Doing cooperation: a co-study with Landsforeningen for barnevernsbarn and Sarpsborg to enhance support for vulnerable children and youth

Well-coordinated services are necessary to improve the situation for vulnerable children and youth. Research however shows that this often represents a challenge for the welfare services. The aim of this project is to investigate how child welfare services and other welfare services cooperate in relation to the individual child in order to identify ways to strengthen the cooperation. This research project is a collaboration between researchers from Norwegian Social Research (NOVA) and Nord University, the Norwegian organization for children in care and Sarpsborg municipality. As “vulnerable children and youth” we have identified three groups: Refugee children, children as victims and perpetrators of violence and children in residential care. To gain necessary information we will interview children and young people as well as employees in different welfare services. We will also observe coordination between services in settings where this takes place. In addition, we will analyze the formal framework for collaborative work (policy documents and legislation). Through our analyses we will produce new knowledge about both strengths and risks related to coordinative efforts among welfare services when offering support to vulnerable children and young people.

We aim to develop new insights and comprehensive knowledge on how cooperation around vulnerable children is done in practice and how collaborative practices can be improved to enhance the support necessary to fulfil children's rights. Our in-depth qualitative research is developed, and will be conducted in, close partnership with Sarpsborg municipality and the National Association for Children in Child Welfare. We combine methods to gain a multifaceted understanding of cooperative interactions, encompassing perspectives of children, youth, their families, welfare professionals, and national and local policymakers. Vulnerable children as a category serves as a recognition of children in need of support and services due to difficult circumstances. Our project narrows the focus to three specific situations of vulnerability: of refugee children, of children in contexts of violence, and of children living in Child Welfare Service (CWS) institutions that demand specific configurations of cooperation and present specific dilemmas: refugee children as children and refugees, children in violence as risky and at-risk, and children in institutions as spatially separated. CWS are involved with the three groups and will be our point of departure for our investigation of cooperative interactions. We will conduct ethnographic studies and co-analyses with practitioners in services and analyse national and local policy and legal documents in light of local practices, and employ innovative methods to access perspectives of children themselves. Expected outcomes: •Nuanced up-to-date descriptions of cooperative interactions to support children in three types of vulnerable situations •Understanding of frontline workers' dilemmas in their cooperative efforts to support children in vulnerable situations •Novel insights into childrens' experiences of collaborative efforts across services •Clear recommendations for future practice built on findings generated with children and practitioners