Iris Marita Rønningen Helgesen is a PhD candidate at the Department of Social Work, Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences, NTNU. She holds a bachelor’s degree in social work and a master’s degree in child welfare from NTNU. Her professional background includes work as a milieu therapist in child welfare institutions and schools, support for youth at risk, experience from the child welfare service’s youth team, and administrative work within health and welfare benefits. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she also contributed as a contact tracer in Trondheim.
Her doctoral research examines parents with cognitive difficulities in child welfare contexts, with a focus on parenting norms, disabling barriers, and lived experiences of parenting. She also studies how child welfare services assess and engage with this parent group, emphasizing dignity and rights in encounters between families and welfare services. As part of her PhD, she has conducted a scoping review mapping social workers’ approaches to parents with cognitive disabilities, and she continues her work through qualitative interviews with parents and child welfare professionals.
Grounded in human rights perspectives, Helgesen aims to contribute to knowledge development that promotes dignity, rights, and quality in child welfare practice and welfare services.
