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ОглавлениеA few years ago, I had the privilege of working on a research project with Dakota Roundtree-Swain, then an undergraduate student at the college where I work. We examined the recollections of young adults who had been in out-of-home care about their experiences with participating in decision-making while in care. The study participants talked about their removal from family, placement in care, and parental visitations (Križ and Roundtree-Swain, 2017). Joseph,1 an African-American young man who was pursuing a college degree at the time of the interview, said that when he was 12, he had called the local public child protection agency and reported being abused by his mother. He was subsequently placed in a foster home. Joseph described several situations when his opinion had not been heard by his child protection caseworkers. For example, the child protection agency wanted to reunite Joseph with his mother when he was 14. Joseph did not want to live with his mother, though, and told his case workers so, but he was returned to her anyway. He felt that the workers did not take his wish seriously because of his age:
I was younger, I was 14, so I think it was really hard for [the child protection agency] to accept and notice that someone as young as I was could be insightful enough to see what was happening and to realize that … the kid wasn’t just feeling hate or just complaining, and to realize that they were in a toxic situation and needed to get out of it. (Križ and Roundtree-Swain, 2017, pp 37–8)
Joseph thought that the caseworkers perceived him as a problem that needed fixing. He described the child protection system as a factory treating children in care as objects that are produced in an automated, identical fashion, as if on an assembly line. He explained: ‘I’ve always looked at foster care as a factory: … we are merchandise on this conveyor belt’ (Križ and Roundtree-Swain, 2017, p 32).
Joseph’s powerful words about his experiences in care were the motivation to write this book. Dakota’s and my project showed that the study participants’ experiences with participation in child protection-related processes varied widely. Joseph and the other young people Dakota interviewed remembered few situations when they had choices and could participate in decisions and many when they could not. They believed that children should receive information from their case workers so they know what is going on and can develop an opinion about their situation. They thought that children’s opinions should be heard and given weight in decision-making processes. (I use the term ‘children’ to describe all children under the age of 18, including adolescents and younger children. I sometimes specifically refer to children between the ages of 12 and 18 years as ‘adolescents’, ‘youth’ or ‘young people’.)
Goal and argument
This book aims to show in what ways child protection caseworkers employed by public child protection agencies in Norway and the US (California2) can create citizens by promoting the participation of children and young people like Joseph in their everyday practice. There is ample evidence about how professionals working in child protection systems discourage children’s and young people’s participation, as I will show in Chapter 2. My goal in writing this book was to highlight the participatory work that child protection workers undertake to promote children’s citizenship while protecting them from harm.
I wanted to study whether and how children’s ‘substantive citizenship’ (Glenn, 2010), their full inclusion into their community through participation, is accomplished in the interactions with professionals in child protection settings. I took this micro sociological, symbolic and interactionist approach to the study of child protection systems not to deflect from the arguments about systemic racial, ethnic and class oppression of children, youth and families who come into contact with child protection systems (see, for example, Roberts, 2002; 2008; Roberts and Sangoi, 2018), but because I was curious about what happens inside the system from the viewpoint of child protection caseworkers. I leaned on the symbolic interactionist tradition in sociology (Goffman, 1959) and especially the work of West and Zimmerman (1987) to show in what ways child protection workers ‘do participation’, that is how they promote children’s participation in interactions with them.
Following the symbolic interactionist paradigm, citizens are understood here as individuals who are recognized as active participants both by those they interact with and by wider society, for example through legislation and public policy. My understanding of children’s and young people’s citizenship was inspired by an article on citizenship by Sherry Arnstein. Arnstein (1969, p 216) defined citizenship as ‘a categorical term for citizen power. It is the redistribution of power that enables the have-not citizens, presently excluded from the political and economic processes, to be deliberately included in the future.’ By my definition, ‘citizens’ are individuals who have the opportunity to participate in decisions that affect their own lives and the lives of their families and communities. They may exercise their power as citizens through participation in elections, engaging in community activism or membership in associations. They may also exercise their power through participation in everyday decisions in the family, at school, at workplaces and in interaction with state bureaucracies, such as the public child protection system.
Public child protection agencies are only one part of the citizenship piece, but they are a salient one in the lives of children and young people who encounter them. Child protection caseworkers, the ‘street-level bureaucrats’ (Lipsky, 1980) working in public child protection agencies, make very important decisions about children and young people’s lives and provide children, youth and families with pertinent services. Children and youth must be able to participate in administrative decisions, according to the international standards set by the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). As Joseph’s example shows, street-level bureaucrats like child protection caseworkers have the power to create the conditions for children’s and young people’s participation. They can thus shape children and young people’s opportunities to act as citizens. The aim of this book was to examine whether and how child protection caseworkers in Norway and the US help promote children’s and young people’s status as citizens by fostering participation.
I focused on child protection caseworkers’ views of and practice with children and the organizational context in which these practices occur. Previous research on children’s involvement in child protection-related processes has shown that it is important to consider organizational factors, such as the procedures employed by a child protection agency, to understand the degree to which children’s and young people’s participation occurs in child protection (see, for example, Vis et al, 2012; Vis and Fossum, 2013, and Vis and Fossum, 2015). I argue that, despite organizational and policy differences, child protection caseworkers in Norway and the US practise a participatory approach that promotes children’s and young people’s status as citizens. I demonstrate in what ways children and young people like Joseph can be empowered in their interactions with child protection caseworkers in child protection investigations and during service provision after removal from home. I will show how child protection caseworkers inform children and young people and encourage them to develop and express their own opinions.
