Background to the Research

• The purpose of this report was to:
  • Provide a review and assessment of the contribution that existing research has made to our understanding of sectarianism and community relations work with children.
  • To suggest and 'model out' an alternative methodological approach for future research that has the potential to make a significant contribution to the refinement and development of community relations policy and practice for children.
    

Main Findings

Sectarianism and Children

• It is reasonable to assume that children, about the age of three, are able to develop an understanding of the categories of 'Protestant' and 'Catholic' (although possible not using those precise terms) and to apply negative characteristics to these.
  
• These initial categorisations can be understood to have an 'imprint effect' where they progressively become embedded within the children's ways of thinking and behaving. With time, and as children are exposed to broader social contexts and experiences, they will come to develop more elaborate and sophisticated ways of identifying, categorising and evaluating others.
  
• Sectarianism is not confined to individual prejudices and beliefs but is manifest in, and reproduced by, peer-group relations and sub-cultures and a range of broader social, political and economic structures.
  
• The expression of sectarianism among children is rooted in their day-to-day experiences. For some, it appears to provide the interpretative lens through which they develop a keen interest in and understanding of the news and politics of the conflict.
  
• The expression of sectarianism among children can therefore only be fully understood within the particular sub-cultural contexts within which it occurs.
  
• The findings of the exploratory study would appear to suggest that children are not passive receptacles to be filled with the sectarian beliefs and value-systems of their parents but are actively and competently involved in appropriating, reworking and reproducing these sectarian beliefs in order to make sense of their own experiences.

Community Relations Work with Children

• Given the fact that sectarianism is to be found at all levels of society - from the systematic and structural to the sub-cultural and subjective - any community relations strategy needs to be similarly multi-layered and involve effective interventions at all of those levels.
  
• Children and young people appear to have gained overwhelmingly positive experiences from cross-community contact schemes. Such schemes will inevitably continue to provide an important element to any community relations strategy in their potential to address sectarianism and foster respect and mutual tolerance at the sub-cultural and subjective levels.
  
• Given the fact that sectarianism will manifest itself differently from one context to the next, the nature and content of community relations work and, within this, each contact scheme should be carefully planned in relation to existing needs and experiences of the children in any one area.
  
• Whatever the current situation in any particular area, it is clear that community relations work needs to engage directly with their perspectives and experiences, whatever these may be. In relation to the children in the present case study, this should also involve helping them to work through their own anxieties and fears.
  
• Cross-community contact schemes should play a key role in this type of approach. However, it will require the continued training and support of those organising such schemes and also will inevitably require appropriate work with the children prior to and then following contact.
  
• Some form of community relations work with children needs to begin as soon as they are capable of being influenced by sectarianism which, from the available evidence, appears to be form the age of three onwards. Certainly, the available research suggests that children of this age, with the appropriate help an support, are capable of reflecting upon their own attitudes and behaviour.
  
• When discussing the importance of finding neutral venues for cross-community contact to take place, the current case study would suggest that this should include consideration of socio-cultural context as well as the geographical location.