Barnkonventionen och Ekonomiskt bistånd

Sammanfattning: The Convention on the Rights of the Child was included in Swedish legislation in January2020. The purpose of this qualitative study is to investigate if and how this has affected workpractices among social workers that investigate families in need of financial support. Thepurpose is also to examine if and how children’s participation in investigations of financialsupport can be understood in relation to different discourses on children. The method thathas been used is semi-structured interviews with a total of six social workers within FinancialAssistance in six different municipalities. The results show that a majority of the socialworkers in the study have not changed their work practices since the Convention on theRights of the Child became law. The Investigation of Financial Assistance is also seen asprimarily concerning adults rather than children. The dilemma experienced by the socialworkers in this study can be interpreted as related to two different discourses about children.On the one hand, children are presented as objects of protection that should be spared frominformation about the investigation, and on the other hand, children are constructed ascompetent actors who are expected to participate actively and contribute to the investigationof the family's economy. The case when children participate more actively in the investigationof the family’s economy is when children act as interpreters for their parents. The child'sposition then goes from being seen primarily as an object of protection, to be seen ascompetent to participate in the investigation and be involved in discussions of financialissues on behalf of their parents.