The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine how the Convention on the Rights of the Child [CRC] as a new law is perceived in financial aid. Furthermore, the study aimed to examine how the employees in financial aid perceive their work with the participation of children since the CRC became law. The study has all throughout been analysed with the perspective of social constructivism.   Six social workers with different roles in financial aid were interviewed. The gathered material was then analysed with content analysis. Through the content analysis, three categories developed: how “participation” is constructed; the construction of the perspective of the child and “the best interest of the child”; perception of the implementation process of article 12. The material was then analysed with the perspective of social constructivism and with the Lundy model. The results indicate that the social workers find it hard to implement article 12 in financial aid. The social workers also seem to have different constructions for the word “participation”.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how children who have been exposed to violence between their parents are involved in the social workers investigation process. For this study the empirical material has been collected through six qualitative and semi-structured interviews with social workers who are working with child protection cases. Through the study we explore social workers' descriptions of the children's involvement, and what factors they emphasize as limiting and enabling for the children's participation in the investigation process. By an analysis with the help of The Lundy model and Shier’s model of participation, we found out that children's age and maturity are a recurring pattern in terms of the extent to which children become involved and how their opinions are taken into account in the investigation process. The interviewees emphasize that there are different ways to involve the children based on children's different conditions, for example through observations and conversation methods. There are no one-sided explanations of how children exposed to violence were involved in social workers' investigation processes, but participation was influenced by a number of factors. The factors that the interviewees describe as limiting and enabling are structures in the organization, laws and methods, and parents.