To be summoned to barnahus: Children’s perspectives

Abstract

This chapter presents and analyses children’s narratives about being summoned to, arriving at and visiting a Barnahus. The children felt welcomed as guests, but hard work awaited them in the police investigative interview in front of frightening cameras and with strangers watching in an adjacent room. The children found that they needed more information about what was going on and why. From the children’s perspective, Barnahus became a house where children meet the police in serious matters. This chapter concludes with suggestions for further research and reflections for practitioners in consideration of children’s experiences of procedures and of being addressed as non-acting objects-instead of the acting subjects, the children talked about themselves as being, and acted as, in the research interviews.