Speaking bodies – silenced voices: Child protection and the knowledge culture of ‘evidencing’

Abstract

Using the metaphors body and voice and drawing on critical contributions on biopolitics, this article interrogates children’s participation rights in a knowledge culture of ‘evidencing’. With child welfare and protection practice as an empirical example, I analyse written assessment reports from a Swedish child welfare agency, all exemplifying how social workers evidence needs for protection and reasons for removing children from the home. I discuss how ‘evidencing’ equals a knowledge culture of seeing-believing and predicting-believing and the search for visibly damaged bodies and underdeveloped minds. I furthermore problematise how such conceptualisation of evidencing foregrounds children’s ‘speaking’ bodies while silencing their voices. By showing these manifestations of evidencing, this critical contribution discusses some wider epistemic concerns for fields influenced by the knowledge cultures of ‘the evidence-based’.

Social change in developmental times? On ‘changeability’ and the uneven timings of child welfare interventions

“…Because changeability was confined to the assessment of parents, parenting became a focus of the analysis. Assessments of children were foremost linking to development and are more fully examined elsewhere (Knezevic, forthcoming; see also Burman, 2017; Castañeda, 2002, 2015; White, 1998).…”

“…The uneven dimension of interventions becomes manifest as in some cases, harm is visible and in situ, yet for others, futurity assessments and the long ongoing problems leading to future risks seem sufficient for a serious response (e.g. Knezevic, forthcoming).…”

Responsibility or Responsibilization in Medical Evidencing of Domestic Violence? The Belgian Case Analyzed Through a Care Ethical Lens

“…Evidence of domestic violence is often reliant on medical records or injury reports, which are drafted by doctors to provide proof of domestic violence. This proof is necessary for victims who want to file official complaints (Isaac & Enos, 2001;Khazaei, 2021;Knezevic, 2021). This points to the primary focus within legal proceedings to physical injury and harm following from incidents of physical violence while contextual features of the relationship and patterns of controlling or coercive behavior in the everyday lives of victims are ignored (Bishop, 2016;Robinson et al, 2015;Stark, 2009).…”

“…Evidencing Violence: Bodily Truths, Responsibilization, and Ethics of Care International research (Bishop, 2016;Khazaei, 2021;Knezevic, 2021;Stark, 2009) challenged the implicit focus on physical violence within prosecution and the role that medicolegal certificates play in proving domestic violence. An ethnographic study in a medicolegal center in Switzerland (Khazaei, 2021) problematized the use of these kinds of certificates because they only account for visible, physical evidence.…”

“…She finds that biological evidence and scientific evidence about psychosomatic and health-related consequences are prioritized over stories of children. Furthermore, she argues that the evidencing of violence is rooted in a "knowledge culture" (Cetina, 2007) constructed by a paradigmatic shift toward "evidence-based" practice and legal positivistic discourses on evidence that presume objectivity, impartiality, and gender neutrality only as trustworthy (Holmes et al, 2006;Knezevic, 2021;Sevenhuijsen, 1998).…”