Despite relatively high prosperity and good social services in Norway, many Norwegian children and young people live in vulnerable life situations. Many are also at risk of falling outside school and social communities. The Centre for Children and Young People and Social Preparedness bring together efforts in research, education and practice to meet these societal challenges, where children and young people will also be involved in research design, exploration, data analysis and dissemination. With a focus on vulnerable life situations and social preparedness, the interdisciplinary centre focuses on social, rather than individual, vulnerability factors.
Social preparedness is about developing an understanding of the social glue in society, mobilising resources in the public and civil society, and creating schemes that counteract exclusion. These can be critical events in everyday life, such as bullying or abuse, or major socially critical events, such as the corona epidemic is an example of.
The centre works to generate knowledge about social preparedness as an approach to early intervention around children and young people in vulnerable life situations. We will contribute knowledge about how "cooperation" and "vulnerability" have been defined, understood and applied, and how vulnerability arises in practice.
Furthermore, we will contribute knowledge about how the school, together with children and young people, the family, the local community and public actors, can establish an early social preparedness to identify and provide support to those who are at risk of being excluded early on and provide support.
Together with students, several actors in the field of practice and our international collaboration network, we have started work to facilitate the development and testing of research-based collaboration models and emergency preparedness exercises across subjects, disciplines, services and sectors. The idea is that the knowledge can be used to improve both practices and systems, as well as form the basis for developing teaching programmes that can strengthen both professional education and practices.
PrepChild has organised its research into six work packages:
1) Understanding vulnerability and risk; mapping how the concepts are used and understood in policy documents, research and teaching literature in a Norwegian and Nordic context.
2) Children and young people's participation and their perspectives on vulnerability, risk and what supports them.
3) Longitudinal field study; a three-year study of pupils from 5th grade to secondary school, on transitions and inclusion in school as an arena for everyday life and learning.
4) Collaboration in critical situations; how different actors collaborate when children and young people are in crisis.
5) Social preparedness; development of collaboration models and social preparedness exercises for critical incidents and situations, for example bullying, or situations involving violence or abuse.
6) Centre management, development of knowledge systems and communication.
In Prepchild's start-up year, we have had a special focus on planning the research activity, recruitment of 3 PhD candidates and 1 post doc position, establishment of infrastructure and anchoring work at Nord University, organizational development, establishment of centre- facilities, plan for communication and dissemination, establishment of closer collaboration with partners in the field of practice nationally and internationally, through a number of collaboration meetings and seminars.
We have had a particular focus on establishing a good collaboration with Med ungdom i fokus, which is a foundation with young people, which is one of the partners, which provides advice and assists in the work of planning and facilitating children and young people's participation in research. They have done this, among other things, through various seminars and two films that have contributed input to PrepChild's research.
An important arena for promoting collaboration with the field of practice is the "Partnership for Young Inclusion in Nordland", which consists of Nordland County Council, the County Governor of Nordland, NAV Nordland, KS, Nordland Research Institute, Northern Norway Regional Health Authority and Nord University. The purpose of the partnership is for the parties to become better acquainted with each other's measures and instruments for youth inclusion, develop forms of cooperation and cooperate in specific areas. The partnership will jointly establish and arrange an annual childhood conference. The partnership work is concretised through two-year cooperation plans on topics where the entire partnership can contribute to strengthening offers and services for children and young people in Nordland.
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.
