Professor Nigel Patrick Thomas
Professor Emeritus of Childhood and Youth , Associate Director, The Centre for Children and Young People's Participation
School of Social Work, Care and Community
Patrick’s research embraces child welfare, children’s rights and theories of childhood, with a particular focus on children and young people’s participation. He has researched with children in care, young carers, school pupils and members of youth councils, using a range of innovative participatory methods. He is an Associate Director and co-founder of The Centre for Children and Young People’s Participation. For seven years he co-edited the journal Children & Society, whose editorial board he now chairs. He is internationally known for his work on children and young people’s participation, and featured in the book Key Thinkers in Childhood Studies.
Patrick came to UCLan in 2007 as Professor of Childhood and Youth Research, and established The Centre for Children and Young People’s Participation (together with Professor Andy Bilson) in 2008. He also held the position of Research Lead in the School of Social Work, Care and Community, and led the submission to REF2014. On retiring from full-time employment in 2017, he was appointed as Professor Emeritus of Childhood and Youth. In this role he continues to take an active part in the work of The Centre, including research projects, publications and research student supervision.
Following a first degree in Politics and Philosophy, Patrick qualified as a social worker and worked in a variety of roles as practitioner, manager and specialist advisor for more than twenty years, in Derbyshire and Oxfordshire. In 1992 he joined the University of Wales Swansea where he taught on, and later directed, the professional social work programme as well as establishing a Masters programme in Child Welfare and Applied Childhood Studies and an all-Wales post-qualifying programme in Child Care Practice. During this time he also completed his PhD on ‘Children’s Participation in Decisions When They are Looked After by the State’, which led to a number of publications and generated considerable interest. (A training and resource pack based on that research was adopted officially by governments in Wales and Scotland.) Patrick later helped to establish the Department of Childhood Studies at Swansea, before moving to UCLan in 2007. The Centre for Children and Young People’s Participation (‘The Centre’) was established in collaboration with two groups of young people, and was the first academic research centre to be dedicated to children and young people’s participation. For 12 years now it has been a significant presence in the field internationally, as well as making a strong contribution to local capacity through its work with children and professionals. In 2012 under Patrick’s leadership, The Centre hosted the second international conference of ICYRNet (the International Childhood and Youth Research Network). This global event, which formed part of UCLan’s contribution to Preston’s Guild Year, was groundbreaking in that a children’s conference was held in parallel and delegates to both conferences were able to attend each other’s sessions and presentations. Patrick has been a leading contributor to ICYRNet, and also to Research Network 04 (Sociology of Children and Childhood) of the European Sociological Association. He was a Convenor of the Network from 2013 to 2017.
- PhD in Applied Social Studies, University of Wales 1999
- AdvDipEd in Child Development, Open University 1996
- Certificate in Microcomputer Programming, University of Oxford 1991
- MSc in Applied Social Studies, University of Oxford 1976
- BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, University of Oxford 1971
- Children and Young People’s Participation
- Children’s Rights
- Children in Care
- Independent Children’s Rights Institutions
- Theories of Childhood
- Recognition Theory
- Adjunct Professor, Southern Cross University
- Honorary Professor, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, Aberystwyth University
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts
- Fellow of the Institute of Welsh Affairs
- Chair of Editorial Board, Children & Society
- Trustee of Children in Wales
- Board member, ICYRNet
- Board member, RN04, ESA (Research Network on Children and Childhood, European Sociological Association)
Patrick’s research has consistently focused on children and young people’s participation, children’s rights and wellbeing, and children’s place in society. It asks questions about how children and young people can participate effectively, and why they should – in decisions about their personal lives (especially for children who face particular challenges because of their circumstances), more generally in their communities, and in politics at every level. He has always been committed to children and young people having voice, choice and influence in the research process to the maximum extent possible, and this is reflected in the methods he has used and developed. Following his doctoral inquiry into children’s participation in decision making when they are ‘looked after’, itself a substantial piece of funded research which produced six publications and is still influential, he led a study of the needs of ‘young carers’ in Wales, and then the evaluation of the work of the first Children’s Commissioner for Wales, which was groundbreaking in that it looked systematically for the first time at the effectiveness of an independent children’s rights institution, and did so in partnership with children and young people. He also led a smaller project which supported children in primary school to conduct their own research projects with expert support, modelled on the work of the Children’s Research Centre at the Open University.
At UCLan, research at The Centre began with an action research project on involving children and young people in staff appraisal and student assessment, designed and conducted in partnership with young people in care. This was followed by a study of Children in Care Councils across London (for London Councils), an exploration of disabled children and young people’s experiences of low income and the impact on their rights, which was conducted in partnership with a group of disabled young people, and research into the impact and outcomes of independent advocacy services for children and young people (both for the Children’s Commissioner for England). More recently Patrick has been a partner on several large projects, including three led by the Centre for Children and Young People at Southern Cross University looking successively at recognition, participation and wellbeing in schools and at ethical practice in children’s services, and a cross-European study of spaces and styles of youth participation, led by the Goethe University of Frankfurt. Patrick was on the steering group for this project, and contributed in particular to the action research element.
