Learning about children’s partecipation in practice. Commentary

The commentary recalls the debate on youth and participation in the last decades. One of the biggest challenges for promoting children’s and young people’s partecipation is connected to the concept of ‘participation’ itself. It is attractively all-encompassing, but at the same time far too bland. The commentary deals with the problematic balance between protection and participation, or in other words between an approach reflecting a sort of paternalism (nurturance orientation) and another one characterised by the promotion of autonomy (self-determination orientation), and refers in particular to disabled children’s participation (or lack of it) and to the condition of young people with mental health problems in self-help groups.