The interconnectedness of vulnerability and agency from the perspective of children in child and youth services

Safety is a central children's right (United Nations. (1989). Convention on the rights of the child) and important for children's well-being (Fattore, T., Mason, J., & Watson, E. (2007). Children's conceptualisation(s) of their well-being. Social Indicators Research, 80(1), 5–29). Children have a right to protection since they are particularly vulnerable, due to physical inferiority, diminished action ability, lack of knowledge, and, because of their precarious position in power relations (Andresen, S. (2014). Childhood Vulnerability: Systematic, Structural, and Individual Dimensions. Child Indicators Research, 7 (4), 699–713). Children and young people are also entitled to the right to participation, acting as agents in decision-making. In residential care they seek solutions, accept help, and struggle to be heard during the out-of-home placement process. Seeming to be able to participate, but having actually no influence. In our empirical material we find narratives about the decision-making process in the out-of-home placement from the perspective of children in Switzerland. Based on the examples, we reconstruct how the right to protection is met while the right to participation is increasingly disregarded. This raises the question of how children and young people are able to act in vulnerable situations.