Children and young people's participation activities continue to grow, galvanised by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). As the activities have proliferated, so has a list of common barriers and problems for children and young people's participation in collective decision making, from tokenism and lack of impact on decision making, to some children and young people being over-consulted while others are marginalised. While this list is frustratingly familiar, certain activities seem to address all or most of these barriers and problems. These examples provide potential learning tools, to examine why they have apparently done so. One such example is youth-led research projects, which involve a core group of children and young people, over a set amount of time, with facilitating adults and organisations. This chapter considers how the young researchers and projects claim credibility and legitimacy through processes of knowledge production. By emphasising expertise, these projects resist perennial critiques of children and young people's participation being unrepresentative. But they create inequalities for those with less time, interest or commitment for in-depth involvement. The chapter concludes that such projects are not radical in challenging the norms of legitimacy and credibility but can be so in positioning children and young people as knowledge producers.

Key findings

• • Youth-led research projects position young researchers as knowledge producers.

• • Young researchers bring expertise to the projects and develop expertise and knowledge through the projects. This leads to credibility and legitimacy claims for both the young researchers and the projects.

• • Such claims can lead to demonstrable impacts on service and policy decision making, as documented by several examples.

• • The intensive involvement required of young people involved as researchers may exclude those with less time, commitment and interest.

Introduction

For those working in participation in the children's human rights field, there is a very familiar narrative (McMellon and Tisdall, 2020). It begins with recognising the impetus of the UNCRC, which puts forward children's rights to participation. These participation rights are described as ‘innovative’ and ‘radical’, changing traditional views of children as vulnerable, innocent and dependent to perceptions of children as social and political actors, who can express agency and competency.