Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
draft 27.9.04 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
 
 
 
 
Celia Brackenridge, Celia Brackenridge Ltd., Hon. Visiting Professor, 
Centre for Applied Childhood Studies, Huddersfield University, 
 
 
 
 
Contact details: 
Coalheughead Cottage, 
Harburn, 
By West Calder, 
West Lothian 
EH55 8RT, 
Scotland. 
Tel: 01506 873768 
e.mail: celia.brackenridge@btopenworld.com
 
 
 
 
Note: This article is based on a keynote speech to the annual conference of the Leisure 
Studies Association, Leeds Metropolitan University, July 2004. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
Silent voices: Consulting with children in sport 
 
ABSTRACT 
 
Despite being outnumbered by the over 60s in the 2001 Census, the children and young 
people have assumed a central role in the UK political agenda and are protected by 
several international statutes and directives. At the same time, leisure and sport 
researchers have been responsive to the political imperative for stakeholder consultation 
that characterises modern leisure policy. Focus groups, surveys and other tools of the 
social researcher’s trade have been used extensively in research that serves the needs of 
leisure industry clients across the public, private and not-for-profit sectors. Yet, arguably, 
the opinions of children and young people have not been seriously taken into account in 
the changes to policy and practice that result from such research. Young peoples’ patterns 
of leisure consumption, highly influenced by commercial cultural forms, can either 
confirm or, often, contradict the rational recreation messages promulgated by 
government. The introduction of national standards for child protection in sport (CPSU, 
2003) is, arguably, a manifestation of the policy fixation on youth and child welfare in 
public leisure provision that accommodates adults’ own anxieties about uncertainty, 
fragmentation and discontinuity in modern life. This paper draws on the experience of 
researching child protection and young peoples’ welfare in sport. It considers the research 
design, ethics and consent challenges involved and critically assesses clients’ and 
researchers’ effectiveness in giving voice to this major stakeholder group. It is argued 
that consultation is all-too-easily used as a mask for continuing paternalism by those for 
whom radical change would threaten their power base. 
 
 
 
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Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
 
 This article addresses the issue of giving voice to children and young people and 
explores, in particular, some of the opportunities for and challenges of including young 
people in the sport research and policy process. It begins by reviewing the place of 
children and young people in the demographic and political landscape, revisiting the raft 
of legislative and other guidance that asserts their civil and human rights, and asks 
whether, and to what extent, children’s rights are yet given expression within sport.  
 Next, the article examines the place of stakeholder consultation in leisure research 
and policy. Using a model of youth participation and some general examples of 
consultative initiatives, it is argued that sport and leisure agencies lag behind other 
services in upholding the rights of the young to be consulted. Differing discourses of 
‘participation’ are uncovered, both within and outwith sport, that inhibit children and 
young people’s proper engagement in shaping their own sport and leisure experiences.  
 Finally, using a particular research project on young people’s involvement in 
football in England, the research design, ethical and operational challenges involved in 
trying to give voice to children and young people are discussed. Notwithstanding these 
challenges, and the limitations of rights discourses, it is posited that that consultation is 
all-too-easily used as a mask for continuing paternalism by those who make and deliver 
sports policy because radical change would threaten their power base. Suggestions for 
reorienting the definition of participation are offered as is a model of what sport could 
look like if children in sport were properly given voice. 
 
CHILDHOODS AND CHILDREN’S RIGHTS 
 Childhood is socially constructed and usually set against constructions of 
adulthood and the family. We are constantly confronted by strong images of childhood of 
the ‘devils v. angels’ sort that reinforce these constructions. The ‘devil construction’, 
which emerged on the back of escalating moral panics about youth crime and disorder, 
especially after the death of James Bulger, has led to calls for tougher policies on youth 
offending: the ‘angel construction’ developed from welfarism and ‘adultism’ (Scraton, 
1997), has led to strongly interventionist models of child welfare and protection. So, we 
have what Scraton (1997, p. ix) calls a “paradoxical fusion of care, control and contempt” 
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Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
rooted in Victorian philanthropy (see Table 1). Both constructions have led to state 
intervention and regulation of childhood, and both bolster paternalistic attitudes to 
children as subjects.  
[Insert Table 1 about here - Perspectives on childhood] 
 
 We have reached a point where perceived risk (of child abuse and molestation) 
leads to perceived safety (from such abuses) being equated with ‘adults know best’, 
described by some as the ‘protectionist perspective’ (Prescott and Hartill, 2004) and 
others as ‘ethical socialism’ (Coppock, 1997). Just as happened with women as leisure 
consumers in the 1970s and 1980s, these dominant social constructions of childhood 
render children an homogeneous or undifferentiated group, which fails to take account of 
the many social and demographic factors that are now so readily acknowledged as 
influencing our (adult) lives.  
 The modern or ‘new’ sociology of childhood allows us to challenge this idea and, 
instead, to view children as heterogeneous, active agents with individual lived 
experiences. Seeing children as people rather than small (and lesser) adults allows us to 
break away from the protectionist approach towards more of a rights-based approach or 
what Scraton and Haydon (2002) call ‘positive rights’ or welfare-based rights. This 
perspective, among other things, regards children as active agents of social change, co-
constructors of knowledge, and in power relations with adults rather than being subject to 
power of adults. In short, it shifts us from a sociology of childhood to one for childhood 
(Prescott and Hartill, 2004).   
 The real potential of a positive rights-based welfare approach is its challenge to 
 construction of children as innocent, vulnerable and weak through promoting their 
 right to information, expression of views and their participation in decision-
 making.    
       (Scraton and Haydon, 2002, p. 325) 
 
