Parents’ Participation in Child and Family Welfare: From Resistance to Emerging Expectations Towards Support

Abstract

In the social work literature, participation refers to the involvement of service users in the planning, delivery and evaluation of the assistance process (Devaney et al., 2021). Fuller and Zhang (2017) state that the active involvement
of parents in the child welfare system can significantly improve the results of assistance, including a reduction in the number of repeated reports of child maltreatment. Despite the relevance of the involvement of parents in the process of assistance, becoming a participant in the child welfare system is associated with the emotional experiences of parents. Studies show that communication with services in the child welfare system is often stressful and very emotional for parents. The article is based on the results of an empirical study to explain the phenomenon of parents becoming a participant in the child and family
welfare system in terms of participation approach. The empirical study presented in the article is based on the approach of participation, which, according to Laca and Laca (2022) stresses the involvement of users in decision-making processes that directly affect them. For the study presented in the article, qualitative research methodology was used. Six mothers between the ages of 23 and 44 who raised children between the ages of 1 and 4 participated in the study. All participants in the study lived in a temporary institution together with children. For data collection, the method of semi-structured interviewing was chosen, and data analyzed on the basis of the coding methods of the grounded theory, implementing
open and axial coding. The study followed the basic ethical principles of the study, including the principle of informed consent. The analysis of the study revealed the events and processes that led parents toward becoming
a participant in the child welfare system. During the analysis of the study data, the following categories were assigned to causal conditions: Unfavorable childhood of mother, domestic violence, alcohol consumption,
mistreatment of children. During the analysis of the research data, the following categories were assigned to the contextual conditions: lack of support, poor financial situation, lack of housing. The following categories
were assigned to the intervening conditions during the analysis of the data: distrust of the system, children as a value. Parental resistance emerged as the main action strategy of the systems’ participants that participated in
the study. The study reveals two conflicting strategies in terms of the consequences of parents becoming part of the system. For one thing, the participants involved in the system do not want to be part of the system and
consider it something “abnormal”; on the other hand, once they become participants in the system, even involuntary, expectations of help begin to form.