Abstract:
Children's participation in decision making is widely declared as the right of the child, with positive consequences for society and for the child. Against this background, the experience of children's participation in decision making is surprisingly rarely studied. In order to fill this gap we describe participation in decision making among children, living in institutional care in three Russian regions and aged 10-17 years (n = 517). Limited participation in decision making is significantly correlated with both institutional and personal factors of children. Our findings show the importance of taking into account the perspectives of the child within the processes of the system of social protection of children.