 Despite being outnumbered by the over 60s for the first time in the 2001 Census 
(www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/demographic_uk.asp accessed 10.6.04), children and 
young people have today assumed a central role in the UK political agenda and are now 
protected by several international statutes and directives.1 The adoption of the United 
Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989 (ratified by the UK in 1991) gave 
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Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
people under 18 years of age children a full set of human rights for the first time. This 
point marked a crucial shift in child welfare from the traditional protectionist approach to 
the more dynamic, rights-based approach David (2001, p. 1). The Convention (almost) 
universalizes the obligation for States to implement children’s rights through legislative, 
financial, educational and other measures.2 These rights are wide ranging and include: 
non-discrimination (Article 2); freedom of expression and thought (Articles 13 and 14); 
association (Article 15); privacy (Article 16); access to appropriate information (Article 
17); and right to life, survival and development (Article 6).  
 In the UK, it is not uncommon for children’s rights to appear in public service 
charters, one recent example being the Scottish Executive’s The Charter: Protecting 
Children and Young People (2004a and 2004b). The work of the State in delivering the 
rights agenda for children has been complemented by work in a range of voluntary sector 
agencies, notably through children’s charities such as Barnados, the National Society for 
the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), the National Children’s Home (NCH), 
and many more. A good international example is Right to Play (formerly Olympic Aid) 
(www.righttoplay.com/overview.asp), a non-governmental organisation that grew out of 
the legacy of the Lillehammer Winter Olympics. It is committed to sport for development 
with disadvantaged children and runs programmes with the United Nations, UNICEF, the 
World Health Organisation and the International Labour Organisation, among others.  
 Whether children’s rights have been addressed adequately in youth sport is a point 
of debate. David, for example, argues that that:  
 … the promotion and protection of human rights of young athletes in the context 
 of competitive sport has received almost no recognition and has rarely been 
 discussed and addressed … despite the existence of a wealth of academic 
 literature and knowledge on the impact of sport on children … Human rights and 
 sports are historically two fields which have had only very restricted interaction.   
 
He sets out five possible sport situations that, in addition to the usual raft of 
discriminations based on sex, race, class and ability, can threaten the physical and mental 
integrity of children: 
 1) involvement in intensive early training (violation of Article 19 – protection 
 from child abuse and all forms of violence, and Article 32 – protection from 
 economic exploitation)  
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Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
2) sexual exploitation (violation of Article 19 – protection from sexual abuse and 
 violence) 
 3) doping (violation of Articles 24 and 33 – right to health and protection from 
 drugs) 
 4) buying, selling and transfers (violation of Article 32 – economic exploitation – 
 and Article 35 – protection from sale and trafficking) 
 5) restrictions on education because of involvement in sport (violation of Article 
 28 – right to education) 
 At the same time as David and others are turning their attention to the possible 
violations of rights that occur within sport, sport is being prescribed for its health, social 
and community development benefits through both state programmes, such as those to 
tackle obesity and urban crime (Physical Activity Task Force, 2003; Allison, 1999; 
Nichols 2004). Whilst private investment in ‘nurturing’ youth soccer players as 
commodities, for example, is certainly not consistent with children’s own desires to be 
left alone to have fun, the exhortation for physical activity and healthy living is perhaps 
the major example of a public sector rational recreation message today. Safe sex is 
another. Young peoples’ patterns of leisure consumption, which are strongly influenced 
by commercial cultural forms, sometimes confirm but often contradict these rational 
recreation messages promulgated by government. But, here again, ‘adultism’ rules, for 
these are the lifestyles and activity patterns deemed by others to be appropriate and ‘in 
the child’s best interests’. 
 Donnelly (1997) used an analysis of the child labour laws in Canada in his 
critique of youth sports and a similar exercise in the UK would readily throw up similar 
issues. The Children and Young Persons’ Act 1933, for example, controls the age at 
which children may start paid work, the number of hours they may work and the sorts of 
jobs they may do (Morgan, undated). A child of school age cannot work, for example, 
before 7am of after 7pm. Children also cannot work for more than two hours on a school 
weekday or more than one hour before schools starts, for more than two hours on any 
Sunday or for more than 8 hours on Saturdays. Given the intensity of training and 
competition hours for some children in some sports these seem like close parallels with 
labour exploitation in children’s sport uncovered in Canada.  
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Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
After almost two decades of lobbying and cajoling, England now has a 
functioning, dedicated Child Protection in Sport Unit (CPSU) inside its largest child 
welfare charity, the NSPCC, co-funded by them and Sport England 
(www.thecpsue.org.co.uk). Why, and why now? And what does this say about a child-
centred view of life in England?  The rapid incursion of the NSPCC into the previously 
voluntary domain of sport, and the tilt away from permissive towards prescriptive child 
protection in English governing bodies, may well reflect exaggerated welfarist concerns. 
The introduction of both guidance on and national standards for child protection in sport 
(CPSU, 2002, 2003) is, arguably, a manifestation of the policy fixation on youth and 
child welfare in public leisure provision that accommodates adults’ own anxieties about 
uncertainty, fragmentation and discontinuity in modern life. Sport sociologists have 
known for decades that the inherent conservatism of sport and sportspeople acts as a 
brake on social change. Perhaps the ideological ‘purity’ of sport (more accurately an 
ideological vacuum) reflects a reluctance to change? Perhaps we English adults suffer 
from a kind of ‘double vision’, looking at children now but seeing them as we were and 
therefore being unwilling to adopt or adapt to their own wishes? 
 
