Co-production with digital technologies in Danish child welfare service

Introduction:
This presentation aims to discuss digital co-production in Denmark with vulnerable families in social work. With the latest legislative proposal on the Children's Act (Barnets Lov), the focus is to ensure better participation of children referring to various digital technologies supporting this.

Methods:
This contribution is based on qualitative findings with a participatory practice research approach. The data consist of future workshops, interviews, and a document study.

Results:
There has been a focus on making Denmark one of the leading countries in digitization. Although this is based on strategic cooperation at policy level, the findings show that policy documents rely on each other with intertextuality (Bazermann 2003), and there may still be room to ensure improvement of the possibilities for co-production.

As a finding, power in the relationships between child and family welfare services and families can be both productive and repressive. Such dynamics can therefore have an impact on how they are included or excluded in social work and put them at risk. For some families, the digital options ensure a higher level of protection and participation when they seek formal help.

For some children, participation and protection are challenged as they find it difficult to use the digital systems and they miss someone who can support them in contact with the children with child welfare services.

Conclusion:
On one hand, technologies have the potential to strengthen empowerment for families, yet on the other hand, they can contribute to disempowerment. The digital co-production is often dependent on the number of digital skills which seem to be required prerequisites for participation in digital technologies. Both children and parents participating in the project point out that professionals or civil society organizations can counteract further exclusion.