Family Counselling: Equal Services for a Diverse Population?

The researchers investigate what it implies for the family services to provide equal services in different local contexts, and what kind of challenges the services experience when trying to provide equal services.

The family services provide family therapy to those who struggle in their relationships and they provide obligatory mediation to couples who want to separate and that have children age 16 or younger.

One overreaching goal in the family services is to provide equal services to families all over Norway. Today there exists 42 services and with subdivisions the service is to be found in 90 different locations in Norway.

In recent years there has been an increased attention to family violence and children as clients and one overarching question is in what ways such attention inflicts on therapist working conditions. 

Research questions

Two main questions in this project are:

1. What does it imply to provide equal services in different local contexts? 
2. What kind of challenges does the services experience when trying to provide equal services for people who live with violence, to children and youth, and to people that find the services unavailable to them.

Sub projects

The research project is divided into four research sub projects:

1. By conduction analyses of official documents, we are going to do a theoretical groundwork to ensnare out how family is conceptualized in these official documents and discuss the consequences of for the family services.
2. In what ways has the attention to family violence in recent years in the family services affected the service provision, and what are the clients’ experiences of this turn? 
3. How are the services adapted to provide help to children and youth?
4. Are the family services tailored to meet the needs of a diverse population?

To answer these questions we are, in addition to the documentary analyses, conducting case studies involving in-depth interviews with managers, employees, associates of the services, children and youth, and adult clients.