I show that even in the context of a system characterized by unequal power relations between children and adults, a participatory practice approach is apparent. It is impossible to say how prevalent this participatory approach is across Norway and the US because my argument rests on a very small sample of study participants. My findings therefore cannot be generalized to other parts of Norway and the US, let alone the countries overall. However, my research suggests that the everyday interactions of child protection workers can be at the forefront of emancipatory practices – practices that allow children to be citizens as a result of interactions with adults. This is perhaps not surprising given the existence of theory and practice models in social work that focus on empowering, collaborative and client-centred anti-racist social work practice (Dominelli, 2018; Granosik et al, 2019).
I primarily drew on in-depth interviews with 28 experienced frontline child protection workers3 employed by public child protection agencies in Norway and 40 workers in the state of California in the US. (More details on my sample, methods of data collection and analysis, and study limitations can be found in Appendix 1.) As the street-level bureaucrats working on the front lines of child protection policy, child protection caseworkers are in a unique position to provide pertinent evidence on the topic of children’s participation because they interact with children daily. Their reflections on their experiences with children’s participation constitute the empirical heart of this book. I also relied on prior scholarship on children’s participation, some of it my co-researchers’ and my own. I shall present this scholarship in Chapter 2.
Significance
This book shows how child protection caseworkers promote participation in the context of the tension between paternalism (the focus on protection of children and young people who are vulnerable to maltreatment) and participation that is inherent in child protection practice. Child protection professionals, given the nature of their work, approach children from a protective (rather than a rights) standpoint (Shemmings, 2000). This stance is legitimized by workers’ professional authority to make decisions in children’s best interests and protect them from abuse and neglect. For example, Skivenes and Strandbu (2006) and Vis et al (2011) have shown that children’s formal right to participation in Norway does not necessarily translate into participatory practice in child protection. This is how Vis et al (2011, p 326) have described the contradiction between children’s participation and the ethos of child protection among social workers in Norway:
Although most social workers in principle believed that participation is appropriate and beneficial, it was apparent that child participation in decision-making was less likely if the case manager thought participation was unnecessary or posed a risk for the child. It is here that the UNCRC principle of participation as a child’s right appears to conflict with a child protection service that is grounded in a child welfare ethos. In many child protection proceedings, children’s rights to participation are set aside in focusing on children’s best interests. When children’s health or welfare is at stake, participation tends to be viewed as not necessary in order to make the right decision. (Vis et al, 2011, p 326)
The tension between children’s right to protection from harm and their right to participation was expressed by James et al (2008) in this way: ‘the “cared-for” may often find themselves at the mercy of the “carers” who control them, a process often leading to the denial of citizenship rights through social exclusion’ (p 85).4 This is how Archard and Skivenes (2009a) described the contradiction between children’s genuine participation and the paternalism underlying child protection systems:
The problem arises because the two commitments seem to pull in different directions: promotion of a child’s welfare is essentially paternalistic since it asks us to do what we, but not necessarily the child, think is best for the child; whereas listening to the child’s own views asks us to consider doing what the child, but not necessarily we, thinks is best for the child. (Archard and Skivenes, 2009a, p 2)
The participation of children in child protection-related processes can positively impact them by improving their safety and well-being and resulting in lower levels of foster placements (Vis et al, 2011). Vis et al (2011) conducted a review of 21 studies from Europe, the UK and the US to assess the effects of children’s participation on their physical, mental and social well-being. They found that participation has a therapeutic effect by strengthening children’s relationships with social workers and other professionals. Participation may increase self-esteem and children’s sense of mastery and control and reduce stress and anxiety. Participation is beneficial because it reinforces the effect of other interventions by tailoring them to children’s expectations and wishes. By promoting children’s interests in child protection, participation allows for the development and implementation of more realistic case plans for the family and greater permanency for children. It keeps children safe by helping social workers discover and substantiate child abuse and neglect in investigations (Vis et al, 2011).
Other research evidence, too, points to the positive aspects of children’s participation in child protection. The research conducted by Weisz et al (2011) about the risks and benefits of children’s participation in foster care-related dependency or family court hearings in the Midwestern US analyzed the reactions of 43 children (between eight and 18 years) who had participated in review hearings in dependency court to the reactions of 50 children who had not participated. (The children who attended the hearings were typically older than 12 years.) The researchers found that children’s involvement in the hearings was not emotionally harmful to them. The children who had attended the hearings had a better understanding of the details of their case and case plan. They reported more positive feelings about the process, especially when they met with a judge who provided encouragement, asked questions about children’s preferences and engaged them in conversation (Weisz et al, 2011). Judges’ attitudes and behaviours towards children in court hearings about their case can play an important role in facilitating children’s participation. However, recent survey-based research with court officials in England, Norway, Finland and the US (California) has shown that courts could be more responsive to children, especially in terms of child-friendly language and time frames that are sensitive to children (Berrick Duerr et al, 2018).5
It is important to show the ways in which child protection caseworkers promote children’s participation because the barriers to children’s participation in child protection are formidable. Prior research evidence, which I discuss in more detail in Chapter 2, has made this abundantly clear (see, for example, Schofield and Thoburn, 1996; Thomas and O’Kane, 1999a; 1999b; Leeson, 2007; and Križ and Skivenes, 2015). The lingering cultural position of children as objects in today’s adult-centric societies is one of the many barriers to children’s participation in child protection today. The distinct and strong formal rights that children enjoy in the United Nations CRC and in law stand in contrast to the way in which governments and professionals working with children perceive and treat them. On one hand, children’s rising social position has been well-documented in the scholarly literature on children and childhood: in sociology, for example, the scholarship by Zelizer (1994) and James and Prout (1997) represents early examples of research on the social construction of childhood. On the other hand, despite children’s rising social status, they are still considered ‘becomings’ rather than ‘beings’. Adults view children as the individuals who they may become in the future rather than focus on who they are today (Qvortrup, 1990; 2009). Child protection laws and policies, too, construct children in terms of who they may become, especially when policies focus on helping children develop into productive citizens in the future, as Lister (2006) and Piper (2008) have shown in the context of child protection policies in the UK.
