Help or formality? Children's experiences of participation in home-based child welfare cases: A Norwegian example

Abstract

This article draws on the results of an interview study of 32 Norwegian children, aged 6–11 years, assigned home-based interventions by child welfare services. Pre-interview conversations with these children's parents also form part of the empirical material. This article explores children's experiences of participation in their cases and provides useful background for improving the interventions. The results indicate that many children were unfamiliar with child welfare services, and that few were familiar with child welfare services and could candidly discuss the agency and the reasons for its services. The children's parents were reluctant to tell their children about child welfare services. Nevertheless, all the children participated in joint decision-making about everyday life and activities with their support persons. It is problematic not to let children know about child welfare services or to participate in terms of understanding child welfare services and acquiring a feeling of ownership of the interventions. The present results suggest that explaining the role of child welfare services to children and cooperating more with them concerning intervention goals and tasks would strengthen both the formal and legal aspects of participation and the everyday and relational aspects of participation.

Keywords:

• child interview
• child welfare
• child protection
• contact family
• contact person
• participation

Notes

1. All names used in this article are fictitious, to ensure informant anonymity.