Including children's voices in a multiple stakeholder study on a community-wide approach to improving quality in early years settings

Abstract

This article will explore the use of visual participatory research methods with young children. These methods have been utilized to add young children's voices to research on the impact of a quality improvement strategy in an early years’ settings involved in a community-based prevention and early intervention programme. The main objective of the intervention programme is to measurably improve the lives of children (pre-birth to six years) and families through universal and targeted services in an urban community which experiences high levels of socio-economic deprivation. Children were offered the opportunity to share their views with the researchers through a variety of participatory rights-based approaches including drawing, photo-elicitation, photography, and conversations. Adding children's voices to the programme evaluation can help us to understand children's experiences and produces better policy and better services and also to interrogate the adult-centric quantitative data and adult perspectives generated in the ongoing project evaluation.