When the Norwegian child-welfare services get involved: parents making sense of referrals

There is limited research exploring parents' views and understanding of referrals to the child-welfare services (CWS). This study explores parents' understanding of the circumstances leading to a child-welfare referral, and their understanding of the reporter's objectives in making the referral. Qualitative content analysis and frequency analysis was performed on open-ended survey responses from a sample of 683 Norwegian parents in contact with the CWS. The results showed that the majority (60.2%) of the parents perceived the referral to be initiated solely because of parental difficulties and multiple family life stressors. Some of the parents (22.8%) believed the referrals were initiated exclusively because of their children's problems, whereas a few (13.3%) perceived it to be a combination of parental/familial difficulties and children's problems. The findings reveal that close to half of the parents (46.4%) felt the objective of the person making the referral was to help the child, their parents and the family. Some (36.5%) saw it as a routine or mandated action by public or official services, while others (18.7%) reported that they did not know why referrals had been made, or gave no answer to the question. A small group of parents (6%) viewed the referral as an act of harassment. The main implications of these findings are discussed.