Professor Nigel Patrick Thomas

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). A wholly new edition of the Handbook was published in 2023, with Claire O’Kane and Afua Twum-Danso Imoh as co-editors alongside Barry and Patrick.