DISCOURSES OF PARTICIPATION – THE LEISURE LAG 
 The principle that young people should participate in decision-making and be 
consulted about political processes is enshrined in Article 12 of the UN Convention on 
the Rights of the Child (1989) states that every child who is capable of forming his/her 
own views has “the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, 
the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of 
the child”.  
 In the UK, there are many examples of consultation initiatives across the public 
and voluntary sectors. Government Departments are now required to write and implement 
Action Plans for the involvement of children and young people in their work. In 2001 the 
Children and Young People’s Unit (CYPU) of the Department for Education and Skills 
(DfES) published Learning to Listen: Core Principles for the Involvement of Children 
and Young People. Based on the underpinning of the UN Convention, this document 
offers advice and examples of good practice for the involvement of children and young 
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Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
people in the planning, delivery and evaluation of government policies and services. The 
Quality Protects (DoH programme)3 (Sinclair and Franklin, 2000), Children’s Funds, 
schools councils, youth councils and the UK Youth Parliament 
www.ukyouthparliament.org.uk/4655/46854.html accessed 8.6.04) all offers avenues for 
children and young people to express their views on various services.   
 Together with Investing in Children (a County Durham partnership), the National 
Children’s Bureau (NCB) has promoted a number of events focussed on young people’s 
participation in decision making (NCB, 2001) and Save the Children 
(www.savethechildren.org.uk) has produced a guide entitled Children are Service Users 
Too: A guide to consulting children and young people (2002). The University of Essex 
hosts the The Children’s Legal Centre (CLC, www.childrenslegalcentre.com), a charity 
promoting information about children and legal issues, which produces a range of 
materials on consulting children, confidentiality, ages of consent and other topics of 
relevance to sport and leisure.  The National Children’s Bureau (NCB) has also published 
a number of documents exploring children’s rights and children’s views. 4  
 Although the shift to private funding has de-emphasised welfare considerations in 
leisure service delivery (Coalter, 1998), the requirements of Best Value (HMSO, 1999) 
have also promoted greater transparency in service allocation methods and greater 
community group advocacy through a range of consultation techniques (Howell and 
McNamee, 2003, p. 20). The consultation directive is delivered through, for example, 
citizens’ panels and community surveys that yield quantitative and qualitative 
information from service users. Leisure and sport researchers have been responsive to 
this political imperative for stakeholder consultation, also using focus groups, surveys 
and other tools of the social researcher’s trade in their research across the public, private 
and not-for-profit sectors. But where do children and young people feature within this 
consultation fest?  
 According to Precilla Alderson (2004, p. 15) “We try to seal [children] into a risk-
free world … To be ‘well-looked after’ is to be constantly under adult care”.  In her view, 
adults underestimate children’s capabilities which results in consultation being a charade 
or just ‘talking shop’. She is critical of the UK government’s new Children Bill for 
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Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
positing that all children are ‘at risk’ (the protectionist perspective) and should be 
tracked. She suggests that: 
Adults would not tolerate such an intrusion … Instead of using children as the 
proxy measure of a service, real consultation treats them as the measurers. 
 
Reading Alderson’s account of children’s absence in decision making reminds 
one of the medical notion of ‘patient compliance’ which is used to describe adherence to 
prescribed medications. She suggests that the most common method of assessing service 
effectiveness is whether “children appear quieter or more law-abiding”. Similarly, 
Whitaker’s (2002) account of treatment regimes for the mentally ill over the past few 
centuries – Mad in America – repeatedly points to patient compliance as a performance 
measure for asylums and hospitals. Perhaps we have something similar going on here 
with children – ‘child compliance’ – where children are being manipulated to consume 
without any consumer rights?  
 Challenging Alderson’s critique, Jessica Gold (The Guardian, April 22, 2004, 
p.25), asserts that we are in fact experiencing a “velvet revolution”. She records that in 
1998 around only 15% of primary schools had schools councils but that in 2004 as many 
as 70% do so. In the secondary sector, thousands of pupils attend training courses 
annually and over “20,000 copies of a handbook for schools councilors have been bought 
by schools”. Pupils are involved in a wide range of decisions within secondary school 
including building, curriculum and staffing issues. In Scotland and Wales, consultation 
with pupils is a statutory requirement. In England, all schools have received a DfES 
booklet entitled Working Together which asks for information about whether pupils have 
been consulted on curriculum, teaching and learning, target-setting, behaviour policy and 
staffing. Gold argues “This is not kid’s stuff”. 
 If Gold is right, then where is sport and leisure in this velvet revolution? The 
Sport England National Survey of Young People and Sport in 2002 found young people’s 
motivation to take part higher than it has been since 1994, with 7 out of 10 regarding 
themselves as a ‘sporty type person’ (Sport England, 2003). There are also now countless 
school and club-related initiatives focussed on sport programmes for youth, promoted 
through the Youth Sport Trust, governing bodies of sport, local authorities, schools and 
many others.5 Efforts to promote social inclusion have also generated better chances for 
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Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
girls sport, children with disabilities and children from ethnic minorities than were in 
evidence ten or twenty years ago. Sport opportunities for young people are everywhere, 
then, but how many of them are genuinely consultative? 
 A report on children’s rights commissioned by the British Council (Hawtin and 
Wyse, 1997a, p. 3) criticised the development of the National Curriculum for using a 
“tokenistic’ consultation” and was especially critical of the failures to afford children 
rights to leisure and play. 
 The child’s right to play and recreation is not recognised in legislation … 
 Children’s own priorities often point to the importance they place on the arts, 
 leisure time and play. This importance … is supported by the UN Convention on 
 the Rights of the Child yet … play and recreation is (sic) often marginalised.  
       (Hawtin and Wyse, 1997a, p. 4) 
 
 The voice of the child in decision-making is often ignored … This perpetuates the 
 view of the child as the ‘property’ of adults, even if the adults view the child as 
 valuable and precious property.  
       (Hawtin and Wyse, 1997b, pp. 1-2) 
 
