Citation

Quick D, Scott AL. Br. J. Soc. Work 2019; 49(2): 485-502.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Oxford University Press)

DOI

10.1093/bjsw/bcy055

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

How might we understand the emotional processes that generate desperate anger and resistance by parents facing child-protection investigations? In this paper, we draw on the sociology of affect and emotion to analyse one parent's story of a child-protection enquiry, the removal of her son and the subsequent family reunification. Using a methodological process of 'productive disconcertion', which draws on similar theories of affect and emotion to those we are using in the analysis, we argue that statutory child-welfare services operate within an emotional regime in which parents of clients are positioned as passive and required to be co-operative. Responses such as intense parental anger can generate an interactive cycle of deepening conflict with child-protection workers, but can also be protective for the parent, supporting the individual's sense of agency and a positive identity. Practitioners should seek to work with, rather than in opposition to, such parents, thus enabling the parent to be successful is his or her attempts to move beyond a cycle of traumatisation, stigma and re-traumatisation.