Violence against children, children’s rights, and society’s response: Implications of child welfare services’ handling of abuse for children’s access to protection and support

Abstract in English

The overall aim of this thesis was to examine aspects of children’s access to societal protection and support in the context of Swedish child welfare services’ (CWS) handling of cases concerning physical and sexual child abuse. The focus was on CWS’s police reporting and decisions on protective and supportive measures, professional discretion and investigative strategies, the application of children’s rights to participation and protection, and children’s voices regarding violence, as documented in CWS case files.

CWS case files, based on 291 reports, were analyzed using quantitative content analysis (including assessments of the severity and suspicion of violence) and thematic analysis. Additionally, semi-structured interviews with 16 supervising social workers were analyzed through thematic analysis.

Children’s accounts of violence in the case files revealed experiences shaped by power and control, significantly impacting their lives. In contrast, although 60.1% of the children disclosed abuse, 70.7% of the CWS investigations were concluded without protection or support measures. CWS typically refrained from reporting to the police, and only 8.2% of the cases resulted in decisions to implement protective or supportive measures related to violence, despite indications of a serious situation in 35.5% of the cases. The findings revealed a broad exercise of professional discretion — shaped by professionals’ conceptions of the child welfare system — that resulted in divergent strategies for handling child abuse and posed significant risks of unequal access to protection and support. A paradoxical practice entailing either protection from participation or unprotected autonomy was identified, illustrating how a unilateral view of children as either incompetent/vulnerable or autonomous risks undermining both participation and protection rights, and often denies them recognition as epistemic subjects.

The main contribution of this thesis lies in its illumination of the complex and paradoxical dynamics through which children disclose violence, while their accounts are simultaneously marginalized or ignored in decision-making processes — ultimately rendering them voiceless and denying them their rights as rights-bearing subjects. By integrating the participatory framework of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child with Fricker’s theory of epistemic injustice, the silencing of children’s voices can be conceptualized as a form of structural discrimination that undermines the realization of their human rights. Recognizing children’s voices in CWS case files as epistemically authoritative contributes to a deeper understanding of child abuse as a phenomenon shaped by power and control, highlighting the importance of acknowledging children as both vulnerable and competent social actors.