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Over recent years, the issue of engaging with children and involving them in private law proceedings in order to afford them a ‘voice’ in their parents’ divorce, has developed considerable impetus (Sutherland, 2014). This reflects an empirically grounded awareness that this involvement is not only a right, but also that such participation can improve children’s skills and self-esteem, inform decision-making and, as such, promote children’s safety and welfare (Ewing, Hunter, Barlow & Smithson 2015; Powell & Smith, 2009). Indeed, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child explicitly calls for children to be granted the right to participate in legal proceedings that affect them. Despite this legal obligation and an evolving consensus that recognizes children as social and competent actors, this rhetoric has struggled to achieve translation into meaningful practice reality, particularly when decisions are being made about contact arrangements for children where there has been a prior history of gender based violence.
Methods
24 children and young people aged between four and twenty four years of age who engaged in three separate qualitative research projects in Ireland between 2009 and 2015, participated in semi-structured individual, sibling and focused group interviews. Drawing on the narratives of those children and young people, this paper critically considers the manner in which they were involved in the decision-making process regarding post-separation contact with domestically abusive fathers and the extent to which their views were ascertained and their voices heard. All interviews relied on age-appropriate activity-based techniques, including vignettes, letters to an agony aunt that they were invited to respond to and art-based exercises.
Results
The children and young people in this current research concluded that their voices were ‘seldom heard and, if heard, usually discounted’ (Morrow, 1999, p. 154). Although it is claimed that children and their needs are the central consideration in the child contact debate, the findings from this research highlight that the decision-making processes in child contact reflect an implicit assumption that it is necessary to increase children and young people’s protection by limiting their involvement in that process.
Conclusions and Implications
This research concludes that any belief in the need to consult was negated by an assumption that this would further harm and distress those children. Inherent in this is the assumption of knowing, in the absence of any consultation with children, what is in their best interest. This assumption can be challenged by the weight of evidence from the narratives and testimonies of the children and young people who participated in this research. Their accounts highlight that, by according them agency in the contact process, they can feel empowered and recognized as the experts of their own lives and lived experiences. This paper concludes by raising the key question of how the child’s best interests can be served if the child’s views are not sought, heard or considered.