Peer-reviewed article
Introducing Child Rights Advocates into Sweden's Family Service-Oriented Child Welfare Field-Boundary Work and Institutional Tensions
Hedvig Nylén ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-sonnet-5-5This study looks at how child advocacy is emerging as a professional field within Sweden's child welfare system. It is based on interviews with twelve employees of Swedish children's rights organisations. The authors use institutional theory and theories of professional projects to examine how child rights advocates build expertise around children's rights. They describe how advocates negotiate boundaries with child welfare authorities and try to shape what counts as 'good' social work practice.
Key points
- Child advocacy is a relatively new and underexplored phenomenon in Sweden.
- The study is based on semi-structured interviews with twelve employees of Swedish children's rights organisations.
- Child rights advocates are emerging as a professional domain in Sweden.
- Advocates do boundary work, constructing expertise and negotiating professional boundaries in relation to child welfare authorities.
- Advocates build expertise around children's rights as a cultural-cognitive and normative framework, which lets them influence understandings of good social work practice and authority.
Limitations
The study rests on a small sample of twelve interviewees from children's rights organisations, so it reflects advocates' own views and not those of children, families or welfare authorities. It does not measure outcomes for children and does not evaluate whether child advocacy improves their well-being.
Abstract
Child advocacy is a relatively new and underexplored phenomenon in Sweden. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with twelve employees of Swedish children’s rights organisations, this study explores the emergence of child advocacy as a professional domain within the institutional field of child welfare in Sweden. Child advocacy is conceptualised as an idea translated into the Swedish context. The analysis draws on institutional theory and theories of professional projects, with particular attention to professionals as agents of institutional change.The study suggests that child rights advocates is emerging as a professional domain in Sweden. Viewed as a professional project, child advocacy involves boundary work through which expertise is constructed and professional boundaries are negotiated in relation to child welfare authorities. Swedish child rights advocates can be understood as part of both internal and external processes within the field of social work, through which they construct expertise around children’s rights as a cultural-cognitive and normative framework. As such, child rights advocates assume a position from which to influence understandings of ‘good’ social work practice and authority within the field. Child advocacy is further discussed in relation to developments in social work as a professional field shaped by boundary work and broader societal transformations.