The analysis I undertook for this book was part of a larger, tenyear, mixed-methods research project entitled CHILDPRO, which compared the child protection systems of England, Norway, and the US between 2007 and 2017. The project was funded by the Norwegian Research Council and managed by Marit Skivenes, Professor at the University of Bergen (UiB), Norway, and director of the Centre for Research on Discretion and Paternalism at UiB. We selected these countries because they represent different types of child welfare systems (Gilbert et al, 2011). The research sites within each country were largely chosen for practical considerations, especially accessibility.

For this book, I used a portion of the qualitative data material we gathered in Norway and the US. The aim of the qualitative interviews was to learn how child protection workers in the three countries viewed children's participation, experienced their collaboration with the police and courts, undertook practice with immigrant children, youth and families, and thought of their respective country's child protection policies. The project, including the ethics procedures, was vetted by the ombudsman for research with human subjects in Norway. The study was peer-reviewed during the funding application process in Norway.

Data collection

Dr Marit Skivenes, the principal investigator for the project, recruited the study participants by approaching two municipalities in Norway and child welfare agencies in two cities in California. In Norway, the research was conducted in Sandefjord and Stavanger between January and March 2008. In each municipality, Dr Skivenes interviewed 14 participants. (The towns allowed the project to identify their names in publications. The interview transcripts were de-identified in other ways before analyses were conducted.) In Norway, the municipalities provided the project with email addresses of social workers employed by the respective municipality. Dr Skivenes sent out an invitation email to all the workers in the agency, including those who conducted investigations at the front end of cases and those responsible for providing ongoing services. The research in the US was carried out in two cities in California. The heads of the child protection agencies in the two cities were approached about participating in the study.