 The importance of leisure and recreation to young people emerged again in 
September 2003 when, following Lord Laming’s enquiry into the brutal death of Victoria 
Climbie, the government issued a Children’s Green Paper - Every Child Matters - which 
set out a consultation framework for improving welfare and protection outcomes for all 
children and families.  The main message that emerged from the consultative meetings 
with young people (around 750, mostly between 4 and 18 years old), was “the need to 
involve young people in decisions that affect their lives” 
(www.dfes.gov.uk/everychildmatters accessed 16.6.04).  The five major areas of concern 
identified in this exercise were: 
• Being healthy 
• Staying safe 
• Enjoying and achieving 
• Making a positive contribution 
• Economic well-being. 
 Leisure freedoms, facilities and leisure activities (often linked to learning) 
featured frequently in the children’s comments, just as they did when the National 
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Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
Children’s Bureau conducted a study to find out young people’s ideas and opinions 
(Tolley et al., 1998). At the same time as this consultative exercise, the government 
introduced The Children Bill (currently for England only) which is intended to provide a 
joined up framework for services affecting children – health, education, social services 
and the police - but which, interestingly for us, does not address the voluntary sector (The 
Guardian, 2004, www.society.guardian.co.uk/children/story/0,1074,1161971,00.html 
accessed 16.6.04). One of the results of this initiative is a Young People’s Fund with an 
initial budget of £200m. Other initiatives include Sure Start, intended to deliver multiple 
services through single centres in deprived neighbourhoods; the introduction of 
Children’s Services Directors and Children’s Trusts in every local authority; and, the 
development of a Sector Skills Council for Children and Young People’s Services. 
Despite leisure’s absence from The Children Bill agenda, ILAM (Ives, 2004, p. 1) argues 
that it offers leisure services an opportunity to “reinforce their contribution to health, 
social inclusion and educational achievement”. Leisure is also absent from Multi Agency 
Public Protection Panels (MAPPS) that have been established by government as joined-
up public safety mechanisms to protect against sex offenders. Is this another example of 
‘leisure blindness’, like gender blindness – leisure is always there but never noticed? 
 In our (sport and leisure) world, the term ‘participation’ refers to increasing the 
numbers of taking part in x or y activity – usually competitive sport or physical activity. 
In the world of social policy and welfare, however, it means refers to engagement in the 
political process and is an expression of the general rights referred to above. To this 
extent, then – and at the risk of perpetuating the myth of dualism - we engage in 
‘disembrained’ (rather than disembodied) participation. In short, we still appear to be 
more satisfied with increasing the number of participants (for which read players) but not 
their activity level (for which read politicisation).  
 ‘Driving up participation’, then, refers to getting people jumping about, not 
engaging them in critical reflection or review of the quality or type of service they 
receive. Indeed, Sport England’s new Excellence Framework (Sport England, 2004) 
identifies as the most important outcome for sport being “an increase in participation in 
sport and active recreation”. One of the stated objectives of the Excellence Framework is 
to provide a platform for an inspection service in sport should it be developed in the 
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Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
future. If so, sport should watch out, for perhaps Ofsport (or Offside?) is in the pipeline? 
If this transpires, then the fast-vanishing boundary between state and voluntary sector 
will disappear altogether. Indeed, although the Excellence Framework is explicitly aimed 
at local government agencies it states: 
 … the principles of good management are the same in any organisation whatever 
 its size or structure. The Excellence Framework is equally applicable to other 
 organisation such as National Governing Bodies … 
        (Sport England, 2004) 
 So, the National Framework for Excellence is intended also to cover other 
partners such as NGBs (for example through Whole Sport Plans), and thus to cross the 
public/voluntary divide. Importantly, user engagement and school or young people’s 
forums feature in this document (perhaps for the first time?) as a directive for sport and 
services. 
 
LISTENING v. HEARING 
 
 There is a need to distinguish between giving young people an opportunity to 
participate in decision making and giving them meaningful experiences of participation 
(Olle, 2002, p. 7). Consultation initiatives with young people include the UK Youth 
Parliament (www.ukyouthparliament.org.uk, accessed 08.6.04), and the Children and 
Young Peoples Unit.6 The Unit was set up by the Prime Minister in 2000 to coordinate 
services to young people. It recently commissioned an evaluation of participatory practice 
with children and young people (Kirby et al., 2003). The key findings were that 
organisations need to change in order to undertake meaningful and sustainable 
participation, that participation is a multi-layered and complex phenomenon, that it 
should apply to all areas of children’s lives and not just selective areas, that listening is a 
crucial prerequisite for bringing about change, that there are many social as well as 
personal benefits of participation, and that organisations need to adopt a clear rationale 
for developing participatory practice from a range of possible reasons.  
 The research report is accompanied by a Handbook to stimulate thinking on this 
topic in organisations and to help them to develop a more participatory culture. 
Throughout the research project, the research team was supported by and worked a 
Young Advisors Group and a Young Researchers Group. Case study groups for this 
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Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
research, which worked mainly with 12-16 year olds, were selected from an initial 
database of organisations that met three criteria: 
1. they had already involved children and young people 
2. they had listened to them and taken action as a result 
3. they had a degree of organisational commitment to participation and had attempted to 
evaluate their activity. 
How many sport groups would pass this initial screening?  
 The researchers identified three different ‘cultures of participation’ … 
¾ Consultation focussed organisations: these consult children and young people to 
inform services, policy and product development. 
 
¾ Participation focussed organisations: these involve young people in making 
decisions (as well as consultations) within participation activities that are time-
bound or context specific. Often a sample rather than all relevant children are 
involved. 
 
¾ Child/youth-focussed organisations: children and young people’s participation is 
central to these organisations’ practice and they establish a culture in which it is 
assumed that all children and young people will be listened to about all decisions 
that affect their lives. 
 
