ABSTRACT
Participation is a key concept in social trends toward democratisation as well as in realising citizen rights within the fields of health and welfare. This chapter deals with participation as a situated interactional phenomenon, by exploring parents' participation within the context of child welfare investigations in Norway. The role of parents as service users within child welfare in Scandinavian countries differs from traditional user roles in welfare service systems in that the child is understood as the primary client, and the parents as collaboration partners. Positioning is part of how the participants co-ordinate and take part in the verbal realisation of the interactional activities of the actual process. The analysis is structured around the different interactional tasks or activities as they are introduced by the social worker and realised in the verbal communication and interaction between the social worker and the parents as the investigation unfolds.
