“Och barnet har bara att hänga med” : En kvalitativ intervjustudie med familjerättssekreterare om barns delaktighet i insatsen umgänge med förälder via umgängesstöd

Sammanfattning: The aim of our study is to investigate childrens’ participation in decision-making processes concerning supervised meetings between parents and children in at-risk families. Earlier research in the same field shows major shortcomings regarding the extent to whichchildren are involved in the decision-making process in these cases. The method we’ve used to conduct our study is through semi structured interviews with seven family law secretaries -all of them with experience from working with supervised meetings betweenparents and their children -working in different family law units in Stockholm, and our study can therefore be regarded as qualitative. Our essay starts with descriptions of supervised meetings between parents and children. It then delves into what actual rights children really have, to take part in decisions that affect their own lives. A number of earlier studies in the same field are then presented, as well as a study on childrens’ participation in child protection cases. Finally a study on childrens’ own views and feelings concerning their participation in supervised meeting cases.The collected empirical data is analysed using Roger Hart’s ”Ladder of participation”(1992), Harrys Shier’s ”Pathways to participation”(2001) and Nick Lee ́s childhood sociological perspective of becoming and being. We have also chosen to analyse our empirical data with the help of previous studies. The results are similar to previous studies presented in our essay: children are generally not allowed to take part in these important decisions to the extent that they should be, according to the United nation Children ́s convention on the rights of the child (2009) articel 12.1. Furthermore, as seen in previous studies, our results show that the adult perspective in the implementation of the supervised meeting cases is more taken into account than the child perspective.