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Finnish child welfare divides care orders into voluntary and involuntary care orders, based on the consent or objection of different parties. When giving consent to a care order, the parties allow their rights to family life and self-determination to be restricted. This article examines how the voluntary care order differs in practice from the involuntary one and how voluntarism and involuntarism are represented in these two types of care order. Findings: The analysis of 37 care orders highlights different shades of voluntarism and involuntarism as well as formal and informal spheres of consent and objection. The binary distinction between voluntarism and involuntarism becomes problematic. Instead, new forms and arenas for consent and objection, e.g., resistance, become topical in child welfare. Applications: The spectrum of voluntarism and involuntarism should be recognised in every type of child welfare. The study points out several critical points in the dual decision-making system in Finland, in particular informed consent.

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Comprehensive overviews of the use of psychiatric services among children and adolescents placed in out-of-home care (OHC) by child welfare authorities are scarce. We examine specialized service use for psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders among children and adolescents in a total population involving children in OHC. We used the longitudinal administrative data of a complete Finnish birth cohort 1997 (N = 57,174). We estimated risk ratios (RRs) for a range of diagnosed psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders among children in OHC. We also estimated RRs for OHC among those with diagnosed disorders. We used descriptive methods to explore the timing of first entry into OHC relative to the first diagnosis. Among children in OHC, 61.9% were diagnosed with any psychiatric or neurodevelopmental disorder, compared with 18.0% among those never in OHC (RR: 3.7; 95% CI 3.6–3.8). The most common diagnosed disorders among children in OHC were depression and anxiety disorders, neurodevelopmental disorders, and oppositional defiant disorder/conduct disorder (ODD/CD). Among all children with any diagnosis, 18.1% experienced OHC, compared with 2.5% among those without a diagnosis (RR: 7.4; 95% CI 6.9–7.9). Of those diagnosed with self-harm and suicidality, ODD/CD, substance-related disorders, and psychotic and bipolar disorders, 43.5–61.2% experienced OHC. Of the children in OHC receiving psychiatric services, half were diagnosed before first placement in OHC. The majority of children with experience in OHC were diagnosed with psychiatric or neurodevelopmental disorders. They comprised a significant proportion of individuals treated for severe and complex psychiatric disorders and self-harm.

No theoretical framework for the wellbeing of children has yet been developed from the perspectives of the state of the environment and the future of the planet as the children themselves experience them. This article