Support family service in children's perspective

Author: Tiina Lehto-Lundén (University of Helsinki) The focus of my presentation is support family service part of the Finnish child welfare services and introduce a child focused data collection method. 
The aim is to... [ view full abstract ]

Author: Tiina Lehto-Lundén (University of Helsinki)


The focus of my presentation is support family service part of the Finnish child welfare services and introduce a child focused data collection method. 
The aim is to shed light on children’s own experiences of support families as part of the support their receiving from the child welfare services.

What are the child’s own experiences when moving regularly between these two different families, biological family and voluntary based support families? What kind of meanings children will give to the support family services? And how do the children experience the effectiveness for their lives of support family service?

Research on children’s experiences will help illustrate various factors that may be significant for a child, such as the everyday life and parenthood in the support family. Child welfare emphasises the family perspective, but this also means that children as individuals may be overlooked. The results will broaden the understanding of the support family service as well as of the factors that could protect a child living in vulnerable circumstances. Studying the children’s experiences is essential for uncovering something unique and significant about the phenomenon. It is impossible to improve the service system and the professional practices of child welfare without making children’s actual experiences known.

Support family services are included in the actions of Finnish child welfare. It is written in the law as one of the support measures. The support family services involve support families providing support on voluntary basis. In reference to earlier research and evaluations, the primary use of these services is to give relief to parents who, in most cases, are single.

The methodological approach of the study is empirical research, wherein existential phenomenology serves as both the research philosophy and the theoretical framework for the study.

In my presentation I will also introduce five staged data collection phase with children: 1. Interviews in biological home 2. Journey to support family 3. Child’s documentation 4. Meeting at the support family 5. Summary interview with the child.

Data is collected by interviewing the children and the use of child as informants is carefully thought out. The use of children as informants needs to be ethically carefully thought out, and other methods in addition to the interview, such as drawing, video and photos are used. Children will become part of the data collectors.

Analysis will be made by using the phenomenological method originally used by Giorg (1988) and restructured especially by Juha Perttula (1993, 1995c, 1998, 2000).

This presentation is based to my early, data collection staged dissertation research, which I’m doing in the University of Helsinki.

Key words: Support family services, child welfare, experiences, phenomenology