Children's Rights in Play

Children’s rights and their meaningful implementation in early childhood practices is complex and multi-layered. Supporting children to understand their rights and educators to recognise rights is a process.  Key to realising children’s rights in their everyday lives is their right to be heard, their right to have a say and their views to be taken seriously on matters that are important to them.  Children express their views in a variety of ways and key to listening is the ability to harness children’s preferred modes of expression including verbal and non-verbal means as well as taking account of silences and dissenting voices.  Our research focuses on children’s rights and empowerment.  Through projects we work with children and educators to understand how children’s lives are understood, what influences their well-being and the ways in which educators can support children and families.