… and proposed ten principles for children and young people’s policies and services: 
 
¾ centred on the needs of the young person 
¾ high quality 
¾ family-orientated 
¾ equitable and non-discriminatory 
¾ inclusive 
¾ empowering 
¾ result-orientated and evidence-based 
¾ coherent in design and delivery 
¾ supportive and respectful 
¾ community-enhancing 
 
 Despite this sizeable shift towards participatory politics, I would argue that the 
opinions of children and young people have generally not been taken seriously into 
account in sport. This could be because either research and/or policy innovation is 
lacking. For example, other than some attitudinal and activity-related items, I could not 
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Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
find any evidence of a young people’s consultation in the 2002/third national survey of 
young people and sport (Sport England, 2003).  
 Adapting Hart’s ‘ladder of participation’ (1992), which had 8 stages, Shier (2001) 
has proposed a 5 stage model of participation (see Table 2) which moves from Stage 1 – 
where children are listened to without having an opportunity to express a view or be 
heard, to Stage 5 – where children share power and responsibility for decision-making. 
Shier suggests that organisations and individuals move through a process of ‘opening’ 
(showing an interest in young people participating), then ‘opportunity’ (giving skills and 
resources to young people), and finally ‘obligation’ in which participation by young 
people becomes embedded in policy and practice. If we apply this idea to sport 
organisations it becomes clear fairly quickly that they are well off the pace.  
[Insert Table 2 about here - Shier’s five levels of participation by young people] 
 Contrary to our adult fears, even very young children have astute judgement and 
are capable of expressing it. Consultation is not the norm in sport, however, and I would 
argue that sport is well behind other social provisions on this issue, not necessarily 
because of its failure to consult with children – although I think most schemes do not - 
but because of its failure to treat seriously the results of any such consultations. Why? 
Because the vested interests of those delivering youth sport would be undermined by 
listening to children’s voices – sport would not be ‘Sport’. This, then, is a form of 
paternalism verging on social control, based on false assumptions about the competence 
of young people.7 Social control is adeptly applied in youth sport where adults choose, 
organize, deliver and evaluate activities and programmes without inviting comments or 
contributions from those who consume them – children. 
 
CASE STUDY 
 
 The rest of this paper uses a case study to illustrate the research design, ethics and 
consent challenges faced by researcher/advocates who wish to develop consultative 
research with young people and to give them a voice in sport policy.  These issues have 
been fairly extensively addressed in educational and social policy research (Scraton, 
1997; McKechnie, 2002; Lewis et al., 2004; Fraser et al., 2004) but, I would argue, not 
very well addressed yet in sport or leisure research. 
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Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
 In 2001 the English Football Association commissioned a five year research 
project investigating the impact of the FA’s child protection strategy on the game.8 This 
was a massive task for the team of researchers but one which excited us enormously as it 
presented a rare opportunity to collect large scale, longitudinal, quantitative and 
qualitative data (Brackenridge et al., 2004). In 2002 and 2003, for example, we 
conducted just short of 500 interviews, over 50 club case studies and 14 internet surveys 
(see Table 3). (Sadly, the FA withdrew the funding for next three years of this project 
pleading lack of money.) 
[Insert Table 3 about here - The FA Child Protection in Football Research Project] 
 Despite a marked decline in the adult men’s game there has been a proliferation of 
children’s and youth soccer opportunities in recent years (refs.). But, as so often happens, 
sport is a late adopter of social trends. The shift to stakeholder politics, in particular, has 
occurred late in sport but is now embedded within the modernisation programme for 
NGBs (Deloitte Touche, 2003a and b). 
 I am as culpable as any other researcher in that my own work on child protection 
and welfare in sport has not engaged, in the main, with children themselves 
(Brackenridge, 2001). From the outset with the FA project – which took two years of 
work to secure the design, methods, ethical protocols and budgetary approvals – we 
determined that children and young people in the game should be primary stakeholders in 
the research. This accords with the FA’s own Charter for Quality (1997, p. 1) that says: 
 The central figure is … the player and his or her best interests. Attempting to 
 provide quality experiences for all young players at all levels is the overriding 
 principle. 
 
 We built in longitudinal stakeholder consultation as one of the major elements of 
the research design and, within this, children were a core group. We adopted a different 
approach for the under 12s and those 12 and above, using an internet survey for the latter 
but not the former, to compliment interviews with both age groups, and we also designed 
some tailored methods for work with under 12s which were subsequently refined and 
repeated in the second year. 
 Needless to say, the political and personal and sensitivity of this research for all 
concerned meant that we had a long list of issues to address when preparing the ethics 
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Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
protocols. Some of these were resolved by recourse to existing ethics guidance and some 
had to be developed from scratch. In addition to setting up informed, voluntary consent 
and parental consent systems, we therefore used a host of ‘What if?’ scenarios to 
anticipate difficulties such as a set of steps to follow should we uncover abuse during the 
fieldwork, a method of dealing with difficult gatekeepers (which proved invaluable), a 
response formula should the media intrude on our work, and so on. Occasional staff 
training and review events and a written A-Z guidelines booklet for the research team all 
helped to ensure uniformity of approach. 
 In the spirit of reflexivity, all researchers on this project were encouraged to keep 
a research diary, charting not just the facts but also their feelings as the work developed.  
This is something I now do as a matter of course with all research students and that I have 
found particularly helpful in the past with long-term projects (Brackenridge, 1999). These 
diaries were not required but some researchers volunteered them and I am grateful to one 
in particular – Claudi Cockburn – who has given consent for excerpts to be reproduced 
here.  
 I use these excerpts not because they necessarily reflect especially well or badly 
on the research but because they capture: first, the messiness of fieldwork with young 
people; secondly, the ethical complexities of such work; and, last but not least, the 
conflicts between the theoretical commitment to consultative processes and the logistical 
realities of fieldwork (otherwise known as the ‘buggeration’ factor!). They also reflect 
how knowledge about children and child ‘safety’ in sport is constructed and reinforced 
and how power relations between adults and children often work against, rather than for, 
the ‘interests of children’. 
 
