Experiences of child protection officers working with children in foster care from immigrant background in Stavanger, Norway

Abstract

Abstract A lot has been said about Barnevernet, the child protection agency in Norway and the foster care of children with immigrant backgrounds. However, we seem to know very little about the experiences of child protection officers supporting these children. Therefore, the study aimed to establish the experiences of child protection workers working with foster children from immigrant backgrounds. Specifically, to understand the nature of the support they provide, establish the challenges they face in doing so and explore their strategies. Therefore, a qualitative study followed a social constructivist perspective and used a combination of a focus group discussion and one in-depth- interview. The participants were purposively chosen based on having at least two years of working experience as child protection officers. The selection also used snowballing for the focus group and convenience sampling for in-depth interviews, with the participants coming respectively from Norway's Rogaland and Oslo-Metropolitan regions. Data was collected using a semi-structured interview guide and analysed using thematic analysis. Three main themes emerged from the data: i) We follow the law and guidelines, 2) Expectations as the basis of challenges and iii) Building understanding. Overall, the findings suggest that while child protection officers’ work follows the law and guidelines, they try to build understanding to overcome challenges of expectations that arise mainly out of cultural differences. The findings also revealed that contrary to the negative public perception of child protection services, foster children seem to appreciate the support they get. Similarly, contrary to expectations, some foster children prefer to be placed in native Norwegian homes instead of similar immigrant cultural backgrounds. The implication is that child protection officers must be mindful of cultural differences and strive to match the needs of foster children with immigrant experience by showing empathy, exercising their discretion, and collaborating with all parties involved.