Speaking bodies – silenced voices: Child protection and the knowledge culture of ‘evidencing’

Zlatana Knezevic

doi:10.1177/2043610620951977

Abstract

Using the metaphors body and voice and drawing on critical contributions on biopolitics, this article interrogates children’s participation rights in a knowledge culture of ‘evidencing’. With child welfare and protection practice as an empirical example, I analyse written assessment reports from a Swedish child welfare agency, all exemplifying how social workers evidence needs for protection and reasons for removing children from the home. I discuss how ‘evidencing’ equals a knowledge culture of seeing-believing and predicting-believing and the search for visibly damaged bodies and underdeveloped minds. I furthermore problematise how such conceptualisation of evidencing foregrounds children’s ‘speaking’ bodies while silencing their voices. By showing these manifestations of evidencing, this critical contribution discusses some wider epistemic concerns for fields influenced by the knowledge cultures of ‘the evidence-based’.

Highlights

In the field of child welfare and protection, evidence may refer to the citation of testimonies, police reports and other documentations
When the Swedish child welfare policy advocates children’s right to participate in assessments and have a voice and influence in matters concerning them, this advocacy is articulated within the context of a subjective-objective dualism and epistemic asymmetry, that is, asymmetry in knowledge status between service users and professionals/science
The issues raised in this study are of concern for all fields in which EBP is advocated, in particular for child welfare social work that simultaneously has increased the emphasis on children’s rights, including the right of participation

Summary

Introduction

In the field of child welfare and protection, evidence may refer to the citation of testimonies, police reports and other documentations. When the Swedish child welfare policy advocates children’s right to participate in assessments and have a voice and influence in matters concerning them, this advocacy is articulated within the context of a subjective-objective dualism and epistemic asymmetry, that is, asymmetry in knowledge status between (child) service users and professionals/science.

Results

Conclusion