Peer-reviewed article
Exploring the colonial contours of child welfare services and their implications for immigrant parents’ participation and trust
Tesfahun Alemayehu Terrefe ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view ·Key points
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Abstract
This study aims to examine how immigrant parents’ participation and trust in child welfare services are shaped by dominant ideologies and operational practices within the system. The article draws on empirical data gathered through semi-structured interviews with ten immigrant parents who have experience with the Norwegian Child Welfare Services (NCWS) due to allegations of child abuse and/or neglect. The overall findings reveal parents had limited participation in the intervention process and had low trust in the NCWS, with several explanatory factors associated with multiple aspects of the services. Yet, the service’s hyper-individualistic child-centered approach, both as a dominant perspective and modus operandi of the intervention practices, were found to have profound impacts on parents’ reported experience of otherness, exclusion during the intervention process and lack of trust in the NCWS, with the overarching themes being: (a) The dominance of the individualistic child-centered perspective and the resulting incompatibility of meaning between parents and the NCWS (b) The child-centered interventions’ binary and adversarial approach, and (c) The child-centered interventions’ narrow focus and risk-oriented approach, that appears to neglect the parents’ broader socioeconomic and cultural context.