Only children know the perspective of the child

Changefactory is a Norwegian knowledge centre set up with one purpose – to find out how public services for children can be improved by directly asking children themselves. The knowledge centre has published around 50 reports with responses from over 14,000 children. Children and youth themselves, called “pros”, present the main findings of these reports to professionals, students, decision makers, and politicians. This perspective article uses the combined knowledge from these children to present demands to researchers undertaking research on public services for children. The demands originate from children’s lived experiences of public services that did not work optimally for them and their frustration over adult professionals’ uncritical faith in methods and programs on “how to help children”. How can adults know what works for children if children have not been directly involved in developing and evaluating services? Through Changefactory’s work, it has become evident that knowledge from children, presented on its own without interpretation and theorization from adults, is rare. It has also become clear that when this type of knowledge is not easily available public services lose out on chances to improve their quality.