Statens Barnehus — Norway's National Network of Children's Houses for Child Victims of Violence and Abuse

Statens Barnehus ('State Children's House') is Norway's national model for responding to child victims and witnesses of violence and sexual abuse, and to vulnerable adults with cognitive impairment. The first centre opened in Bergen in November 2007 under Justice Minister Knut Storberget; the network now covers all 12 police districts through around 17 physical locations, run jointly by the police (host agency), health trusts and child-welfare services under the Ministries of Justice, Health and Children & Families.

Each centre performs court-mandated forensic child interviews under a specialist protocol, alongside medical examination and therapeutic follow-up, so a child is not repeatedly interviewed by different agencies. The barnehus model has since been adopted or adapted in other European countries through the PROMISE Barnahus Network, which counted 26 member countries as of 2022.

In 2024 the network conducted 4,392 facilitated forensic interviews (92% involving children under 16) and 993 medical examinations, employing 175.9 full-time staff including 28 psychologists. A national evaluation (NOVA/OsloMet, 2021), commissioned by the Police Directorate, found the model 'important, highly competent and well-established' but identified a structural weakness: a 'criminal-case dominance' that undermines the intended holistic offer, with the majority of children receiving no medical examination at all — corroborated by the network's own 2024 figures, where only about 23% of interviews were paired with a medical exam, and dental examinations were offered at just 10 of the centres.

A follow-up Directorate of Health report (2022) identified seven specific shortcomings, including insufficient qualified health staff, absent standard procedures and poor interdisciplinary collaboration, and proposed nine remedial measures. The Police Directorate's own 2024 annual report also flags that the network's case-recording systems are fragmented and 'do not adequately capture' its combined caseload, and that applications to the specialist child-interview training pipeline have been declining.