CHAP Child Panel

CHAP's motto is For children and families - with children and families. Over the past decade, we have worked to raise the voices of children in research. In 2025, we are launching CHAP's own Child Panel where we invite children to act as experts on just that - what it is like to be a child. In the Child Panel, children work with researchers to help make our research better, more relevant, and child-centred.

Children's participation is important and useful in all parts of the research process. Their views can improve research ideas and the conduct of studies, and they can contribute important ideas about who should benefit from the results of studies and how this should be communicated. Children can also contribute broader ideas about research, such as what research should be done, how it should be done, and how research can be talked about with children. Children also have the right to have an opinion on issues that affect them and relate to their lives. This is why we are increasingly working with involving children in our projects: we want to do our research together with children.

This is why we are launching the CHAP Child Panel. Here we are creating a forum for children's insight into and influence over the work of the research team. The Child Panel acts as an advisor on CHAP's various research projects. The children will hear about different research projects - what we do and how we do it - and then tell the researchers what they think. The Child Panel also tells the researchers who should be told about the results of the research and how to tell them in a good way.

The children in the Child Panel are between 5 and 10 years old. We will meet every one or two months, and we will decide together how we will work together. We who work with the Child Panel are Elin Inge, Anna Pérez Aronsson and Tobias Haglöf. We are there every time, and sometimes other researchers come to talk about their projects and ask the children for advice.