WP4 PRACTICING CARE AND CONTROL IN WORK WITH FAMILIES

Leader: Halvor Melbye Hanisch; Co-leader: Ellen Syrstad
Researchers: Anna Chalachanova

WP4 aims to explore how institutional logics of care and control emerge, continue or transform outside enclosed institutional spaces. It acknowledges that researchers often study contexts in isolation, biased by
the "seductive charm of the border" (Parker & Wiliams, 2009: 584). As normative concepts such as "reintegration", "reunification", "rehabilitation" or "transitional zones" WP4 refocuses the exploration of care and control in the context of transitions between different services, as well as in the inter-actions between institutional systems and the lives of families. In investigating these relations WP4 also emphasises temporality, acknowledging how the provision of institutional services often responds to the past (for example prior incidents of violence or abuse) and envisions a future (for example a more independent life outside the familial context). Two empirical contexts are chosen to serve as case studies for this WP: (i) support given by the child welfare services to vulnerable families involving reunification, restoration work, and reintegration after a stay in prison; (ii) support given to families with children with disabilities from respite care.