The proposed work seeks to put children and young people charge, by enabling them to access resources (training, budgets and support from workers) so that they can identify issues they wish to change (in their own lives and communities or more broadly). The ethics approach flows from this commitment, as we have sought to create a structure in which children and young people can identify the goals which we will then evaluate, whilst ensuring this is done with due attention to principles of informed consent and child safeguarding.

To ensure that children are sufficiently supported in the PEER project and in any on-going work, the involvement of host agencies has been sought. We seek to support host agencies to increase their capacity in working in participatory ways with children and young people, and therefore we take a partnership approach throughout. Before any contact about this research is made with children, the issues dealt with in this summary will therefore be discussed with host agencies and a research protocol (David et al. (2005)) will be signed with the host organisations (see below). As the project seeks to support capacity in partner host organisations [like Roma led NGOs or children’s charities] we will not be using a sampling strategy, rather invitations to attend initial training will be distributed through Roma networks and host organisations that decide to take part will identify groups of children and young people who they can work with in a sustained way.