The role of child forums in promoting child well-being: A social welfare perspective on participation and geographic equity

Abstract

Background: Indonesia institutionalizes children's participation through Forum Anak as part of the Kabupaten/Kota Layak Anak (Child-Friendly Regency/City, KLA) policy, similar to how many cities around the world give children a formal voice in local governance. Prior Indonesian studies document Forum Anak's formal existence and its dependence on local government partnership, but district-level studies outside major cities remain limited, particularly on how geography shapes equitable access to participation, an issue also highlighted in broader research on children's civic participation. Methods: This qualitative descriptive study draws on undergraduate thesis fieldwork conducted in Gowa Regency, South Sulawesi, in December 2020. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with six informants (a DP3A official and five Forum Anak leaders/members), participatory observation, and documentation study, and analyzed following standard stages of qualitative data condensation, display, and conclusion drawing. Findings: Forum Anak Gowa performs four roles: strengthening children's participation rights (chiefly via Musrenbang Anak, which Gowa pioneered in South Sulawesi in 2017), providing space for freedom of expression, supporting equitable access to education, and focusing advocacy on priority child issues (child marriage, bullying, and stunting). These roles are constrained by three recurring challenges: limited outreach to highland sub-districts, limited and inconsistent funding, and uneven cooperation from some local governments. Read through a social welfare perspective and a ladder-of-participation framework, the forum generates empowerment and social capital, but its benefits appear concentrated in lowland, more accessible sub-districts. Conclusion: Forum Anak Gowa is a meaningful, government-recognized channel for child participation, but its equitable reach depends on resolving practical funding and geographic-access constraints. Novelty/Originality of this article: This study contributes a district-level account from South Sulawesi's highland–lowland terrain, showing how a regency-pioneered participation mechanism (Musrenbang Anak) can still reproduce geographic inequity even where the formal institutional design is comparatively advanced.