A great deal of this book is devoted to child protection workers, describing how they create barriers to participation by drawing symbolic boundaries around the inclusion of children in decision-making. Symbolic boundaries are defined by sociologists Michèle Lamont and Virág Molnar (2002) as ‘the conceptual distinctions made by social actors to categorize objects, people, practices, and even time and space’ (p 168). These classification systems, which are based on cultural attitudes, create hierarchies between people that confer on some the status to exercise power and exclude others (Lamont et al, 2015). The ‘participation boundaries’ drawn by the research participants in this study involved situations in which they felt they could not speak with children and young people, for example when the participants feared that their involvement in decision-making might distress or retraumatize children and young people. Study participants did not involve children and young people when they could not verbalize their feelings and opinions because they were incapacitated by a severe physical disability or mental illness. A child’s age served as a prominent symbolic divide between children’s inclusion as well: children 12 years and older were typically viewed as individuals who should participate, while younger children were more likely excluded from genuine participation. There were country differences. Several of the US study participants described teens as ‘liars’ and ‘manipulators’ of adults. The types of perceptions that workers had of the teens they worked with were important because the participants who perceived them in negative terms did not appear to seriously consider their opinions. The participants in Norway were more likely to regard teens as participants because they viewed them as reasonable agents and strong enough to resist the child protection agency’s interventions. Many study participants in both countries reasoned that an intervention measure, such as, for example, counselling or a drug use disorder treatment, would be fruitless unless teens bought into it.
Questions and concepts
I examined the views and experiences of child protection workers in Norway and the US to illustrate how workers in countries with two different child protection systems promote children’s participation in their interactions with them. This book answers questions along three thematic areas: first, the study participants’ views about why children can, should or must not participate in decision-making, and workers’ justifications for providing participatory opportunities for some while excluding other children; second, the study participants’ ways of doing participation; and third, the impact of laws, policies and organizational procedures on workers’ participatory practices. Table 1.1 illustrates these thematic areas and research questions.
Table 1.1:Topics and research questions
| Thematic area | Research question |
| Child protection workers’ views about children’s participation | When do child protection workers think that children can, should or must not participate? What are the beliefs that workers draw from to justify allowing some children to participate while excluding others? |
| Child protection workers’ ways of doing participation | How do child protection workers do participation in Norway and the US? |
| Effects of legal, policy and organizational contexts | How do laws, policies and organizational procedures facilitate or impede children’s genuine participation? |
The term ‘doing participation’ spans the entire spectrum from fostering minimal participation by listening to a child’s opinions and reflections without taking them into consideration to promoting genuine participation in decision-making. The terms ‘genuine participation’ and ‘providing children with genuine participatory opportunities’ refer to child protection workers listening to children and considering their wishes in their deliberations when making decisions in a case. For my use of genuine participation, I employed the definition put forward by Archard and Skivenes (2009b). It contains two important elements: first, that children’s authentic voice is heard, that is, children must have the opportunity to develop, reflect on and express their own opinions about what they think should happen; second, that children’s views are taken into consideration in the deliberations about what should happen. Their reflections and opinions carry some weight in a decision that child protection workers make, even if their wishes do not necessarily drive that decision.
Hart’s (1992) and Shier’s (2001) rankings of the different levels of children’s involvement are valuable in capturing the fine-grained gradations of children’s empowerment through participation. Both these indices of children’s participation in decision-making highlight the difference between a child’s full empowerment through genuine participation, and a child’s exclusion from power through manipulation by adults or participation that is mere tokenism. Hart depicted different levels of children’s participation using the image of a ladder, with the lowest rank delineating the manipulation of children by adults. The highest level represents decisions initiated by children that are made in collaboration with adults, with children on equal footing (Hart, 1992, p 8). Similarly, Shier distinguished between five levels of empowerment, including: listening to children; supporting children in expressing their opinions and wishes; taking children’s opinions seriously; involving children in decisions; and sharing power and responsibility with children (Shier, 2001, p 110). When all the levels are woven together, this constitutes ‘genuine participation’.
