‘You Decide’: Relationship-Based Knowledge and Parents’ Participation in High-Risk Child Protection Crisis Interventions

Abstract

In the scholarly writing on child protection, there is a broad consensus regarding the importance of parents’ participation in knowledge-production processes. However, there is limited research on the conditions required to make parental participation possible in high-risk crisis situations. In particular, there is a dearth of writing that takes into consideration the context of poverty that influences families’ lives and the power imbalances between social workers and parents that are evident in these processes. Through a case illustration of a high-risk crisis situation in the Israeli child protection system, this article examines the potential contribution of a developing critical paradigm—the Poverty-Aware Paradigm—to the promotion of parents’ participation in high-risk crisis situations. Specifically, it points to ‘relationship-based knowledge’ as an organizing axis for knowledge production, and to its derivative, ‘dialogue on power/knowledge’, as a useful practice in child protection interventions. The case analysis reveals three distinguishing features of this dialogue: (i) the social worker holds a dialectic stance regarding knowledge; (ii) the social worker and the parents negotiate their interpretations; and (iii) the social worker shares common hopes and worries with the parents.

Parenting through the lenses of risk and othering: Constructions of parental cannabis use in child protection court proceedings

“…Moreover, the dominance of the politics of neoliberalism has resulted in a focal concern with the personal responsibility and moral behaviour of individuals and created “a context where need is understood through a risk lens, and responsibility continues to be conflated with conscious intentionality” (Featherstone et al, 2018, p. 12). This risk‐focused paradigm easily discredits more open‐ended and dialogical ways of interpreting the ambiguous definition of risk that could help professionals and parents talk about mutual concerns and the circumstances in which parenting takes place (Houston & Griffiths, 2000) and enable professionals to critically and continuously (re)consider their framing of risky situations (Saar‐Heiman & Krumer‐Nevo, 2020).…”

Knowing poverty: Social workers’ perceptions of poverty knowledge

“…Due to the importance of this mission, research into social work in relation to poverty is ample and usually focuses on three main topics: the implications or effects of poverty on individuals, the efficacy of intervention programs that aim to liberate people from poverty, and the study of poverty as experienced by different groups (Feldman, 2019; Saar-Heiman & Krumer-Nevo, 2020). However, little research attention has been given to the type of knowledge required of social workers in order to care for this population.…”