Child welfare workers' perceptions of children's participation: a comparative study of E ngland, N orway and the USA ( C alifornia)

This paper examines how child welfare workers in E ngland, N orway and the USA ( C alifornia) perceive children's participation building on 91 qualitative interviews. First, analysing the data using H art's ladder of children's participation, we found that all N orwegian workers perceived children's participation as some form of decision‐making, whereas 40% of E nglish and 35% of US workers embraced views of children's participation that can be considered token or non‐participation. Second, we coded the data for main themes and found that child welfare workers in all three countries perceived children's participation as hearing the child's opinion and information gathering . The themes of age , maturity and ability to form an opinion also emerged from the data. E nglish workers' reflections about children's participation were more nuanced than their N orwegian and US counterparts; and US workers understood children's participation as children providing valuable information during the investigation of a case more frequently than workers in E ngland and N orway. We discuss the implications of these findings on future research.