The Child Welfare Service is responsible for protecting the rights and interests of children with a difficult family situation. The service seeks to ensure that children receive adequate care and to prevent them from being subjected to extreme physical and psychological stressors.
The underlying principle governing all child welfare efforts is devotion to the child’s best interests. As a general rule, it is assumed that children will grow up with their biological parents. This biological criterion forms the foundation for Norwegian legislation regulating the relationship between children and parents. A child’s affiliation with its parents is considered to be a resource in and of itself.
The Child Welfare Service works to ensure that families have the best possible conditions for taking care of their children. Activities are thus by definition preventative. In addition, efforts are aimed at ensuring that children and young people are not excluded from community life within their own neighbourhood environments. Norwegian child policy attaches great importance to further refining and disseminating family and neighbourhood environment-based work methods throughout the child welfare services.
Support and assistance
The Child Welfare Service is responsible for implementing measures for children and their families in situations where there are special needs in relation to the home environment. Assistance may be provided as counselling, advisory services and aid measures. Common aid measures include external support contacts, relief measures in the home and access to day-care.
Children are also entitled to participate in decisions involving their personal welfare, and have the right to state their views in accordance with their age and level of maturity. This applies especially in cases where there are administrative and legal proceedings that will strongly affect the children’s day-to-day lives.
Required to take action – even against parental wishes
The child welfare services are required to take action if measures implemented in the home environment are not sufficient to safeguard the child’s needs. In such cases, the Child Welfare Service in consultation with the parents may place children under foster care, in a child welfare institution, or introduce specific parent-child measures. Removing a child from the home without parental consent requires a decision from the County Committee for Social Affairs on the basis of a recommendation submitted by the municipal authorities. The county committee is a government body with an autonomous position in relation to the ministry and the Office of the County Governor. Decisions taking by the county committee may only be overturned by the courts. The county committees are administered under the auspices of the Ministry of Children and Equality.
The municipal child welfare services are charged with monitoring the development of children who have been placed in care outside their homes as well as their parents.
Child welfare service employees are privy to a large amount of personal client information, and must comply with strict rules of confidentiality. However, information may be provided to other administrative agencies when this is necessary to carrying out child welfare service tasks.
The responsibilities and tasks of the child welfare authorities are stipulated in the Act relating to child welfare services. The overall responsibility for child welfare lies with the state through the Ministry of Children and Equality, while the administration of child welfare services is primarily carried out at the municipal level and through the Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs.