sort of. We're expecting them not to understand things. And I think if you take the time to listen, you're often quite amazed by how much they have gathered along the way.
[00:19:47] Speaker C: Yeah, it's moving away from some of those traditional ideas of children, perhaps, as being passive or not knowledgeable and acknowledging that they can be quite active and knowledgeable and have things that we don't even think of. And what about for yourself as a practitioner, how does exploring children's voice enrich your work?
[00:20:09] Speaker A: I find it invigorating, I think. I think because of the, you know, the enjoyment of ink gathering and working together. There's. It really makes it feel like it's more important as well. And the idea that I have, I'm carrying something important and the honoring of their voices is something that I really want to be careful of and to hold gently in that space. So, yeah, I guess it makes it feel more important from that perspective. But I think it's. For me, it's like, you know, it gives me new energy. It's new ideas. It's sort of new ways of seeing, which has been very important.
[00:20:51] Speaker C: Yeah, that's fantastic. And you mentioned challenges before or a particular challenge. And I know that, yeah, this isn't just something that just happens. We don't embark on these processes and it all goes smoothly. So what are some of the challenges that you've come up against and how have you overcome them as well?
[00:21:13] Speaker A: Yes, I think one, the biggest challenge is time and space. It takes a long time to work because you need to do things relationally. You can't just give them a piece of paper and you need to do things sort of through activity.
And so therefore, it can feel like, you know, that's going to take a long time. You know, you can get them to fill in things, but often the pearls of wisdom happen, whereas they give in the form and they tell you all these other things but they haven't written it down. So the idea of instead of doing evaluations at the end of a eight week program, we try to gather them a bit more spontaneously throughout so you can actually hear when they're thinking about that issue rather than sort of eight weeks later when they've forgotten what it was that you actually did.
So structuring in evaluation as you go. I think the language and conceptual thinking, again this is something that often we underestimate what children can do. It can be hard to really rethink things from a different perspective if you've got a. If you want to know something about something that's conceptually a bit challenging. So trying to re languaging and that's where I think if you've got some children in your world that you can trial things with is. Can be really quite helpful because it can help you with know whether you've got a gist of what it actually is. You know, you've been able to language it in a way that means that they can understand. Attention span is a challenge for.
For this work as well. And so needing to sort of have enough options, lots of different ideas so that you can sort of. Let's try something else and go along that. So yeah, flexibility, I think that's the other thing is that that requires you to be quite flexible as well. Yeah. And I think the age differences and what children can think and do and express at different ages is it can be a real challenge for this sort of work as well. So gearing it around sort of primary school. But that might mean that it's a bit not sort of deep enough for a teenager and too hard for a toddler. So you're sort of trying to sort of work out how you get a whole age range in that sort of context. Yeah.
[00:23:39] Speaker C: So all really important things to be thinking about that may come up for practitioners and services who want to try doing a bit more of this. And I wanted to ask you related to that around, what are some common things that maybe get missed when people sort of start these processes or perhaps even things that have popped up that surprised you that you were like, oh, I didn't think of that before we started this.
[00:24:05] Speaker A: One of the things that's really important to hold in mind is that children give you information in a context and you need to sort of make sure you understand or keep that context as you're. As it's going forward. And it's important to honor that perspective as well. And making sure that you understand the perspectives that they've come from, honor the world that they're giving it from in that way as well. And because often in this sort of work, things get sort of collected together as if they're sort of context irrelevant. And I think it's sort of just important to hold, hold that in mind, the assumption that you should just be able to engage and ask questions and not do the relationship stuff first. You might have to do a few takes to be able to actually get an answer to the things that you're actually wanting answered. Because the first time might be just, you know, establishing safety and comfort enough for them to be able to say hello to you next time. And then I guess that thing around making sure you're road testing the questions or the conceptual things, would this actually work? And you know, sometimes we do an activity and it sort of ends up with bedlam and you think, right, well, I won't be doing that again.
It's, there's a bit more, I guess that sort of idea of having time, nice time, you know, little capsules that will do this then or do that then I want to, has to be sort of a bit more flexible in that way, which can feel a bit less rigorous or a bit less sort of uniform in that way as well.
[00:25:44] Speaker C: So what about for the practitioners who might be listening, who are keen to start doing a bit more of this in their work or in their service?
What advice would you have about where they can start?
[00:25:57] Speaker A: I think probably starting by noticing where children are, where do they come, where do you see them in the service and what sort of spaces is that and how are they communicating in that space.
Often people don't notice children, they, they come as sort of extras within an adult focused service, for instance, and being alert to sort of where are the opportunities? How can you start engaging? Because I think it's always best to start where they're at. But the other thing is to just then have a go. Starting with relationship is always important and then from there, you know, it can lead you in all sorts of places. But that engagement has to be relational as your sort of other starting point. So noticing first and then relational, starting with building relationships and working out sort of how do you engage on their, on their level, on their, on their terms, I guess, rather than our terms, but also just to give it a go because, I mean, you'll get clear feedback if you're doing the wrong thing.
Sometimes services can make it pretty hard for children to feel like they can say what they think. But you might get it through non verbal tears instead.
Children just don't choose not to engage if they don't feel comfortable in that space. So. Yeah, but there could be things like, you know, having a space in the waiting room that has something which pictures or opportunities for children to sort of leave their opinions or suggestion boxes or you know, that they could draw pictures or they could write something on a book, on a whiteboard or something which might be a. Yeah. Thinking about what you could. Might be able to do easily that in. In spaces where children already are as well about something that matters to them is also thinking very clearly about whether this matters to them or whether that actually matters to you.
So working out how we probably shouldn't really be doing stuff with children that only matters to us and doesn't matter to them and so making sure that we're understanding them enough to know what matters to them, I guess as well.
[00:28:14] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's a really important point because going back to what we spoke about earlier around there being benefits for children and benefits for services but you know, weighing an up and you may see a benefit for your practice or for your service. But yeah, does that matter for children as well? And making sure that we're not sort of outweighing our priority and by doing something that doesn't necessarily matter for children
[00:28:41] Speaker A: as well, which I guess comes back to safety and comes back to choice. If it feels transactional to them and like you're just taking things from them, then they'll choose not to give you the information.
I think.
[00:28:54] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a really important point around. Yeah. Transactional and how that. How it feels for children and young people to be asked for their feedback and yeah. Being really mindful of their experience.
Before we finish up, is there anything else that you wanted to add or any final message that you have?
[00:29:15] Speaker A: Only that you should have a go and it's lots of fun that I love working with children. I think they're. Yeah. There's so many new insights that you gain from gathering as well as energy and enthusiasm and seeing the world differently. So you should definitely try.
[00:29:34] Speaker C: Yeah. And I loved all the creative kind of ways that you described that you can engage and.
Yeah. Have fun with it as well. And be playful.
[00:29:44] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. It helps adults be playful too. But yeah, if it's not fun actually children won't do has to be fun to them. As someone used to say to me, if it's not fun for everyone, it's not fun at all.
[00:29:58] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:29:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:59] Speaker C: That's a great message to end on? I think so. Thank you so much, Becca, for joining us. It's been a pleasure to chat with you.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: Thank you, Nicole, for the opportunity.
[00:30:13] Speaker B: Thanks to our listeners for joining us us. We'll be back with a new episode next month. In the meantime, explore our catalogue of over 200 episodes and we hope you'll join us again soon.
[00:30:25] Speaker A: Visit our website
[email protected] au to access a range of resources to assist your practice.
Brought to you by the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health, led by Emerging Minds. The Centre is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing under the National Support for Child and Youth Mental Health Program.
