Ph.d.-profil: Frøydis Petersen Jensen

This PhD project focuses on children’s right to participation in decision-making in the Norwegian child protection system, with emphasis on children’s right to indirect participation through representatives.

In line with national legislation, children in Norway have a right to participate in all matters that concern them (Child Protection Act, 2021, § 1-4), which includes the different phases of a child protection case. If the child protection agency sees the necessity of an out-of-home placement to protect a child from harm or neglect, the case proceeds to the Child Welfare Tribunal (hereafter ‘the Tribunal’) (Skivenes, 2011). For this PhD project and its focus on the representation of children, my attention is on the phase where a child protection case has proceeded to the Tribunal (i.e., a court-like body) for a decision on involuntary measures.

More specifically, my PhD project focuses on the spokesperson arrangement in the Norwegian child protection system. Children have a right to express their views in cases before the Tribunal and can do so in different ways, including through children’s spokespersons (2021, § 14-13). The role of the spokesperson is to forward the child’s views and opinions to the Tribunal, both through a written report and orally as a witness (Regulation on the child’s spokesperson in Child Welfare Tribunal matters, 2013).

This PhD dissertation is article-based. The first article will be an international scoping review on children’s indirect participation/representation in child protection decision-making processes, which aims at identifying and mapping available evidence in the research field (Munn et al., 2018). For further data collection, I will distribute an online survey to spokespersons in Norway to identify structural mechanisms for detecting and correcting misunderstandings between spokespersons and children, drawing on organizational theory (Jacobsen & Thorsvik, 2019).