Thomas’s (2002) metaphor of a climbing wall of participation is pertinent in conceptualizing participation because it incorporates different kinds of life circumstances into a theoretical model of children’s empowerment. The six bricks in the climbing wall conceptualized by Thomas consist of: (1) children’s level of autonomy to make decisions; (2) their choice over participating; (3) their control over the process of making decisions; (4) the information children possess about what is happening and what their rights are; (5) the support children experience in voicing their opinions and wishes; and (6) children’s voice in the setting where deliberation and decision-making happens. Thomas’s conceptualization of participation adds to the other theoretical frames by differentiating between various kinds of children and situations in terms of capacities and opportunities: for example, children who can advocate for themselves may need less support to voice their opinions than children who are less assertive (Thomas, 2002). The support of a child protection worker may make all the difference for children who are less vocal. Thomas (2007) emphasized that, ‘different kinds of participatory activities and relationships are appropriate to different settings and circumstances’ (p 205). This is important in child protection because children meet child protection workers in a variety of settings, and their relationships and participation in them may differ. A child protection investigation setting differs from a case review meeting or a court hearing about child removal or parental visitation. During an investigation, child protection workers focus on assessing the risk to a child, often under extreme time pressure if the child is in imminent danger. In this situation, workers need to take the necessary steps to remove the child from home to keep the child safe.
I shall demonstrate that child protection workers ‘do participation’ in their daily practice (promote children’s participation in their interactions with them) in five ways: by actively engaging children and building a respectful rapport with them; by providing information about the case process and the rationale behind the child protection agency’s decisions; by giving children time and space to develop and express their opinions; by including teenagers as consultants and collaborators in important decisions, thereby creating ‘youth citizens’; and child protection workers divest power away from themselves and towards children through ‘recognition work’. Through this type of presentation of self workers convey to children that they recognize their wishes and see them as valuable contributors to decision-making processes. These approaches, which are common to client engagement in social work,6 represent the core of the participatory practice approach of the participants in my study.
Theoretical framework
This study was mainly informed by two theoretical concepts: ‘substantive citizenship’ and ‘street-level bureaucracy’. Children can become empowered citizens by being granted full inclusion into their community through genuine participation in decision-making. This status of full-fledged citizenship is called ‘substantive citizenship’ (Glenn, 2010). Child protection caseworkers, as the ‘street-level bureaucrats’ (Lipsky, 1980) implementing child protection policy in their interactions with children and families, can create children’s substantive citizenship status in their interactions with them. Citizenship, Glenn (2010) posited, is more than individuals’ access to formal rights. It is a social status obtained through processes of inclusion or exclusion, ‘constructed through face-to-face interactions and through place-specific practices that occur within larger structural contexts’ (2010, p 2). While these interactions, and the social structures they are embedded in, shape children’s citizenship, children themselves shape their citizenship through their agency, as Bacon and Frankel (2014) contend.
In child protection, children’s substantive citizenship status is constructed in the face-to-face interactions between children, their caregivers and adults working in the child protection system, including child protection workers, judges, legal representatives and other adults. Children’s full inclusion in their community, their status as fully-fledged citizens, requires their empowered participation in these interactions. This includes their ability to express their opinion and have it taken seriously in interactions with child protection workers and others who seek to safeguard their wellbeing. When child protection workers empower children by giving them the opportunity to genuinely participate in decisions, they help children obtain substantive citizenship.
I am a comparative sociologist and have lived half of my life in Europe and half of my life in the US. The question of how the construction of children’s substantive citizenship in child protection differs across child protection systems intrigued me. I departed from the theoretical standpoint that three types of context can influence child protection workers’ interactions with the children on their caseload, namely: formal rights related to children’s participation, such as the CRC and child protection laws and policies at the country level; practices and procedures at the organizational level (the child protection agency); and cultural ideologies about children, childhood, and children’s participation, especially of children from families in poverty and children of colour. A similar approach to citizenship has been employed by scholars in the field of gender studies (see, for example, Haney, 1996, 2002; Korteweg, 2006). Gender scholars have combined analyses of the legal, policy and interactional levels when studying citizenship. For example, Korteweg (2006) compared how citizenship is gendered in welfare-to-work workshops in the Netherlands and the US. Her findings ‘show the usefulness of understanding citizenship as not solely the granting or withholding of social rights through formal social policy legislation. It becomes clear that citizenship, much like social policy, is partly constructed at the street level, where particular bureaucratic practices are conduits for the signs through which citizen-subjects are recruited’ (Korteweg, 2006, p 335).
It is important to view children’s citizenship in the context of historical and current racial/ethnic and class biases. Historically, citizens have been considered those individuals who are part of a community that grants them the right to make decisions about their lives. This right assumed that human beings can make reasonable choices. This development, which has been occurring for over 250 years, began in the mid-18th century and wrested autonomy and sovereignty away from the power of the monarchy and clergy towards individuals. In the US, social groups other than white, property-owning men managed to gain human rights gradually by fighting for their rights (Hunt, 2007). Historian Lynn Hunt’s (2007) argument about the development of human rights supports the importance of larger cultural forces in the creation of citizenship. She argues that people’s identification with and empathy for others in very different circumstances were instrumental in the creation of human rights. Opposed to the rise of human rights were doctrines of exclusion, such as racism, anti-Semitism and misogyny. These narratives and arguments about innate differences between individuals promoted the exclusion of certain social groups, who were not considered worthy of fully-fledged citizenship (Hunt, 2007).
