Barns delaktighet i barnavårdsutredningar inom socialtjänsten : En kvalitativ studie om hur barns delaktighet tillämpas i praktiken

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to investigate the empowering and limiting factors that social workers are subjected to when they are to involve children in child welfare investigations. The empirical collection for the bachelor thesis is based on qualitative data collected by interviewing five social workers working mainly within the children- and family units and a sample of 17 scientific articles. The articles are international with origins from England, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Taiwan. When the empirical collection was compiled we could establish that the term “children’s participation” is in fact a complex field to put into practice by the social workers. Even if the children in some cases showed willingness to participate this could be limited by the social workers' fear to overburden them. Among other factors that limited the children’s participation was the social workers’ ambiguous view on children’s participation, the high workload, the caretakers influence on children’s participation, the child’s age and maturity as well as the social worker’s lack of competence and communication skills. Through the collection of former research, interviewing material, and Harry Shier’s Pathway to Participation model (2001) we could analyze how children’s participation is shaped by forming a thematic analysis. Finally, we can note that the reached stage of participation is relatively limited and does not reach a higher stage than stage two in Shier’s Pathway to Participation model (2001). Due to our limited possibility to conduct more interviews we couldn’t draw any general conclusions. However, we were able to shine a light on the critical and challenging aspects social workers could face when trying to enable child participation.