Children's participation in Teledialogue

Teledialogue is a combined research and design project aimed at improving communications between social workers and children under their custody living in foster care or youth institutions. While social workers are responsible for the welfare of placed children they are under heavy workload and often only communicate with children at biannual meetings - the minimum required by law.The purpose of Teledialogue is to use participatory methods to develop an IT-enabled concept for children and social workers to maintain communication between the biannual meetings. Social workers and children are thus the primary participants in this design process.This presentation describes the inclusion and participation of the placed children in Teledialogue. With an outset in Actor-Network Theory (ANT) two points are made: 1) that children were participating in shaping the design long before they were formally included in design activities, and 2) that who children are, and want they want, is continuously configured and re-configured throughout the process. The overall argument being that the existence of participation in Teledialogue is not dichotomous (participation vs. non-participation) but rather that children’s participation unfolds throughout the entire project; it shapes funding proposals, research problems and design activities and is, in turn, itself being shaped by these.