“Seeing like a child”: How an NGO operationalizes child-centered social-work practice in urban poverty

Historically, children have been recognized as central to social work practice: vulnerable yet powerful levers of social change. Yet adult, institutional, and policy lenses often silence their experiences. Globally, child-centered practice has shifted from charity and welfare models toward rights- and strengths-based frameworks that recognize children as capable social actors who bear agency and voice. Despite this evolution, many children in contexts of poverty, migration, and informal urban settlements remain excluded from state protections and basic services.

This study examines how a non-state actor, the Children of the World India Trust (CWIT), operationalizes child-centered practice in the Sai Nagar and Sambhaji Nagar settlements of Navi Mumbai. Adopting a bottom-up, qualitative case-study design, the research draws on a year-long field immersion through participant observation, reflective field notes, and informal interviews with children, parents, and staff. Data were thematically analyzed across education, nutrition, and holistic development, and framed by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and ecological perspectives on development.

Findings show that CWIT functions as a stabilizing microsystem within children’s everyday ecologies, proving crucial and transformative in children's lives through consistent care, participation-based learning, and resilience-building engagement. Interventions focused on building literacy and education for all emerged as empowering, nutrition catering to children’s basic needs, and structured recreation and co-curricular activities as fostering a sense of self-expression. These actions create a ripple effect, extending beyond the child to their families and communities, promoting overall changes in parental mindsets and the community’s approach.

The study argues for reframing child-centered social work from an abstract ideal to a practice of everyday relationships and systems-level scaffolding. To strengthen child welfare in underserved urban contexts, policy and practice must center children’s voices, enable participation, and support NGOs that translate rights-based theory into sustained, context-responsive action, positioning children as co-authors of their development.