Parent ability in the eyes of the court : A qualitative content analysis of judgements on child custody removal

Social services have one of society's most important responsibilities: to protect children from being exposed to neglect, abuse, and other conditions that may harm their health and development. However, social services have faced criticism for inaccurate assessment of parental capabilities and for the inherent difficulty in evaluating such abilities. In addition to this, the criteria in LVU have been found to be too vague. Therefore, it is vital for research within social work to analyze how parental ability is constructed in the court and whether certain family constellations are seen as more risky than others. This study is a qualitative document analysis of judgments from the administrative court. The judgements were collected from courts and analyzed through a qualitative content analysis where the process consists of coding the material and finding different patterns and themes. The result of the study shows that parental ability is constructed partially based on social services investigations and an ideal that can be traced to the middle class. The lack of parental ability is primarily found among single mothers, which makes this group seem riskier than others in decisions regarding 2 § LVU.