This is a research project on child welfare services in Norway, Finland, England and USA. The aim is to identify decisive factors and mechanisms in different welfare state arrangements and child welfare systems that promote or hinder high quality decision-making in the best interest of children and families.
We are a group at the University of Bergen that conduct research on children´s rights. Pro Bono is a Latin phrase for professional work and research undertaken voluntarily without payment and for the benefit of the public good. We believe that working for children and young individual’s rights is a particularly important social responsibility. In […]
Teachers as Street-Level Bureaucrats. An Analysis of Mandated Reporting and Professional Discretion
Master thesis, University of Bergen. 2017. Original title: «Slik gjør vi det her» En kvalitativ vignettstudie av læreres skjønnsutøvelse i henhold til lovpålagt meldeplikt Abstract: Denne studien søker å belyse læreres skjønnsutøvelse i henhold til meldeplikten. For å gå i dybden av problemstillingen; «Hvordan utøver lærere skjønn i sine vurderinger av elevers omsorgssituasjon i henhold til […]
Master thesis, University of Bergen (2017) Original Title: Sakkyndige som «demokratiets sorte hull»? En vignettstudie av sakkyndige psykologers vurderinger av barnevernssaker Abstract: Denne studien er en kvantitativ vignettstudie som undersøker hvordan barnefaglige sakkyndige psykologer og psykologspesialister vurderer emosjonell og fysisk omsorgssvikt hos spedbarn (N=116). Undersøkelsen ble sendt ut til alle barnefaglige sakkyndige psykologer og psykologspesialister […]
Influence and Legitimacy: Civil Society Organizations and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child
Master thesis, University of Bergen (2017). Abstract: The Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is a UN Treaty body with the mandate to assess the State parties’ adherence to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This assessment is carried out in a periodic reporting process, where the CRC receives information about […]
The need for improved child welfare systems is urgent worldwide, because we know that the outcome for children in these systems is unsatisfactory, and the evidence for the correlations between childhood neglect and abuse and adult well-being is well-documented, e.g. in the Adverse Childhood Experiences studies. The aim of this NFR-funded project is to identify […]
Universitetsforlaget. 2016-2017
The Acceptability of Child Protection Interventions: A Cross-Country Analysis
This project examines the population´s values and interpretations of the child´s best interest’s principle within different societies, as well at the courts justifications of their best interest’s judgments. The principle of the child´s best interests is recognized by all states, but it is a principle that is controversial and contested within and between welfare states. […]
Discretion and the Child’s Best Interest in Child Protection
The research project “Discretion and the child’s best interests in child protection” aims to unlock the black box of discretionary decision-making in child protection cases by a comparative-empirical study of how discretionary decisions are made and justified in the best interests of the child. There are huge research gaps in this important area of the […]
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is a legal document with global reach and thus has a cosmopolitan imprint. The CRC is the most far-reaching document that explicitly states the rights of children. The convention serves young human beings, the child, and constitute a critical standard that can and should be […]