Hvordan forstår og vektlegger barnevernarbeidere etnisitet i arbeidet med minoritetsetniske barn og deres familier?

This thesis is based on a vignette study related to the research project CHILDPRO (Norwegian Child Protection in a Comparative Perspective), funded by the Norwegian Research Council under the Welfare Programme. The CHILDPRO project is a major comparative study of child welfare systems in the United States, United Kingdom and Norway. The purpose of this study is to shed light on child protection worker's understanding of culture and ethnicity, and to see how this is reflected in their child welfare work. Do child protection workers relate differently to minority ethnic children and their families, or do they do their evaluations and form their opinions independently of the family's ethnic and cultural affiliation? The study is based on what social workers working in the Norwegian child protection system say about this. What do they perceive as the biggest challenges in working with minority families, and are there special considerations they will take in child welfare work with ethnic minorities? This has resulted in the following theme for the thesis: How do child protection workers understand and emphasize ethnicity in their work with ethnic minority children and their families? The study has a quantitative approach, using the vignette method. A relatively large number of respondents have been given a case study, and were asked to answer questions and give their evaluation and opinions in relation to the case content. A total of 97 social workers in direct client work in the municipal child protection service in Bergen have responded to the vignette. All respondents were introduced to the same child protection case. To reveal what role the child's ethnicity might play, half of them got the case where the family in question was of white Norwegian majority origin, while the other half assessed the same case, but where the child now had a minority ethnic background. The vignette study shows that child protection workers all in all have a color blind" and universalistic approach to child welfare cases. Based on what they themselves say they will do, it seems that they are considering both the general risk, violence issues, and child participation in the same way, whether the child has an ethnic minority or majority background. The child protection workers age or work experience, do not seem to bear significance in relation to how they evaluate the case. However, there are a significant number of child protection workers who show that they have an essensialistic approach to culture and religion. This can be seen in the vignette text responses, where about 20 % argue in a way that make the child's culture and ethnicity a risk in itself. This shows that even though child protection workers have a universalistic approach to issues of ethnic minority children, some of them seem to lack an understanding of the dynamic nature of culture. The conclusion is that the child protection workers need more training in, and a clearer focus on, a contextual understanding of culture. This will help child protection workers to be conscious of their own attitudes, and to understand when and how culture and ethnicity matters in a specific child protection case