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.

This article addresses the ‘temporal black box’ of care by exploring how children and social workers view the first months in care. Although practice and policy are built on time in different ways (for example, long- and short-term care), very little attention has so far been given to the different temporalities included in care. The focus here is on interpretative practices of addressing time instead of describing the use of time or measuring its use. The data consists of interviews with children in care as well as surveys and workshops with social workers in two Finnish municipalities. The analysis highlights children’s temporal agency, and how they navigate between the present, past and future when in care for the first months. Social workers’ view on time is described in particular in terms of organisational and professional time and their clash. In both views, time is deeply interwoven with social relations and systems, so it is argued that the complexity and multidimensionality of time should be recognised in child welfare research, practice and policy.

Contemporary adult discussions often set up strong, even unchallenged norms of what things in the home promote children’s well-being and what constitutes a threat to it. This article examines children’s own descriptions of their homes and their standpoints on what is a good and proper life at home. The analysis focuses on the interview talk of child clients of Finnish child welfare. Children’s talk of home is characterized by positiveness, the presence of mother and scarcity of words. Home talk was not tinged with worry and problems. The study shows that children also have personal moral standpoints related to their homes. The children regard their homes as places of reciprocal obligations and responsibilities. Just as the adults have a moral obligation to look after the daily life at home, the children and the livelihood, the children also must look after the adults in situations where the adults have not enough energy, time or capability. The results argue for the need to rethink ‘adultist’ and professional norms of homes as a platform to promote the good life of children.

This article is based on a study of children's experiences of being in care in which children were given the opportunity to choose either their own social worker or an outside researcher to interview them for the purposes of the research. The starting point of the study was that children's views are necessary to inform child welfare research and practice. However, as the topic is sensitive, there is a need to give children different options to participate in research. In this article, we examine how the children (N=17) describe their choice of interviewer and also explore how the social workers (N=8) experience their role as research interviewers. The findings highlight that there is no single reason for children for choosing either a social worker or a researcher to be the interviewer. Familiarity in particular can either be a motivation or an obstacle. The dual positions of children as research interviewees and as clients as well as the dual positions of social workers both supported and hindered the interviews. Social workers reported new insights into their knowledge about children's views as a result of the research interview experience. It is argued that the choice of the interviewer may be an option for some children to have their voice heard in research. Ethical balancing and critical dialogue are also suggested as having a role.