ABSTRACT
Throughout the 1990s, childcare policy in many European countries has come under the influence of the discourse of the child's perspective: one emphasising children's rights, own viewpoints and competencies. In this chapter, the author begins by describing the setting, data and approach of the her research. She examines the prevailing ways by which the participant status of children is defined in the interactions of children, parents and professionals in studied child protection encounters. The position of children is shaped by three different frames of action. The frames of children's rights, of family centred action and of peers all construct in differing ways the participant status or position of children. On the other hand, however, the implications of this different framings are mixed and ambiguous. In the chapter, the author's analyses child protection works as embedded in institutional discourses and concludes with a discussion of the authors’ findings and their implications for child protection practices.
