Introducing Child Rights Advocates into Sweden's Family Service-Oriented Child Welfare Field-Boundary Work and Institutional Tensions

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.