Barnets bästa : En kvalitativ studie av familjerättssekreterarens arbete med barns delaktighet i samarbetssamtal

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this study was to investigate how family law secretaries in Sweden works with fulfilling the best interests of the child in collaboration talks and how they get children involved in the process. I have performed five semi-constructed interviews with family law secretaries from different municipalities. In order to achieve broader answers to my questions I have chosen to use a qualitative method. This method was also chosen to enable the possibility of follow-up questions. I gathered data from previous research in this area by searching after these keywords; child’s best, collaboration talk, custody, family law, children’s participation in investigations. The collected data was then analyzed with three different theories; Michael Lipsky’s theory about grass root bureaucrats, Svensson, Johansson & Laanemets’ theory about the social worker role and Roger Hart’s participation model.  The participants that were interviewed all stated that it was difficult to fulfill the child’s best as it is an open concept that can be interpreted differently depending on the secretary’s individual knowledge and scope. Among the participants there were some of them that had deeper knowledge concerning the principle of the child’s best. This knowledge had been achieved through further education which ensures higher certainty that the child’s best has been fulfilled, but also raises awareness on when participation of the child in collaboration talk is possible. For those secretaries that are lacking this deeper knowledge in this principle agree that there are difficulties to ensure that the child’s best has been fulfilled. Because of the difference in knowledge there were variances in deciding when it was possible for a child to participate in the collaboration talk. Some of the secretaries thought that it was important to get the children involved in collaboration talks, but some thought that collaboration talks were not a platform for small children to participate in. This means that children are encountered in different ways depending on which family law secretary they meet and in what municipality the collaboration talk is held in.