The notion of children’s fully-fledged citizenship is historically relatively new. It is underpinned by the idea, embodied by the 1989 United Nations CRC, that children are not citizens of tomorrow, but citizens of today who possess rights in their present lives (Doek, 2008). The CRC is commonly cited as the legal platform that cemented the ideal of children’s participation internationally (Invernizzi and Williams, 2008). Article 12 of the CRC established children’s participation in ‘judicial and administrative proceedings’ (such as the processes in child protection) as an important policy goal. It declares:
1.States Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.
2.For this purpose, the child shall in particular be provided the opportunity to be heard in any judicial and administrative proceedings affecting the child, either directly, or through a representative or an appropriate body, in a manner consistent with the procedural rules of national law. (United Nations, 2020, n.p.)
I relied on the concept of ‘street-level bureaucracy’ to examine child protection workers’ practices with and views on empowering children. The insights into the workings of street-level bureaucracies (Lipsky, 1980; Brodkin, 2012) underscore how street-level bureaucrats may affect the construction of children’s participation. Street-level bureaucrats engage in (often unauthorized) informal, yet systematic behaviours (Brodkin, 2012), which build on their own normative judgements and ultimately create the relationship between children and the state. In child protection, child protection workers can either deem children worthy or unworthy of participation. Workers’ perceptions of and attitudes towards children may matter to the extent to which children get the opportunity to participate, how children view themselves, and how others in society see children. In this regard, I was influenced by the insights of Thomas (2007); building on Bourdieu’s (1992) theories of society, he argued that a theory of children’s participation ‘will need to understand not only institutional and legal context and processes, but the cultures and dispositions that underpin them’ (p 216). The dispositions underlying child protection workers’ interactions with children are what I am trying to reveal in this book.
The study of modern bureaucratic organizations, such as public child protection agencies, has a longstanding legacy in the social sciences: Michael Lipsky (1980), who built on Max Weber’s legacy (Weber, 1946), defined street-level bureaucrats as the frontline service workers in public agencies who create public policy in their interactions with clients. In the face of the dilemmas that they invariably encounter in their work – such as budget constraints, unclear or contradictory policy or agency goals, time and information limits, and high caseloads– street-level bureaucrats may ‘distort’ public policy by dealing with clients in ways that undermine the original intention of the policy. They can do so because they enjoy a certain level of professional discretion. The actions of street-level bureaucrats then become the de facto policy (Lipsky, 1980; Brodkin, 2012). Brodkin explained that ‘discretion is of interest not when it is random, but when it is structured by factors that influence informal behaviors to develop in systematic ways. It is these systematic informal behaviors that impart specific practical meaning to policy as produced’ (Brodkin, 2012, p 942). One of the main goals of this book is to examine child protection workers’ systematic, informal practices to find out how they contribute to creating children’s citizenship.
One of the ways in which street-level bureaucrats ‘manage’ clients is by creating psychological benefits and sanctions. The signals that street-level bureaucrats send to clients about their dignity or worthiness (to participate, for example) can then positively, or negatively, reinforce clients’ self-image. The labels that bureaucrats bestow on clients may have implications beyond the bureaucracy if a person’s family or community treats the person differently after being stigmatized by street-level bureaucracy. The labels depend on (structural) factors, such as the bureaucrat’s training, the social context in which the labelling occurs, and the presence or absence of other client populations (Lipsky, 1980; Brodkin, 2012).
In child protection, the power of street-level bureaucrats was evidenced by a research study conducted by Smith and Donovan (2003), who examined how frontline child protection workers in Illinois (US) dealt with the organizational pressures and institutional limitations in their work when reuniting children with families they had been removed from. Almost all the street-level bureaucrats the authors interviewed and observed in court used several strategies to deal with institutional constraints: they focused their energy on the parents they considered most demanding, thus prioritizing and cherry picking one group of parents while ignoring others. They denied the possibility that they could change parental behaviour (and therefore did not attempt to do so), or they attributed the failure of family reunification to the behaviour of individual parents by labelling them as ‘resistant’ (Smith and Donovan, 2003). While these types of behaviours may be functional for the individual street-level bureaucrat and the organization, they create systematic consequences by shaping ‘policy as produced’ (Brodkin, 2012, p 942). This is policy that differs from the original intention of policy makers. Such consequences are problematic because their impact can undermine both the original intent of the policy (Lipsky, 1980) and the legitimacy of the state.
Child protection in Norway and the US
A sizeable number of children in Norway and the US encounter public child protection agencies when child protection workers investigate children’s caregivers for child maltreatment, remove children from home or develop service plans to assist families. Their interventions may include parenting support in the family, daycare, individual or family therapy, drug use disorder treatment, financial and housing assistance, and (if children have been removed from their family) foster, kin and residential care and adoption. In both countries, when a referral about child abuse and neglect reaches the public child protection agency, child protection workers investigate to assess the risk to the child and determine whether the child can safely remain in their home. In the US, after child maltreatment has been reported to a child protection agency, the report is either assessed for a child’s risk of harm or, in some states, leads to an alternative or differential response. A differential response focuses on fulfilling a family’s service needs with the help of the family and community services in cases where risk to the child is considered low or moderate. This could involve services such as welfare assistance and access to counselling. This is the type of response system of many counties in California (Reed and Karpilow, 2002; Berrick Duerr, 2018), the US state where the interviews for this book were conducted. Child protection workers in both countries make recommendations to the court (California) or the county board (Norway) to initiate a care order. This is a court order to move a child to an out-of-home placement (Berrick Duerr, Peckover, Pösö & Skivenes, 2015). It must be emphasized that the issues that child protection caseworkers in Norway and the United States face are similar – in both countries, workers deal with child neglect and abuse, and aim to keep children and young people safe.7
In Norway, child protection investigations were started or under way for 46,903 children under the age of 18 years by the end of 2016 – 42.2 children out of 1,000 children in that age group.8 Also by the end of 2016, 12,636 children under 18 (11.4 children out of 1,000 children of that age) were in out-of-home care (Statistics Norway, 2017a). In the US in 2016, 3.5 million children (or 46.7 children per 1,000 children under the age of 18 years) were estimated to have received a child protection investigation or an alternative response. The number of children under 18 who were victims of child abuse and neglect was estimated to amount to 671,622 children nationally, or 9.1 per 1,000 children (US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Children’s Bureau, 2018a). In the US, 437,465 children between birth and 20 years were in foster care nationally by the end of September 2016 (US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, 2017).9 This means that five out of 1,000 children in this age group were in foster care in the US.
