Embedding children’s participation in child protection: The burden of decision making and the potential of complexity theory

Incorporating children’s voices into institutional decision making is considered a challenge despite the widespread policy imperative to do so. This paper problematises organisational management approaches that struggle to lead to children’s participation in favour of complexity theory. It applies complexity theory to decision making in an Australian child protection system to demonstrate the potential value of a systems approach in normalising child participation. Decision makers indicate that determining child safety is burdensome and as a core process influences their engagement with children. There are three complications evident: the extensive scope and scale of decisions; the gravity of the decisions; and the emotional toll of those decisions. An organisational management approach perceives these complications to be intensified if children’s voices are added to the decision-making process and there is a resultant sense of ambivalence around the uptake of children’s participation.