Children's view of participation in Swedish Children House and right to partnership with the social worker in the social investigatory process

While the best interest of the child has a long standing in Swedish social work discourse, it's currently challenged and complemented by the themes of rights and of voice. Current critique of social work and ideas on enhancing the quality of services stress the importance of social workers making contact and enticing the participation of parents and children. Thus making the social investigations more of a participatory venture. Assessments, planning, interventions and reviews should be less a punctuated decision and more of a continuous process allowing involvement by clients/users/customers. In the area of child protection there has been a growth of themes that can make up for the rise of goal conflicts. Several initiatives have been taken to amend this situation. Among those is an idea of social workers working from the perspective of being the child's advocate. There has also been critiques of the outcomes of cases were children are exposed to crime especially acts of sexual abuse. To improve cooperation and processing a new institute the Children's House (CH), inspired by the Children's Advocacy Center model, is developed. In a CH professionals; police, prosecutors, health care and social services collaborate. One of the guiding ideas for CH is that the child should have to go to only one place in the investigation. In an ongoing action research study evidence has emerged indicating that the idea of inviting children into partnership, are at risk of being superseded by the priority given to police conducted forensic interviewing. The social workers report difficulties in knowing how to orientate themselves in relation to the child. Also children have voiced that they do not understand the role of the social worker in the proceedings. The objective of the study is to explore children's understanding of CH.