Fieldnotes from Claudi Cockburn 2002 (with permission) 
 
Excerpt one – junior girls club tournament:  
 
 [8.6.02] I’m on location. It’s a 5 a-side tournament for … under 14s and under 
 12s – all female. Serious looking referee all in black. Loud manager on the 
 sidelines - or are they parents? Good strong girls playing well in shin pads and 
 boots. Not quite sure how to hold the tape recorder as we’ll be standing and I 
 want to write notes too! I’ve just seen a female manager smoking as she gives her 
 pre-match talk … There was an interesting incident where the parent of a 
 daughter playing under 14s and another player had a row. One club (mine) had 
 16
 
Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
 split their 11 a-side team into two 5 a-side teams for the tournament. They were 
 playing each other in the final and one girl fouled the daughter of one of the dads 
 watching who then had a go at the girl. The girl who had done the foul then left 
 the pitch yelling and screaming at her father that she’d not done it on purpose, 
 said sorry twice and that it was “his fault last week as well”. So there is obviously 
 some herstory there. It’s interesting that the parent I had already interviewed had 
 told me about this girl being a bit ‘bolshy’ but that the club took the line that life 
 is not easy for her at home and that they treat each other as an individual i.e. they 
 make allowances for her and try to help. The manager took everyone on one side 
 – very much the ‘peacemaker’ – in his women’s words, and ‘too soft’ in the 
 parent I interviewed’s words. It all seemed to calm itself down and 15 minutes 
 later one of the players said ‘let’s go and find her (the one who’d been fouled) and 
 get her to come back’, seeming calmer and more mature than the parent! Already 
 I’m learning that this is a repeated problem – abuse from parents, more commonly 
 toward their own child … [One] manager talked to me after the incident and 
 asked me if he’d ‘passed’. He said he was unable to do more than get people to 
 talk to each other to resolve these things. There are no sanctions for parents like 
 that – it’s something they ‘all have to live with’. The referee did not get involved 
 at all. Ultimately, it’s the kids who suffer, because even if they banned the father 
 he’d probably just take his daughter away from the team. 
 
Excerpt two – academy trainees training session: 
 
 [18.7.02] I’m watching a session now that is very serious for 16 year olds. The 
 coach is shouting and it seems to be a lot more serious than kids playing for their 
 school. On the one hand they must feel like they’re living out a dream to be 
 playing (on a Thursday morning when everyone else is at school or college or 
 work) with other professionals with a professional coach on a professional 
 training ground with all the facilities, status and glory that comes with that. But 
 on the other hand, I can hear this coach yelling at the lads in a serious and 
 relatively intimidating, harsh, hard way, not very friendly, no use of humour. A 
 very different feeling to what kids in other clubs are telling me about … and yet 
 watching this bloke, he’s not a million miles from the parents I’ve seen at it at 
 tournaments! 
 
Excerpt three – deaf boys’ soccer club training session in a public park: 
 
 [19.7.02] Well, that was an amazing experience. I’ve just been sat in the park 
 with four boys, three of whom are partially hearing and one deaf, all aged 
 between 15 and 18. I’d approached the lads who were signing and they turned out 
 to be from the club but the coach never turned up. They didn’t even have a ball 
 which was lucky for me because I had a captive audience. They were keen to go 
 ahead with the interviews but I felt wrong about doing an interview without even 
 having met the coach never mind having parental consent etc. So I offered to 
 ‘phone their parents to get consent over the ‘phone but only one of them had a 
 mum who speaks English. So I got her on the ‘phone and she was fine about it so 
 17
 
Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
 I did one interview and sent the form home with an SAE to his mum … I said I’ll 
 come back in two weeks’ time and gave the others consent forms in hope! But it 
 was so nice to meet them and they were so sweet with me. They taught me to sign 
 half a dozen words and we had a good laugh. While I was interviewing one lad, 
 the others were messing about and making a noise and it was so funny, instead of 
 turning round and telling them ‘for heaven’s sakes shut up’ my interviewee told 
 them ‘for heaven’s sakes sign will you!’ At one point the deaf kid asked my 
 interviewee to ask me if it was possible for deaf people to become famous playing 
 football. It was so touching. I explained that only one in a million hearing people 
 can become famous in football and that deaf people have a disadvantage but that 
 he should go for it as much as he can. 
 
 [1.8.02] Well, I have driven for over two hours to get here and my deaf club 
 haven’t turned up – annoying to put it mildly! Well, it’s quite a relief really. It’s 
 funny, it takes a lot of energy to re-introduce yourself and be that super-nice 
 researcher! Only because a) you ought to be anyway; b) because you’ve driven 
 for three hours and c) because that’s what researchers do. I’m trying to make solid 
 connections here. Supposing it’s not me next year, I need to make sure it’s good 
 relationships I leave behind. So maybe I’ve been a bit stupid coming all this way 
 at a time of year when they’re not that committed to training, but having told 
 those boys 2 weeks ago that I was coming I didn’t want to let them down with no 
 form of communication between us and the secretary being away on holiday …  
 
 I’m sitting in the park, it’s half past seven and all the other sad people around me 
 are drinking out of a paper bag and leering at the girls as they go by. There are 
 several groups of (sadly hearing) footballing blokes, including an ethnic group of 
 oriental looking lads. Oh the joys of doing fieldwork; I’m getting eyed up now so 
 I’m going to go for a walk and pretend I’m not ‘Norah No Mates’. I’m glad it’s 
 [summer] and not February! I also thought the coach might just have had an 
 ounce of responsibility and turned up because the lads told him I was coming. So 
 I’m looking for someone who looks like he might be called ‘Memmos’ and who is 
 looking for some footballers or a researcher woman. The trouble is, that most of 
 the population round here looks like they could be called Memmos and are 
 looking for somebody, wandering lonely in the park! 
 