Table 1.2 illustrates the main differences between the welfare state and child protection systems of the two countries.
Table 1.2:Legal, policy and organizational frameworks
| Norway | California | |
| Welfare state context | ●Social democratic1 | ●Liberal/residual1 |
| Child protection system orientation | ●Family service-oriented and child-centric2 ●Low intervention threshold4 | ●Child protection-oriented3 ●High intervention threshold4 |
| Legal or policy guidance about children’s participation | ●Yes: legislation5 ●Yes: practice guidance7 | ●Yes: caseworker practice guidance5 ●Yes: court hearings6 |
| Child protection workers’ professional discretion | ●Wide8 | ●Narrow: investigations ●Structured Decision-Making (SDM)9 ●Case reviews: Team-Decision-Making10 |
Sources:
1 Esping-Andersen, 1990; Arts & Gelissen, 2002
2 Berrick Duerr, 2011; Križ & Skivenes, 2014
3 Skivenes, 2011; Križ & Skivenes, 2014
4 Skivenes & Søvig, 2017
5 Berrick Duerr, Dickens, Pösö & Skivenes, 2015
6 Barnes et al, 2012; California Courts, 2019
7 BLD, 2009, cited in Eidhammer, 2014
8 Berrick Duerr, Dickens, Pösö & Skivenes, 2015; Križ & Skivenes, 2015
9 Berrick Duerr, Peckover, Pösö & Skivenes, 2015; Berrick Duerr, 2018
10 Berrick Duerr, Peckover, Pösö & Skivenes, 2015
Norway and the US embrace different types of welfare state models (Esping-Andersen, 1990; Arts & Gelissen, 2002) and child welfare systems (Gilbert et al, 2011). In the US, a liberal or residual welfare regime, the state only provides residual services to the most destitute through means-tested social programmes. Norway is a social-democratic welfare state that provides universal public services to children and families (Esping-Andersen, 1990), such as subsidized daycare for children starting at the age of one year (Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs, 2017). The difference in the two countries’ social safety nets (wider in Norway than the US) and the extent of their public welfare provisions (more generous in Norway than the US) has implications for the variation in poverty levels and affects how the two countries score on the children’s well-being index for OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries (UNICEF, 2013). This index includes variables such as material well-being, health, safety and education (UNICF, 2013). The US is ranked comparatively low on this index, whereas Norway is ranked among the top five out of 29 countries. Norway is ranked number two in children’s ‘overall well-being’ (UNICEF, 2013, p 2), behind the Netherlands and ahead of Iceland, Finland and Sweden. The US is ranked as number 26, followed by Lithuania, Latvia and Romania (UNICEF, 2013).
The orientations of the child protection systems of Norway and the US differ. The Norwegian child protection system is considered a ‘family service’ system, and the US system is ‘protection-oriented’ (Berrick Duerr, 2011; Gilbert et al, 2011; Skivenes, 2011).10 The differences between the two systems lie in the values underpinning them, and the way in which they approach children at risk. The main approach of family service systems is a preventative one; the child protection system seeks to provide universal public services to prevent more serious harm and prevent children’s out-of-home placements. The Norwegian Child Welfare Act (Articles 4–12) stipulates that services to families must be offered first, or there must be evidence that they will not be useful, before a child can be removed (Ministry of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion, 2017). Children tend to be older in Norway than in the US before they are removed, but the proportion of children living in care is higher in Norway than in the US (Skivenes, 2011; Gilbert et al, 2011).
The US child protection system is oriented towards intervention once there is serious risk of harm to a child. The underlying normative principles of the US child protection system are the child’s safety, permanency (continuity of care and connectedness for the child), and child and family well-being (Goldman et al, 2003; Berrick Duerr, 2011). These normative legal foundations were mainly established by the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act 1974 (CAPTA) (PL 93–247) and the Adoption and Safe Families Act 1997 (ASFA) (PL 105–89). Public child protection agencies in the US focus on investigating child abuse and neglect in a legalistic, adversarial and often standardized manner after the event, allowing for less professional discretion than in Norway (Berrick Duerr, 2011). Decisions are made expeditiously to protect a child from imminent risk of harm. Once child maltreatment is reported to the telephone hotline in California, for example, a child protection worker must assess the danger to the child speedily. If the child is in imminent danger, then a worker must investigate the case within two hours. If the situation is not an emergency, then the time frame for the investigation is up to 10 calendar days (Berrick Duerr, Peckover, Pösö & Skivenes, 2015). According to Berrick Duerr, Peckover, Pösö and Skivenes (2015, pp 371–2)
[t]he investigation/assessment process can take up to 30 days. Once a decision is made to take temporary custody of a child, the child is removed by the child protection worker … followed by a presentation of evidence to court within 48 hours in order to sustain custody, and further evidence must be presented to court within 30 days to detain a child longer and/or to impose a care plan for services.
