Swedish Child Protection under the CRC: Application of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in the Social Work Assessments

Abstract

After reviewing previous researches regarding the child care system in Sweden, the actual application of the Convention on the Rights of the Child seems questionable. Sweden has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990 and has adopted its principles into the domestic law regarding the child welfare system. The aim of the present study is to examine how the CRC is applied in the social work practice. The research questions that aimed to be answered are how do the social workers in Sweden implement the CRC in the child assessment process? To what extent does the domestic Swedish Child Protection setting favor CRC functioning? Moreover, to what degree do children actively participate in their own welfare assessment? A qualitative method of interviewing was used applied on five social workers of different municipal child welfare offices. Meaning condensation was the main tool used to analyze the gathered data. According to the findings, social workers do apply the CRC indications in their assessments and intervention planning however the predominant guidelines they use are the instructions of the domestic legislation such as BBIC and SSA. The latter ones allow social workers to act flexibly in the decision-making process based on their professionalization and discretion. Finally, the children‘s participation is the main focus of the social workers while conducting assessments, yet it is not always feasible due to law‘s restrictions regarding the age and maturity of the child as well as the social workers‘ estimations regarding those aspects. The interconnection between the findings will be analyzed and discussed further. Theories used to analyze the findings are the organizational theory including the street-level bureaucracy approach and the service providers‘ professionalization and discretion as well as the organizational culture approach in order to define how and why social workers function under certain ways. The sociology of childhood was applied in order to understand how children are included and allowed to participate in the social welfare. Finally, the human rights- based approach was used since human rights are the core stone of the present study.