Participation in youth justice research: involving children in the telling of their own stories

Youth justice research, in trying to pursue positive outcomes for children, has tended to neglect involving children as collaborators in meaningful participation (privileging adult-centric understandings). In England and Wales, ‘Child First’ justice has become the ‘strategic approach and central guiding principle’, a central tenet of which is collaboration with children to mobilise progressive, child-centric approaches. To extend this imperative from practice into research, we put forward an innovative research methodology centred around a Project Reference Group. This group, populated entirely by justice-experienced children, embeds them within all aspects of the research process, from shaping research questions and guiding data analysis, to final dissemination of findings, using a range of creative methods to facilitate their honest and effective collaboration. This ensures a child- rather than adult-centric understanding of empirical data, providing a transferable model for other researchers to adopt, thereby potentially facilitating better child-centred and child-generated research going forward.