Of Patrick’s many publications, four in particular have been highly influential and extensively cited: two articles, ‘The ethics of participatory research with children’ with Claire O’Kane (Children & Society 1998) and ‘Towards a theory of children’s participation’ (International Journal of Children’s Rights 2007); and two books, Children, Family and the State: Decision-making and Child Participation (Policy Press 2002) and A Handbook of Children and Young People’s Participation: perspectives from theory and practice with Barry Percy-Smith (Routledge 2010).
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- Researchgate
- View their unique and persistent identifier on the ORCiD registry
- Full list of publications and articles on CLoK
- Google Scholar
- The Centre for Children and Young People’s Participation
- Institute for Citizenship, Society and Change
- (Main projects since arrival at UCLan) Evaluation of the Children’s Commissioner for Wales (2005-8). The first systematic evaluation of a Children’s Commissioner, undertaken in partnership with a group of children and young people
- Promoting Positive Mental Health and Recovery in Young People: Evaluation of the UThink Project (2009-10, with David Pilgrim)
- Children in Care Councils: the London Picture (2010-11, with Barry Percy-Smith and colleagues)
- “We want to help people see things our way”: A rights-based analysis of disabled children’s experience living with low income (2012-13, with Cath Larkins and colleagues)
- Improving approaches to wellbeing in schools: What role does recognition play? (2012-14, with Anne Graham and colleagues)
- Independent Advocacy: Impact and Outcomes for Children and Young People (2015-16, with Cathy Street and colleagues)
- Improving Wellbeing through Student Participation at School (2014-18, with Anne Graham and colleagues)
- PARTISPACE – Spaces and Styles of Participation: Formal, non-formal and informal possibilities of young people’s participation in European cities (2015-18, with Andreas Walther and colleagues)
- The EPIC Project – Beyond Safety: Ethical Practice Involving Children (2018-21, with Anne Graham and colleagues)
- Nuffield Foundation 1996, £62,000
- National Assembly for Wales 2001, £24,000
- Children’s Commissioner for Wales 2005, £70,000
- City and County of Swansea 2006, £3,500
- Children’s Workforce Development Council 2008, £30,000
- Rethink 2009, £20,000
- Lancashire Children’s Champion 2009, £5,000
- Lancashire County Council 2009, £2,750
- Children’s Commissioner for England 2012, £50,000
- Lancashire Youth Offending Team 2012, £20,000
- Lancashire County Council 2013, £5000
- Eurochild 2015, €5000
- Children’s Commissioner for England 2015, £55,000
- Conference keynotes:
- Council for Family Proceedings, British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering, Rhondda Cynon Taff Borough Council, 1999
- Netherlands Youth Information Institute / Netherlands Institute of Care and Welfare, Hilversum, 2000
- Devon County Council foster care service, 2000
- Young Researcher Network Annual Conference, Warwick University 2008
- Institute of Welsh Affairs / BBC Wales ‘What Are We Doing To Our Children?’, Cardiff University, 2009
- Centre for the Study of Childhood and Youth Postgraduate Research Conference, University of Sheffield, 2009
- Public lecture, Children’s Research Centre, Trinity College Dublin, 2010
- ICA:UK Conference, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2011
- A Child’s World – Next Steps, Aberystwyth University, 2014
- Eighth Nordic Congress on Child Abuse and Neglect, Nuuk, Greenland 2014
- Voice of the Child Research in Practice Partnership Conference, Birmingham, 2015
- CREATE Foundation conference ‘Youth for Change: creating a better future’, Brisbane, 2015
- Aotearoa New Zealand Childhood Studies Colloquium, University of Otago, 2015
- BERA day conference, University of Huddersfield 2016
- Centre for the Study of Childhood and Youth, 6th International Conference, Sheffield 2016
- A New Democratic Settlement? People’s History Museum, Manchester, 2016
- Bangor Interdisciplinary Conference on Childhood and Youth, 2017
- University of Portsmouth School of Education and Childhood Studies Annual Conference, 2017
- 8th International Korczak Conference (International Janusz Korczak Association, Ombudsman for Child Rights, Museum of Jewish History POLIN), Warsaw, 2017
- Metropolitan University College and University College Capital, Copenhagen, 2017
- Participation in Qualitative Educational Research, University of Essen‐Duisburg, 2017
Telephone:+44 7977 148178
Email: Email:Professor Nigel Patrick Thomas
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