Centre for Research on Discretion and Paternalism Bergen

Projects

NEW PROJECT: Child Protection Systems Across the World

CPS-WORLD aims to conduct groundbreaking research by examining the empirical foundation of an emerging, global typology of child protection systems – systems imbued with the legal authority and responsibility to intervene into the private sphere of the family. The main objective of the project is to examine defining elements of child protection systems and their boundaries by analyzing public and judiciary perspectives across the world, enabling empirical advancements and theoretical innovations.

Group of serious diverse kids looking at camera standing by window with arms folded in hall at school or educational center. Success, confidence in future, conflict resolution in children's community

Children's Right to Participation

Children’s right to participate in matters affecting them is a fundamental right in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Still, reports from children themselves and research shows that children are not involved and do not participate as the Convention and the laws prescribe. The primary objective of this project is to generate new knowledge, develop new measures, and build research expertise that enables society to address the challenge of children’s participation.

Microphone in focus against blurred crowd. Political rally.

Legitimacy Challenges

“LEGITIMACY CHALLENGES” aims to reveal conditions and mechanisms for sustaining legitimacy in societies in which there is a backlash on social and political right developments. The project will be the most comprehensive cross-country study ever undertaken on this topic, and it is pioneering in its empirical and critical ambition to understand the rationale behind what seem to be a strong citizen driven mobilization against established institutions in democratic welfare states.

Many books isolated on white

County Social Welfare Board Decisions in Child Protection Cases

“County Social Welfare Board Decisions in Child Protection Cases” (BARN-NEMND) is an infrastructure project whose primary objective is to develop a new database on care order decisions in Norway.

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Discretion and the Child’s Best Interest in Child Protection

The research project “Discretion and the child’s best interests in child protection” aims to unlock the black box of discretionary decision-making in child protection cases by a comparative-empirical study of how discretionary decisions are made and justified in the best interests of the child.

TOPSHOT - Iraqi children play on a street in the capital Baghdad on September 12, 2016, on the first day of Eid al-Adha holiday.
Muslims across the world celebrate the annual festival of Eid al-Adha, or the festival of sacrifice, which marks the end of the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca and commemorates prophet Abraham's readiness to sacrifice his son to show obedience to God. / AFP PHOTO / Ahmad al-Rubaye

The Acceptability of Child Protection Interventions: A cross-country analysis

This project examines the population´s values and interpretations of the child´s best interests principle within different societies, as well at the courts justifications of their best interests judgments. The principle of the child´s best interests is recognized by all states, but it is a principle that is controversial and contested within and between welfare states.

Silhouette of family on the beach at dusk.

Cosmopolitan Turn and Democratic Sentiments: The Case of Child Protection Services

The CONSENT-project empirically examines the extent to which the CRC is considered to be relevant in democratic assemblies and legal regulations, if it corresponds to the nature of trust people have in child protection services, and if it can be identified in professional practices.

Young professional psychologist in casualwear listening to little patient with teddy while sitting in front of her

Cross-national Experiences of Foster Care

This project explores the differences between Norwegian and US welfare state ideologies, focusing specifically on child welfare.

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Music and Participation

“Music and Participation” will investigate how minor migrants’ experience arts-based activities, and use such insights to inform the fields of music therapy and practices within child welfare/refugee work.

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Child Rights Unit

The Child Rights Unit at LawTransform seeks to address normative, legal and empirical research questions. The unit aims to understand the role of law and administrative, political and judicial institutions as well as ideas, interpretations and practices around children´s rights that are embedded in societies cultural practices.