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The research reported here forms part of a study of children’s participation in children in care reviews and decision making in one local authority in England. The purpose of this paper is to outline the views of 11 social workers and 8 Independent Reviewing Officers (IROs) and explores their perceptions of children’s participation in reviews. The paper considers the barriers to young people participating meaningfully in decision making and how practice could be improved in this vital area so that children’s voices are more clearly heard and when possible acted upon by professionals.

The data reported here derive from a qualitative cross-sectional study in one English local authority. The entire study involved interviewing children in care, IROs, social workers and senior managers about young people’s participation in their reviews. Findings from the interviews with young people and senior managers have been reported elsewhere (Diaz and Aylward, 2018; Diaz et al., 2018); this paper focusses on the interviews with social workers and IROs. Specifically, the authors were interested in gaining insight into their views about the following research questions: To what degree do children and young people meaningfully participate in reviews? What are the barriers to participation? What can be done to improve children and young people’s participation in reviews?

During this process seven themes were identified, five of which concerned barriers to effective participation and two which concerned factors that appeared to support effective participation. These are summarised below and explained further in the following sections. Barriers to effective participation: social workers and IROs’ high caseloads and ensuing time pressures; high turnover of social workers and inexperienced staff; lack of understanding and training of professionals in participation; children and young people’s negative experiences of reviews and consequent reticence in taking part; and structure and process of the review not being child-centred. Factors which assist participation: quality of the relationship between the child and professionals; and the child or young person chairing their own review meeting.

Although these findings reflect practice in one local authority, their consistency with other research in this area suggests that they are applicable more widely.

The practice of children chairing their own reviews was pioneered by The Children’s Society in North West England in the 1990s (Welsby, 1996), and has more recently been implemented with some success by IROs in Gloucestershire (see Thomas, 2015, p. 47). A key recommendation from this study would be for research to explore how this practice could be developed and embedded more widely. Previous research has noted the tension between the review being viewed as an administrative process and as a vehicle of participation (Pert et al., 2014). This study highlighted practitioner reservations about young people chairing their own reviews, but it also gave examples of how this had been done successfully and how it could improve children’s participation in decision making. At the very least, it is essential that young people play a role in deciding where the review is going to take place, when it will take place, who is going to be invited and what will be included on the agenda.

The paper highlights that in this Local Authority caseloads for social workers were very high and this, combined with a high turnover of staff and an inexperienced workforce, meant that children in care struggled to have a consistent social worker. This often meant that young people were not able to build up a positive working relationship with their social worker, which negatively impacted on their ability to play a meaningful role in decision making.

There have been very few recent studies that have considered professionals’ perspectives of children’s participation in key meetings and decision making, so that this provides a timely and worthwhile contribution to this important area of work.

There is a growing recognition that participation in ‘shadow’ structures such as youth councils, forums and parliaments does not meet all of young people’s needs for action and engagement, and a growing emphasis on finding and recognising opportunities for young people to move out of these structures and initiate their own forms of democratic action for change. This chapter, co-written by academics and young researchers recruited from a youth council, tells the story of an action research project set up under the auspices of PARTISPACE which aimed to learn about the dynamics of self-initiated and autonomous youth participation beyond the confines of formalised youth participation structures. In this chapter, the authors explain what we all brought to the project, reflect from different perspectives on the process we went through, the challenges we encountered, the outcomes we achieved, and make sense of what we, collectively and individually, learned from the experience about different processes of participation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore twentieth century sportscapes and their role in the development of urban arenas as places of sport.

Utilizing frame theory and sport business history scholarship, the author examines entrepreneurs' development of six‐day bicycle races at Madison Square Garden. The main primary sources include autobiographies, morgue files, and newspapers.

In this paper, it is argued that entrepreneurs' shaping and marketing of six‐day races and their sportscapes resulted in a popular sporting spectacle and helped to promote arenas as spaces and places of sport.

The paper demonstrates the process and development of “frame management” in urban arenas and their transition to spaces and places of sport. By exploring six‐day bicycle races at Madison Square Garden, the paper shows the importance of a now‐forgotten cultural event to the development of the multi‐billion dollar sport industry and to one of the world's most iconic arenas. The paper adds to scholarship on bicycle racing and marketing history, as well as the historiography of the sport industry.

For over 100 years biomedical psychiatry has dominated the way people throughout the western world understand their sadness and distress, despite the lack of empirical evidence that distress has a biological basis. Now, the interests of the global pharmaceutical industry and trans‐national professional elites such as the World Health Organisation and the World Psychiatric Association are extending these biomedical accounts across the globe. This paper briefly describes biomedical psychiatry and its origins before considering how this project is closely aligned to the interests of the pharmaceutical industry. It ends with a call for a new agenda in mental health, driven by the concerns and interests of ordinary people in local communities, and an outline of recent developments in Britain and elsewhere that illustrate this challenge to the biomedical hegemony.

The Sanitary Committee of a certain County Council, strong with the strength of recent creation, have lately been animated by a desire to distinguish themselves in some way, and, proceeding along the lines of least resistance, they appear to have selected the Public Analyst as the most suitable object for attack. The charge against this unfortunate official was not that he is incompetent, or that he had been in any way negligent of his duties as prescribed by Act of Parliament, but simply and solely that he has the temerity to reside in London, which city is distant by a certain number of miles from the much favoured district controlled by the County Council aforesaid. The committee were favoured in their deliberations by the assistance of no less an authority than the “Principal” of a local “Technical School”;—and who could be more capable than he to express an opinion upon so simple a matter? This eminent exponent of scientific truths, after due and proper consideration, is reported to have delivered himself of the opinion that “scientifically it would be desirable that the analyst should reside in the district, as the delay occasioned by the sending of samples of water to London is liable to produce a misleading effect upon an analysis.” Apparently appalled by the contemplation of such possibilities, and strengthened by another expression of opinion to the effect that there were as “good men” in the district as in London, the committee resolved to recommend the County Council to determine the existing arrangement with the Public Analyst, and to appoint a “local analyst for all purposes.” Thus, the only objection which could be urged to the employment of a Public Analyst resident in London was the ridiculous one that the composition of a sample of water was likely to seriously alter during the period of its transit to London, and this contention becomes still more absurd when it is remembered that the examination of water samples is no part of the official duty of a Public Analyst. The employment of local scientific talent may be very proper when the object to be attained is simply the more or less imperfect instruction of the rising generation in the rudiments of what passes in this country for “technical education”; but the work of the Public Analyst is serious and responsible, and cannot be lightly undertaken by every person who may be acquainted with some of the uses of a test‐tube. The worthy members of this committee may find to their cost, as other committees have found before them, that persons possessing the requisite knowledge and experience are not necessarily indigenous to their district. Supposing that the County Council adopts the recommendation, the aspirations of the committee may even then be strangled in their infancy, as the Local Government Board will want to know all about the matter, and the committee will have to give serious and valid reasons in support of their case.