This article explores how leadership in child welfare is practised in a context with co-existing institutional logic. The article is based on a qualitative design using document analyses and semi-structured interviews. The document analysis is based on seven documents and interviews with 20 child welfare managers (CWM). The data indicate that CWMs…

Childhood marginalization is the result of complicated processes that appears difficult to address for policymakers worldwide. Neo-institutional theory enables studies of the complexity of educational organizations, showing how they evolve in responses to their contradictory surroundings and generate unintended social inequality. Three Nordic…

The child welfare service in Norway is in the spotlight internationally after the European Court of Human Rights (EMD) convicted Norway of human rights violations in several child welfare cases. Norwegian child welfare services are presented as having weaknesses in competence, prioritization, structure and supervision. The child welfare service in…

Enhanced Academic Support (EAS) is an intervention designed to improve academic achievement among children who receive support from the child welfare services (CWSs) in the home. We investigated the effects of EAS in a randomized controlled trial in Norway. In total, 82 families who received support from the CWS were included in the study (37 in…

Sexual abuse of children is a growing public health issue, with a substantial proportion of such abuse carried out by other children and young people. Schools and teachers are uniquely placed to prevent and intervene against harmful sexual behaviour (HSB) among children and young people. Yet, for schools to safeguard effectively, they are reliant…

Internationally there has been a movement to reform investigative work in child welfare and protection systems. These reforms have aimed to introduce national frameworks that systematize the way assessments are carried out. Several reports have identified shortcomings in the way that child protection investigations are carried out in Norway.…

In this article, we draw on a case study where the Norwegian Child Welfare services placed an ethnic minority girl, Amara, into foster care. Her sensemaking around being moved into foster care is used as entry point to explore tensions between Amara, her family, and Child Welfare services. Amara's responsibilities within the family conflict with…

The paper explores what lies behind the development of Sámi child protection services in practice. The study is an empirical investigation of how policymakers and child welfare leaders reflect on the challenges and opportunities in this field. All the twelve participants in the study worked in northernmost counties of Norway that are part of the…

Few Nordic studies put children's experiences of social inequality at their centre. This article explores the children's perceptions of their education and well-being within two Nordic cities. The participants in this cross-national comparative qualitative study are children living in polarised urban metropolitan areas in Norway and Sweden. Our…

Political, legal, and educational documents present expectations for teachers who encounter pupils with experiences of domestic violence. Teachers say they lack competence and confidence and experience uncertainty about their role in this area. This study sheds light on teachers' experiences of uncertainty in their encounters with these pupils.…

The discourse surrounding unaccompanied teenagers' migration seems to favor a willing-participant model in their journey to asylum. When such a discourse is prominent, other restrictive measures are taken, such as invoking temporary, limited permits to control the migration of children without an adult. Further, policy frameworks are not…

Based on a qualitative study, this article explores how Norwegian juveniles construct themselves through stories of everyday life in coercive residential care and how this is related to diverging discourses of the child's status in society. The findings reveal two dominant positions of identification--the autonomy position and the responsibility…

This paper reports on student experiences with an interdisciplinary project entitled "The Difficult Conversation", the aim of which was to develop professional competences linked with parental cooperation in heterogeneous social contexts, ethical reflection, pedagogical tact, and judgment skills. Student experiences with the project were…

Lindvig addresses the concern that minority-ethnic users of child welfare services in Norway lack the opportunity to express themselves in literature and public debate. This situation presents ethical and methodological challenges, and it is problematic for a democratic society when research does not give voice to ethnic minorities. Building on…

Drawing on the tradition of childhood studies, this study explores how children's problems are being conceptualised by primary school teachers in Finland and Norway and what kind of institutional childhood is reflected in those conceptualisations. I use thematic content analysis to analyse data derived from two primary schools in Tampere, Finland,…