What is Participation?
The ladder of Participation ( source: “Ladder of Children’s Participation, Hart, R: 1992 ) is a diagram to help bring a
critical perspective to children and young people’s participation and can be used to act as a reference and reflection
point for professionals. It enables us to re-think how we work with young people when it comes to participatory
activities, and to gain clarity around what we are asking them to do. It can be used as a way of motivating ourselves
to improve the quality of our engagement and to self- assess when we are being “manipulative or tokenistic”. It also
encourages us to consider that young people participate in different ways, and for some, just walking through the
door is a major step. Colleagues and young people can use the ladder as a tool to measure the degrees of participation,
and to reflect on ways that we may disempower children or employ methods that are tokenistic or manipulative.
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