 [2.8.02] … All in all this CP thing in football is a haphazard set up of poor 
 knowledge, mixed feelings and a will to do well but a volunteer base. And I think 
 the FA need to get a grip on it … 
 
 Many events and agendas could be deconstructed from these pieces, including the 
ethical issues, the tensions between empathy and objectivity, the power relations between 
children, adults and researchers, and the different ‘faces’ and spaces on show here. What 
they do for me, in a very graphic way, is to underline just how far policy-makers and 
 18
 
Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
researchers still have to go if ‘participation’ in the politics of children’s sport is ever to be 
achieved.  
 
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS 
 
 Despite the oft-cited use of football as a socialising and civilising force with 
young people there is remarkably little research on their experiences of the game. So, 
what came out of our project from a children’s perspective? We found that the voice of 
the child was silent and that “… the game was used primarily as a means of control, 
pacification and discipline rather than as a source of empowerment.” (Pitchford et al. 
2004, p. 47). The mixture of care and control talked about earlier was certainly evident 
here and it was debatable whether youth football had reached even level one on Sheir’s 
participatory scale.  
 A small number of the clubs in the study in 2003 told us that they had player 
representatives on committees or that players were consulted about selection or team 
tactics. In general, however, young people were woefully absent from decision-making 
processes in clubs.  Even where they were represented on committees, there was a view 
from adults that children under 12 were simply not interested in or capable of 
contributing to the decision-making forum.  
 When we talked with children, they emphasised intrinsic rather than extrinsic 
motivations, often linked to particular skills or techniques (such as the sliding tackle on 
wet grass). They objected to lengthy warm ups and ‘boring drills’ and preferred matches 
to practices as, in competition, they were not constantly interrupted and could make 
personal choices. At the 2003 BASES Annual Conference a delegate from one of the 
nation’s top Premier League clubs told how she set up a whole season in which 8 year 
olds in the academy played without adult intervention, with startlingly good results and 
much praise from the children. When she asked the club if she could repeat the 
experiment with this cohort as it moved up a year, permission was refused.  
 In the 1970s, the psychology of motor skill challenged the intuition of equipment 
manufacturers that had resulted in them providing children with miniature bats and balls. 
What children actually needed was larger, not smaller, surfaces to allow for greater 
margins of error in skill acquisition. In the same way, the commonsense development of 
 19
 
Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
mini-soccer has actually led to greater emotional and psychological intensity in its 
restricted spaces, with touchline abuse of both players and referees being augmented by 
spectators’ close proximity to the game. Children we studied preferred an inclusive rather 
than meritocratic approach to football. Not surprisingly, we found numerous examples of 
children objecting to shouting, swearing, racism, sexism and loutish behaviour by adult 
spectators, who were often their own coaches or parents (Pitchford et al., 2004). We also 
found examples of codes of practice and guidelines on behaviour but children were 
seldom given the chance to influence the development of these even when they were 
consulted about or involved in implementation. 
 Elsewhere (Pitchford et al., 2004, p. 57) we propose a research agenda for 
children in football that accepts football’s role in cultural (re)production and social 
control and that examines the exercise of power and the interplay between power and 
knowledge, by drawing on the ‘new’ sociology of childhood. Importantly, power, 
authority and control in football, and in sport more widely, still rest with rival institutions 
and individuals whose sectarian in-fighting leaves little time or energy for those young 
players who hold the key to the future. Consultation, on the rare occasions when it 
happens, is used as a mask for continuing paternalism by those for whom radical change 
would threaten their power base. The FA’s annual child protection conference in October 
2003 was entitled ‘Putting children first’ but nine months after submitting a second 
annual report to the FA the researchers were still waiting for an indication that its 
findings had influenced policy changes.  
 What would children’s sports look like if adults both listened to and heard their 
voices? 
1) Sport organisations would comply in letter, spirit and in practice with the 
international and national statutes on children’s rights. 
2) They would each adopt a child’s rights policy with a charter of principles in 
children’s own words. 
3) Laws governing children’s involvement would be enforced. 
4) There would be full and proper investigative procedures for examining complaints 
into violations of children’s rights and prosecution of offenders. 
 20
 
Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
5) There would be independent, commissioned research to investigate, monitor and 
evaluate children’s experiences in relation to their rights in competitive sport. 
6) There would be permanent, formal mechanisms for children to voice their 
opinions, make comments and complaints and to be represented in investigations 
about these. 
7) All staff and volunteers in sport organisations would receive training in child 
welfare, rights and protection in sport. (Here, the FA have done a commendable 
job with over 55,000 people having attended the basic training course.) 
8) All children and young people in the organisation would be empowered to express 
their views freely in matters affecting them.  
9) An open ethos would be established whereby children could trust adults, and each 
other, and feel confident in sharing opinions or problems. 
10) Children would have access to any information held by the organisation about 
themselves and their development.  
 If we set these outcomes against the current functioning of almost every 
governing body then we find sport wanting.  
 Rights discourses have been “criticized for being no more than symbolic 
gesturing rather than vehicles of effective structural change” (Scraton and Haydon, 2002, 
p. 323) and for detracting from collective responsibility. Scraton and Haydon (p. 324) 
argue that children require both protective and proactive rights - in short, a rights-based 
welfare approach. In order for this to happen in sport, not only does our notion of 
participation require re-interpretation but we also require a concerted effort on behalf of 
leisure researchers and policy makers to engage children and young people in both 
knowledge construction and power relations. 
 The danger is that everyone gets to have a say, and then the adults with power 
 make whatever decisions they would have made in the first place … If we believe 
 that adults don’t always know best, and that children and young people have a 
 valuable contribution to make … we would expect things to change after we have 
 made our contribution, not for them to remain the same. Otherwise what’s the 
 point?  
      (National Children’s Bureau, 2001, p. 24) 
 
