The Change Factory’s Participation in Social Work Education in Norway

Abstract

Abstract This chapter describes an initiative by children and young people involved with the public child welfare systems in Norway called “My Life Education.” My Life Education is a cooperation between the child welfare programs at the University of South-Eastern Norway (USN), the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), and the Change Factory (Forandringsfabrikken). The Change Factory is made up of children and young people with lived experience in the public child welfare system who seek to improve the public child welfare system based on their experiences and recommendations. The My Life Education project aims to include the lived experiences of children and young people in university-level child welfare training and education. It seeks to improve the participatory competencies of future child welfare workers by developing pedagogical tools to enhance children’s participation. The chapter shows that the experiences of the children and young people and the students participating in the initiative are overwhelmingly positive. The main challenge in academia is for children’s knowledge to be considered equally important as evidence-based scientific knowledge.