The Centre for Children & Youth, Vulnerability, and Social Preparedness

Despite Norway's high level of prosperity and good social services, many children and young people live in vulnerable situations. Many are also at risk of dropping out of school and social communities. The Centre for Children and Youth and Social Preparedness brings together research, education, and practice to address these societal challenges, also involving children and young people in research design, exploration, data analysis and dissemination. Focusing on vulnerable life situations and social preparedness, the interdisciplinary centre draws attention to social rather than individual vulnerability factors. Social preparedness is about developing an understanding of the social glue in society, mobilising resources in the public sector and in civil society and creating schemes that counteract exclusion. These can be critical incidents in everyday life, such as bullying or abuse, or major events that are critical to society, such as the corona epidemic. The centre will generate knowledge about social preparedness as an approach to early intervention for children and young people in vulnerable life situations. We will contribute knowledge about how ‘co-operation’ and ‘vulnerability’ have been defined, understood, and applied. Furthermore, we will contribute knowledge about how the school, together with the child, the family, the local community, and public actors, can establish early social preparedness to identify and provide support to those who are at risk of experiencing exclusion. Together with students, a number of actors in the field of practice and our international collaboration network, we will develop and test research-based collaboration models and emergency response exercises across subjects, disciplines, services, and sectors. The idea is that this knowledge can be used to improve both practices and systems and form the basis for developing teaching programmes that can strengthen both professional education and practices.

Despite the relatively high wealth and robust social services in Norway, more Norwegian children and youth (C&Y) live in vulnerable situations than we might or should expect. Poverty is one factor that increases vulnerability, as does domestic and sexual abuse, and bullying and exclusion in school. C&Y who have endured these adverse contexts and conditions have a greater incidence of contact with child welfare services, of becoming juvenile crime offenders, and of being over-represented among those with low school performance. This proposal aims to establish a research centre that will coalesce its efforts in research, education, and practice to respond to these prevailing social challenges. By focusing on "children and youth in vulnerable life situations" rather than "vulnerable youth" we aim to refocus attention onto social, rather than individual, factors of vulnerability. Rather than treating vulnerability as a static concept, we start from a rigorous examination of how it has been defined, applied, and understood both institutionally and by C&Y themselves, by involving C&Y in both research design, exploration, data- analysis and dissemination. The PrepChild centre will focus on public social preparedness and the need to prevent marginalisation by redeveloping and optimising the conditions – in domestic spheres, educational arenas, social & digital domains, and local communities – of the lives of C&Y. Doing so effectively, however, requires more rigorous and critically informed collaboration between sectors & institutions, and our centre begins from an analysis of how 'collaboration' and 'vulnerability' have been engaged, understood, misunderstood, and misapplied. The PrepChild centre will become the hub for a nexus of research, education, and practice on social preparedness that can be applied through up-to-date training & exercises and collaboration across subjects, disciplines, services, & sectors.