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Since 2016, researchers at the BC Injury Research and Prevention Unit (BCIRPU) have undertaken a series of projects that empower children to take initiative in advocating for safety in their communities.
Known collectively as the Voices of Children and Youth (VOICES), these projects explore how placing children at the centre of information-gathering and decision-making can inform community injury prevention policy and practice improvements.
Each VOICES project has been different, but a few key elements remain the same:
“The overarching theme of VOICES is to actually let kids voice their thoughts and feelings about safety and injury prevention without the scholar or adult getting in the way, or overshadowing their voices,” said Dr. Ian Pike, lead researcher on each of the studies.
Read about each of the VOICES projects below.
VOICES is about providing kids the opportunity to indicate their levels of comfort, thrill-seeking, and perceptions of safe and unsafe places, and then asking them, "What would you like to do about it?" —Dr. Michelle Bauer, BCIRPU Research Associate
This project, which took place in 2013/2014, focused on road safety and child passenger safety, and was the initial First Nations community to pilot the VOICES approach. Children moved around their community, capturing images and narrative specific to pedestrian and child safety in the pick-up and drop-off zone outside of their child care centre. A final report was prepared for the use of the Tsleil-Waututh nation and child care centre administrators.
The research team established relationships with Tsleil-Waututh community members over the course of a year prior to the study. Under OCAP principles, a publication was produced and approved in partnership with Tsleil-Waututh reviewing community interventions to improve Aboriginal child passenger safety.
In 2016, the City of New Westminster released a Child and Youth Friendly Community (CYFC) Strategy, which aimed to demonstrate the city’s efforts towards being child- and family-friendly.
Contrary to usual practice, in 2017 PhD student Desiree Wilson and members of the BCIRPU opted to ask children directly about what they thought were child-friendly spaces in the city. The team partnered with a local school and engaged 51 students 11-to-13-years-old, giving them the opportunity and agency to lead the conversation about their own safety.
Children documented their daily journeys to and from school, as well as the places where they played. Cameras in hand, they captured what they believed was making New Westminster more or less child-friendly. Using these images, the children identified a number of key locations they found to be problematic. They then prepared and presented their findings to the New Westminster Mayor and City Council, resulting in the implementation of safety improvements for children and youth.
This experience gave children the agency to represent themselves, fostering skills in critical observation, research, and presentation, enabling policies to reflect the voices for whom they are made.
In 2020, this project was published in the Routledge Handbook of Designing Spaces for Young People, a resource guide for researchers, design and planning professionals, community leaders, and youth advocates. It outlines how to increase young people’s access to, and use of, public spaces, as well as their role in design and decision-making processes.
“It is important not only to involve children in consultation processes, but also for decision-makers to take children’s perspectives and ideas seriously when planning and designing cities,” said Wilson in 2020.
In 2018, the BCIRPU had the opportunity to work with the Akwesasne Mohawk community to involve the Nation’s children in finding ways to improve safety and prevent injuries. Located on the St. Lawrence River on the border of Ontario and New York state, Akwesasne Mohawk community is comprised of three areas. This iteration of the VOICES project employed similar methods, including PPM, but was adapted by Indigenous leaders and youth to better suit the cultural practice of storytelling. The children who participated in the study shared their observations with the Grand Chief, Chiefs, and Councils of Akwesasne. This resulted in a plan to address the issues identified, including funding for the immediate implementation of a safer dock, diving board, and swimming area.
The youth of the Hupačasath First Nation, located on Vancouver Island, adapted PPM to a video format. This project ran from 2017 to 2019. This resulted in the creation of short, PSA-style videos to raise awareness about their safety concerns in their community, particularly at the community spiritual grounds at Sproat Lake. The videos were used to advocate for grant funding applications, which ultimately enabled safety equipment and improvements to be made at the lake’s spiritual grounds. A final report was prepared for the Hupačasath community.
As part of her postdoctoral fellowship research at BCIRPU, current Research Associate Dr. Michelle Bauer applied the VOICES methods with children aged 9 to 13 who lived in low to mid-income neighbourhoods in Vancouver, and who attended a summer camp.
The project took place over a two-week period in 2021, during which children were observed, participated in unstructured photo-elicitation interviews, and engaged in an adapted version of PPM. The study showed that children actively assess their play environments and their own abilities to interact with these environments—this is done in terms of the likelihood of receiving an injury as well as the severity of a potential injury. Children had a strong desire to have both risk-seeking and injury prevention components to their play, which was influenced by specific features of their play environments.
This iteration of VOICES was part of a partnership with the Society for Children & Youth of BC and Thriving Kids Care Society.
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The outcomes of these projects demonstrate that allowing for children to voice their own ideas and concerns about safety and injury prevention is an effective way to evaluate and improve how child-friendly a community can be. It is crucial to solicit these voices and for adults to enact the changes necessary to optimize the ways in which children learn, play, and grow.
“Risk-taking in and of itself is fun and allows learning and adds resilience, but what’s less talked about is risk-seeking behaviour, and how children are thinking about and seeking challenging environments or features because it’s more fun than ‘safe’ or typical places for play,” said Dr. Bauer.
“VOICES is about providing kids the opportunity to indicate their levels of comfort, thrill-seeking, and perceptions of safe and unsafe places, and then asking them, ‘What would you like to do about it?’”
Publications related to the VOICES Projects:
The BC Injury Research and Prevention Unit is a leader in the production and transfer of injury prevention knowledge and the integration of evidence-based injury prevention practices in the daily lives of those at risk, those who care for them, and those with a mandate for public health and safety in British Columbia.
F508 – 4480 Oak St.
Vancouver, BC, V6H 3V4
Email: bcinjury@bcchr.ca