Child maltreatment is prevented in Norway by targeting families in need of assistance through public services (Skivenes, 2011). The threshold for intervention is low in Norway compared to the US (Skivenes and Stenberg, 2015; Skivenes and Søvig, 2017). The time frame to complete an investigation in Norway is three months (six months in special circumstances) (Berrick Duerr, Peckover, Pösö & Skivenes, 201).
Children’s participation in law, policy and practice
In Norway, the participation of children is firmly anchored in national law. In the US, which has not ratified the United Nations CRC, it mainly rests on state law and professional social work guidelines and practices within a child protection agency. Children in Norway have had strong formal rights as participants enshrined in law since the country signed the CRC in 1989. Norway turned the CRC into national law in 1991, explicitly using it as a platform to draft legislation about child welfare in Norway (Vis et al, 2012; Bårdsen, 2015; Berrick Duerr, Peckover, Pösö & Skivenes, 2015). The views of children aged seven and older must be considered in child protection in Norway (Vis et al, 2012; Berrick Duerr, Peckover, Pösö & Skivenes, 2015; Skivenes and Søvig, 2017). This is how the Child Protection Act 1992 (Lov om Barneverntjenster) formulates children’s participatory rights related to age in Section 6.3:
A child who has reached the age of 7, and a younger child who is capable of forming his or her own opinions, shall receive information and be given an opportunity to state his or her opinion before a decision is made in a case affecting him or her. Importance shall be attached to the opinion of the child in accordance with his or her age and maturity. A child may appear as a party in a case and exercise his or her rights as a party if he or she has reached the age of 15 and understands the subject-matter of the case. The county social welfare board [the body that makes care order decisions] may grant a child under the age of 15 rights as a party in special cases. In a case concerning measures for children with behavioural problems or measures for children who may be at risk of human trafficking, the child shall always be regarded as a party.
Children who are 15 or older become parties in a case and may be appointed a lawyer (Berrick Duerr, Dickens, Pösö & Skivenes, 2015; Berrick Duerr, Peckover, Pösö & Skivenes, 2015). Children 12 years and older must be heard in decisions about guardianship when a caregiver who is responsible for a child loses guardianship (Ministry of Children and Equality, 2016, p 23). Children younger than 15 years are invited to plan their care. The definition of children’s best interests in the Child Welfare Act 1992 (Section 4.1) was amended in 2013 to specifically include children’s participation in child protection with the help of an adult the child trusts:
When applying the provisions of this chapter, decisive importance shall be attached to finding measures which are in the child’s best interests. This includes attaching importance to giving the child stable and good contact with adults and continuity in the care provided.
The child shall be given the opportunity to participate and steps shall be taken to facilitate interviews with the child. Children who have been taken into care by the child welfare service may be given the opportunity to be accompanied by a person whom the child particularly trusts. The Ministry may make further regulations regarding participation and regarding the duties and function of persons of trust. (Ministry of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion, 2017, p 13)
Since 2003, when the Human Rights Act was passed, the CRC has had primacy over any other national legislation in Norway (Bårdsen, 2015). As part of the Constitutional reform process from 2013 to 2014, a new article, Article 104, was introduced. It enshrines children’s participatory rights in the Constitution (Bårdsen, 2015). The article reflects several policy principles found in Norwegian child protection legislation: a child’s participation (depending on age and maturity), a child’s best interests, protection and safety, material well-being, and family preservation.
Children in the US do not enjoy similarly strong formal rights to participation (Skivenes, 2015). This begins with the Constitution of the US, which does not mention children or families (Woodhouse, 1992). At the federal level, the 2006 amendment of the Social Security Act (Social Security Act, 2006) requires that children 16 years and older be consulted about their permanency or transition plans in court or administrative hearings, but practices vary by state (Social Security Act, 2006; Weisz et al, 2011; Barnes et al, 2012). The state of California, where the interviews for this study were conducted, has introduced its own legislation regarding children’s age and participation in court: if children ten years and older do not attend their court hearing in California, the judge will inquire whether the child had the chance to appear in court (Advokids, 2018). All children are assigned an attorney who represents them in court (Berrick Duerr et al, 2018). Children who attend hearings in juvenile court may work with a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA). A CASA is a trained lay person who volunteers to assist the child to get their wishes heard in court (Berrick Duerr, Dickens, Pösö & Skivenes, 2015).
The US has a decentralized child protection system. Each state interprets and implements federal child protection laws and regulations differently. Child protection is administered at the county level in California (Berrick Duerr, 2011; Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2018). In Norway, the municipalities are responsible for undertaking child protection work. They are tasked with providing services in the home when a child requires assistance and applying for out-of-home services when in-home services do not work or are inappropriate. The 12 county social welfare boards in Norway decide about involuntary child welfare services, such as mandatory daycare, supervised visits, and out-of-home care. They typically consist of a lawyer (who chairs), an expert member (a professional with expertise in child protection), and a layperson (Skivenes and Søvig, 2017). In Norway, child protection workers enjoy a great deal of discretion. For example, it is up to the case manager to decide whether to let children participate in planning meetings (Vis et al, 2011).
