Barns delaktighet i barnavårdsutredningar - hur tillämpning av barns delaktighet iscensätter handlingsutrymme.

Sammanfattning: According to Swedish law the child must be involved in issues concerning the child, which means that during a child care investigation, the child's perspective must be obtained. The aim of this study was to explore how social workers relate to and apply laws on children's right to participation in child care investigations depending on age, maturity and function ability. The method used in this study was qualitative, semi structured interviews with seven different social workers who currently or recently worked with childcare investigations. The social workers were active in six different municipalities in south of Sweden. To analyze our findings three theories were used. We applied Amartya Sen's capability approach, Michael Lipsky's theory of street-level bureaucracy, and Harry Shier's theory regarding children's participation. The capability approach and the theory regarding children's participation were used to enlighten the importance of autonomy and its effect on children's well-being, and the theory of street-level bureaucracy were used to illustrate the social workers role in children's participation in childcare investigations. The result of the study showed that there are different ways to involve the child which are talking to the child, obtaining information from people close to the child, observing the child and providing the child with information. Regarding maturity some social workers said that there are guidelines but others argued that there are not. In the matter of adaptation in childcare investigation all interviewed social workers agreed on the importance of adaptation by age, maturity, functional ability and situation. According to the empirical material it appears that there are guidelines for what should be done, but no clear guidelines on how it should be accomplished.