Att omsätta barnkonventionen i praktiken:En kvalitativ studie av hur kommunövergripande barnrättsarbete påverkar verksamheters implementering Examensarbete i

Abstract

In January 2020 the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) became Swedish law. Many of the rights described in the convention are provided on a local or regional level, close to the children. Municipalities´ implementation of the convention plays therefore an important role in how Sweden fulfils its obligations to respect and protect children’s rights. Surveys made in October 2019 shows that there are big differences between municipalities in how far they have come in their implementation of the CRC. Previous research shows that strategic efforts on an overall level in the municipalities are successful for progress in the implementation of the CRC. But how these strategic efforts in fact influences public officials at the lower levels in the municipalities is, at this point, unclear. The aim of this study is to investigate how four of the most existing efforts on an overall level in municipalities affects public officials in their everyday work with and for children. It also wants to identify challenges and success factors in municipalities child rights work. To answer this research questions, interviews with 19 public officials, in 10 municipalities, were conducted. Half of the municipalities have had an ongoing, strategic work with implementing the CRC, and the other half have not taken any action so fair. The analysis is based on implementation theory and Lundquist´s (1987) theory about the criteria can, will and understand. The results shows no notable difference between the two groups of municipalities. The one with an ongoing strategic work, indeed, can have better pre-conditions to implement the CRC, but their will and awareness about the convention was not automatically higher than in the other group of municipalities. Instead, the results indicates that many of the success factors in child rights work, connects to individual and group factors, instead of only strategies on an overall level. However, the will and understanding of the CRC among public officials is therefore crucial to how well the Swedish public sector fulfils its obligations to respect and protect children’s rights.