 Listening to children in sport does not mean allowing anarchy on the sportsfield. 
The same limits on freedom should pertain as they do for adults but there should at least 
 21
 
Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
be some debate about this. The manner of play, if not the very structure of the game and 
the way it is managed, may well be changed through consultation. If, in seeking to 
develop children’s rights in sport, we simply tinker with minor changes in coaching 
practices in order to promote child protection then we are moving the deck chairs on the 
Titanic and overlooking the macro social processes by which sport as an abusive practice 
has developed. 
 Long Term Athlete Development (Balyi and Hamilton, 2003), adopted by Sport 
England as the major underpinning framework for  sport performance development, may 
look like a panacea for the ills of burn out, pressure, over training and over exposure but 
could also be conceived as a dubious practice that has as its end point performance 
outcomes and is essentially focused on human doing rather than human being: a ‘don’t do 
something, just stand there’ approach might allow more reflexiveness and more 
constructive engagement with the subjects of youth sport, children themselves. Forster 
(1998, p. 165) argues that prolonged paternalism in the name of child protection can 
communicate to children that they are incapable of taking responsibility for their own 
actions. I would argue that paternalism is actually the modus operandi of sport. If I am 
right, and if sport participation continues to be de-politicised, then it is no wonder that 
athletes so often seem child-like and sport persists as never-never land. 
 
Notes 
 
1. According to the 2001 Census, there were 19.8 million people aged 50 and over in the 
UK as against 11.7 million dependent children. Over 60s outnumbered children for the 
first time (www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/demographic_uk.asp). 
 
2. Only the United States and Somalia, among the 193 possible States, failed to ratify to 
the Convention during the 1990s although these countries have now signalled their 
intention to do so (www.unicef.org/crc/crc.htm). 
 
3. The Department of Health (www.doh.gov.uk/qualityprotects/index.htm) has developed 
a ‘Quality Assessment Tool’ for managers of children and families under their Quality 
Protects programme which could very easily be adapted or adopted for use in sport. 
Under the same programme, National Standards for the Provision of Children’s 
Advocacy were adopted in November 2002 (www.doh.gov.uk/childrensadvocacy/).  
 
4. These include: Young Opinions, Great Ideas (1998) which is written by a group of 
young researchers “So that big people can see things from little people’s eyes.”; The 
 22
 
Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
Emperor’s New Clothes (2001), Young Europe (Olle, 2002), and Involving Young People 
in the Recruitment of Staff, Volunteers and Mentors (Michel and Hart, 2002). 
 
5. Young people in sport initiatives include: Sports Colleges; TOP programmes; School 
Sport Coordinators; the Nike/Youth Sport Trust Girls in Sport Partnership; the Junior 
Athlete Education programme for talented and gifted young people (all from the Youth 
Sport Trust); Dreams and Teams (The British Council); Sport Action Zones (local 
authorities). 
 
6. The UK Youth Parliament (UKYP) is run as an independent charity with multi-agency 
funding and support. It was started by MP Andrew Rowe in 1996 after he faced criticism 
from young people in his own area that they were not listened to. Through him, the 
NSPCC developed a proposal that led to the formalisation of the Parliament in 2001. The 
Government aims to ensure that by 2006 all young people area aware of the UKYP and 
that those between 11 and 18 years old can take the opportunity to vote for members of 
the body. In 2003, 25,000 of a possible 40,000 on the electoral role cast votes for 
representatives and over 90% of local authorities had signed up to the principle of the 
Parliament. 
 
7. The differences between ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ paternalism in relation to leisure 
management professionals are explicated by McNamee et al. (2000). 
 
8. This project was undertaken by a team of researchers that also included: Andy 
Pitchford, Kate Russell, Joy D. Bringer, Gareth Nutt, Zofia Pawlaczek, Claudi Cockburn, 
Liz Kinder, Annie Kerr, Adrian Ibbetson, Jacquelyn Allen Collinson and Heather 
Sheridan. 
 
 
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Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
Table 1 Perspectives on childhood 
 
Care perspective Control perspective 
Disturbed Disturbing 
Welfare and support Justice and control 
Victimised Victimiser 
Protection of the child Protection of the public 
Troubled Troublesome 
What is best for the child What is best for society 
Supports the traditional ‘Family’ as the central unit of society 
 
 28
 
Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
Table 2  Shier’s five levels of participation by young people  
  (Source: After Olle, 2002, p. 8) 
 
1 Children are listened to 
No effort is made to ascertain children’s views on a topic but adults have to be 
ready to listen to children when they express a view. 
2 Discourses of participation – the leisure lag 
Adults taking positive action to consult with children and opportunities are 
provided for children to have a say. Adults use a range of age-appropriate 
activities to enable young people to express their opinions. 
3 Children’s views are taken into account 
Children express their views and these will influence the decision. The child’s 
views are given due weight, even if the final decision is not what the child asked 
for. This level of participation is mandatory for any organisation that has adopted 
the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.  
4 Children are involved in the decision-making process 
Children become directly involved in making the decision. Organisations 
establish procedures to enable children to participate fully such as becoming 
more child-friendly by changing the times and procedures of meetings. 
5 Children share power and responsibility for decision-making 
To achieve this level, adults have to give up some of their power and share it 
with young people. This risks a decision being made that has negative 
consequences and adults and children have to learn to share the responsibility for 
this. Organisations find appropriate areas in which children can take on this 
responsibility and then support them in doing so.  
 
 29
 
Silent voices: Consulting children in sport 
Table 3  The FA Child Protection in Football Research Project:  
  Data collection methods that included children and young people 
 
Data collection method n in 2002 n in 2003 
Internet survey of 12-17 yr olds 287 [39] 
Stakeholder interviews overall … 225 257 
… of whom, chn and YP in clubs, academies/ 
centres of excellence and study centres 
70 (31%) 119 (46%) 
Club case studies 32 24 
 
 
 30