Exploring children's everyday life: An examination of professional practices

Abstract

In this article, we discuss an everyday life approach as a basis for professional collaboration with children in light of the present day emphasis on children's rights. Everyday life is both a theoretical concept and an object for exploration. We present approaches, results and experiences from the research project “Talk with Us” – Professional practices and children's participation. The aim of the project was to study how professional practices could be formed to support children's participation in their everyday life, as well as in professional practices. The article draws on empirical material from the child welfare field. The project has dealt with the questions of how to talk with children in professional practices, what to talk about, and why the children should be engaged verbally, aspects of professional practices which are highly intertwined. However, in both the research literature and policy documents most attention is given to the question of how one develops professional skills in talking with children. By contrast, this article focuses on the question of what, the content of the conversations. The subject of examination is of importance for illuminating the kinds of knowledge that might be generated, and important for the consequences that that knowledge can have for the services the particular child is offered, in other words, how “the case” is constituted. Knowledge of what happens in the particular child's everyday life, and how she/he makes sense of it, is crucial for the professional to be able to assist the child. Although the empirical material is from the child welfare field, we suggest that the issues discussed are relevant also for other professional contexts involving children.