"Det er ikke nok å høre - alle må også gjøre"

What is needed for children to experience being heard in their matters following Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which guarantees a child capable of forming their views the right to express those views in all matters affecting the child and to have those views given due weight according to the child's age and maturity? To find the answer to this, the Child and Family Unit (BFE) in Bodø municipality initiated an interdisciplinary collaborative project involving leaders, professionals, and children as service users, to develop the department's practice of Article 12 and discover the significance of employees' views on children and identifying any skills or knowledge that employees might need. BFE includes health, child welfare, and social services aimed at children and families. The diversity of professional fields and legal frameworks makes the area complex, and the project, which initially involved 130 employees across eight different services, expanded further when the need arose to collaborate more closely with kindergartens and schools. This collaboration proved to be crucial in safeguarding children's procedural participation in cases involving multiple services. We have confirmed how professionals' pre-assessments of children's maturity and vulnerability limit the application of Article 12, but also how this can quickly change when confronted with children's capacity and knowledge. Actions, such as inviting all children to meetings and having professionals experiment with the best ways to do this, have led to a shift in attitudes towards children, thereby increasing children's opportunities to express their views and be heard. Practicing Article 12 as a collaborative effort towards a common goal has shown to contain the same challenges and opportunities as a collaboration between colleagues and in the leadership of employees. The natural asymmetry, varying degrees of responsibility, expertise, and experience can be managed through factual, equitable, trustworthy, and open dialogue. The traditional distinction between children and adults has thus proven to be counterproductive and unnecessarily complicated for all types of collaboration where participants are expected to learn from each other, regardless of whether they are adults or children. The process has shown that fear of making mistakes, performance focus, and lack of openness and trust can hinder development and learning. In contrast, the ability and willingness to try and fail, combined with a focus on mastery and openness, equally promote learning. Continuous management of disagreements and resistance to changes has therefore been crucial to achieving collective learning. This has highlighted the importance of leaders' ability to manage their own and others' emotions and conflicts in this type of change and development work, which involves all employees trying out new actions and work methods despite a possible lack of motivation, engagement, or self-efficacy. The project has led to concrete results in the form of procedural descriptions where all children in BFE now receive information about the rights Article 12 gives them. They are invited to meetings that concern themselves, and documents and case management systems have been revised by the requirements for child-friendly case processing where children's participation in their cases is now continuously documented. The children in Bodø municipality also systematically participate in the development of kindergarten and school environments in connection with the ongoing Competence Enhancement related to inclusive environments and the organization of special educational assistance. These results can be directly transferred to other municipalities that wish to facilitate systematic safeguarding of Article 12. However, there is no recipe or method for the execution itself, other than that the employees must be trained to follow the principles that underlie all forms of collaboration and dialogue. The conclusion from the work in BFE is therefore that facilitating collaboration between children and adults, which ensures that children can express their opinions and be heard, primarily depends on employees being "forced" to meet the various children without pre-assessing whether they will be able to form their views, thereby gaining experience that children's knowledge is necessary and useful for both the child and themselves. This may seem simple, but it requires that the organization is founded on the principles of collaboration and dialogue: factuality, equality, trust, and openness.

- BFE praktiserer nå barnevennlig saksbehandling hvor barns syn og i hvordan dette tas hensyn til dokumenteres gjennomgående - Barn tilknyttet BFE får informasjon om artikkel 12, utformet av barn på et barnevennlig språk - Barn tilknyttet BFE blir invitert med inn i alle møter som angår dem selv og ansatte legger til rette for deltagelsen basert på råd fra barn - Barn i barnehage og skole deltar i vurdering og utvikling av arbeidet med Kompetanseløftet - Hele Oppvekst- og kulturavdelingen arbeider med å revidere sine dokumenter i tråd med det som er gjort i BFE

Ansatte i barne- og familieenheten er profesjonsutøvere med spisskompetanse. De bidrar med vurderinger av, og tilrettelegging for ofte svært sårbare barn og unge, og deres foreldre. Sårbarheten i seg selv kan medføre et bevisst eller ubevisst ønske om å skjerme barna, noe som kan hindre medvirkning. I hvilken grad bør barn for eksempel kjenne sin egen diagnose eller gjøres oppmerksom på egne utfordringer, hvis de tilsynelatende ikke er opptatt av det selv? Spisskompetansen øker ekspertisen på de ulike områdene og ekspertsamfunnet kjennetegnes gjerne av en hierarkisk tenking hvor man antar at de med den høyeste utdanningen kan, og vet mest og best. Barna befinner seg naturlig nok nederst i dette hierarkiet, noe som kan medføre at de ikke får tilstrekkelig informasjon, eller mulighet for å bidra til å løse verken sine egne eller familiens utfordringer. Hvor mye bør barn for eksempel involveres i foreldres utfordringer som psykisk sykdom, rus eller foreldreveiledningsbehov? Hvilken informasjon trenger en fireåring om fars bipolare lidelse, eller hvordan kan en seksåring bidra for at pedagogisk psykologisk tjenestes (PPT) sakkyndige vurdering skal være så riktig og presis at spesialpedagogen, i samarbeid med barnet, kan skreddersy et opplegg som vil virke? Profesjonsutøvere har ulike svar på denne type spørsmål, på tross av vår antagelse om at de fleste oppriktig synes at de ivaretar medvirkningen i tråd med det som er rimelig og mulig. Prosjektets hovedproblemstilling er dermed: Hva skal til for at barn som brukere av kommunale tjenester skal oppleve seg som deltagere i sin egen sak, jfr. Barnekonvensjonens art. 12? Problemstillingen skal belyses gjennom spørsmål som: - Hvilken betydning har voksnes syn på barn? - I hvilken grad opplever barn i dag at de er deltagende i egen sak? - Hvordan kan en modell for deltagelse utformes? - Hvilken kompetanse er det behov for?