Child protection workers who investigate abuse and neglect in public child protection agencies in California are more constricted when investigating child maltreatment because they utilize standard assessment tools during an investigation. Many of the Californian child protection agencies, including the ones in this study, employed an actuarial tool called a Structured Decision-Making Scheme (SDM) for their risk assessments (Berrick Duerr, Peckover, Pösö & Skivenes, 2015; Berrick Duerr, 2018). Actuarial tools such as SDM provide factors predictive of maltreatment which workers score to provide an overall risk score (Ryan et al, 2005; D’Andrade et al, 2008; Berrick Duerr, Peckover, Pösö & Skivenes, 2015). The higher the point tally, the higher the risk in the case (California Department of Social Services, 2012). The Norwegian risk assessment approach, which differs from that employed in California, rests solely on professional discretion and knowledge: the norm in Norwegian child protection practice is to rely on individual workers’ professional assessment of the situation. However, there are indications of a turn towards more systematic guidelines in the Norwegian system, such as the so-called Kvello method (Kvello, 2010) that several municipalities are now using (Skivenes, 2011). Several Norwegian research participants in this study mentioned employing ‘The River of Life’ tool, which allowed them to gather information about children in a structured manner during a child protection investigation.
Californian child protection workers are expected to follow a practice model that includes expectations about how children should be treated in terms of participation (Berrick Duerr, Dickens, Pösö & Skivenes, 2015). Many counties in California, including the two counties in which my study participants worked, practised an approach to meetings called Team Decision-Making (TDM) meetings, also called family team meetings. These types of meetings provide children, family members and other parties who know the family with a structured opportunity to be heard in a child’s case (Berrick Duerr et al, 2015). Berrick Duerr (2018, p 222) describes TDMs like this:
A meeting that brings together a family and other interested parties such as friends, neighbors and community members, with staff from the child welfare agency and other helping agencies (e.g., mental health, schools, etc.). Working together, the members learn what that family hopes to accomplish, set realistic goals, identify the family’s strengths and needs, and make a plan for who will do what to keep the children safe.
According to Reed and Karpilow (2002): ‘California child welfare workers use family group decision-making approaches to engage parents, children, and extended family members in making critical decisions regarding the safety and possible placement of the children and identifying services the family needs to continue or resume safely caring for the children’ (p 39). Since 2014, California has implemented Safety Organized Practice (SOP), a strengths-based collaborative practice approach that emphasizes teamwork between the child, family, caseworker and community (Casey Family Programs, 2019).
Burford and Gallagher’s (2015) research showed the positive impact of family group decision-making on children’s participation. The researchers interviewed 32 teens in the US state of Vermont, most of whom were living in out-of-home care, about their experiences with the child protection system. They found that interviewees were very satisfied with the family safety plan and family group conferences. These types of meetings are part of a practice model introduced by Vermont, following state legislation passed in 2007 that encouraged children’s active participation in case planning. While these meetings have great democratic potential, only few families in Vermont get to access them, as it is up to the discretion of the public child protection agencies to offer them. These are the results of the researchers’ survey data:
We note that survey data gathered at the end of family safety plan meetings and family group conferences, which were both introduced as part of practice reforms, indicate high levels of teen satisfaction with these meetings. In particular, the family group conferences (N = 132) have received significantly higher ratings by teens on items such as ‘other people at the meeting really listened to what I had to say’; ‘I liked where the meeting was held’; and ‘I think the right people helped make the plan.’ These meetings almost always have a higher proportion of family members and people of the family’s, including the teen’s, choosing, and fewer professionals in attendance. (Burford and Gallagher, 2015, p 231)
Organization of the book
Legislation and policies may express goals and ambitions about children’s rights to be heard, but the everyday reality of children’s participation in child protection lies in the interactions between children and child protection workers. Child protection caseworkers may contribute to creating children’s citizenship by establishing boundaries of children’s inclusion and exclusion. They may, for example, exclude children from participation because they perceive some children, but not others, as deserving of participation. I examine in this book which factors child protection workers perceive as triggers of children’s participation and non-participation. I analyze how child protection workers said they involved children, and in what ways they reported producing genuine opportunities of participation.
Chapter 2 discusses prior scholarship about children’s experiences with participation and analyzes the barriers to children’s genuine participation created by child protection professionals in Norway and the US. Chapters 3 to 6 offer the main empirical contributions of the book. In Chapter 3, I analyze ‘non-participation triggers’ – the factors in a child protection case that lead child protection workers to exclude children from participation. In Chapter 4, I take a 180-degree-turn and describe participation triggers. These are the situations in which child protection workers heavily weigh a child’s reflection or opinions when making decisions. In Chapter 5, I examine how and at what stage child protection workers facilitate children’s participation. In Chapter 6, I investigate how workers involve teenagers compared to younger children. In Chapter 7, I weave together the findings from the empirical chapters and prior scholarship to present my central argument about the presence of a participatory practice approach. In Appendix 1, I describe the methods of data collection and analysis used for this study and the strengths and limitations of the data material. Appendix 2 offers questions for discussion.
