Research and development areas

I am a PhD researcher on the project Involving Children in Record Creation. The project explores how children and young people with an active child welfare case experience their participation in the creation of the documents that professionals write about them—for example, when preparing a notification report, writing case notes, producing status reports, or documenting meetings and conversations with children and young people.

The project builds on my previous work aimed at transforming documentation practices among municipal professionals through the project The Right to One’s Own Story (www.rettentilegenhistorie.dk). To gain insight into how written documentation is experienced by children and young people involved in ongoing child welfare proceedings, I am conducting anthropological fieldwork at four sites where they reside or spend extended periods. Theoretically, the project draws on narrative theory and positioning theory.

The project is anchored at Roskilde University (RUC) and University College Copenhagen (KP), with Professor Hanne Warming serving as principal supervisor and Associate Professor (Docent) and Senior Lecturer Ann-Karina Eske Henriksen as co-supervisor. It is funded by the Welfare and Research Foundation for Social Educators, the Tryg Foundation, the Åse and Ejner Danielsen Foundation, and Roskilde University.

Until June 2026, I served as co-project leader of Placing the Child’s Perspective at the Centre of Documentation in Child Welfare Cases, a four-year research and development project conducted in collaboration with the Danish Welfare Museum, the Danish National Archives, TABUKA, and DAV (see www.rettentilegenhistorie.dk). As part of this work, I designed and delivered professional development programmes for social workers, residential care practitioners, foster care consultants, and other professionals, focusing on how to write respectfully about children, young people, and families, and how to involve them meaningfully in the documentation process.

In 2022, I published the professional book Perspectives from Those You Write About: Children’s and Young People’s Access to Their Case Records (Larsen, 2022). In 2024, I co-authored With the Child on Your Shoulder: Nine Principles for Writing About—and Together With—Children and Young People in Vulnerable Positions (Larsen, Svendsen, & Andersen, 2024). Both publications are intended for practitioners and for professional education programmes, including social work, social education, and teacher education.

I have extensive research-based and practice-oriented expertise in out-of-home care and disability services. As director of a knowledge centre specialising in out-of-home care within the City of Copenhagen, I led a range of action research and methodological development projects, consistently focusing on the perspectives of children and young people. My primary area of expertise is the involvement of children and young people in the creation of written communication and documentation within child welfare services.