To be summoned to Barnahus : children's perspectives

This chapter presents and analyses children’s narratives about becoming summoned to, arriving and visiting a Barnahus. In the children’s perspective Barnahus became a house where children meet the police in serious matters. The children felt welcomed as guests, however hard work waited in the police investigative interview in front of scary cameras and strangers watching in an adjacent room. The children found they had needed more information about what was going on and why. The chapter concludes with suggestions for further research and reflections for practitioners in considerations of children’s experiences of procedures and of becoming addressed as non-acting objects – instead of the acting subjects the children talked about themselves as being and acted as in the research interviews.The chapter is submitted for publication in a book about the Nordic model of Barnahus.Research funders are: Research Platform for collaboration for Health at Kristianstad University, the research group Children's and Young People's Health in social context at Kristianstad University, the Kempe-Carlgrenska Foundations and the Letterstadska foundationChildren in Barnahus – an interdisciplinary study into child perspective