{"id":9,"date":"2019-08-21T14:24:45","date_gmt":"2019-08-21T13:24:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/sig-cfr\/?p=9"},"modified":"2019-08-21T14:24:46","modified_gmt":"2019-08-21T13:24:46","slug":"eswrc-2919-sig-children-and-families-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/sig-cfr\/2019\/08\/21\/eswrc-2919-sig-children-and-families-research\/","title":{"rendered":"ESWRC 2919: SIG Children and Families Research"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Children, emotions and research: Reflections on the 2019 SIG<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To find yourself\nsitting in a three to a row set-up, with the intention of mimicking being on an\nairplane, is not perhaps what you might expect when you attend a European\nSocial Work Research conference Special Interest Group on Child and Family\nResearch. Nonetheless there we were, experiencing how airplane attendants enact\nemotional labour in the course of daily work routines. Smiling when feeling\nfrustrated, displaying a calm demeanour when actually deeply irritated or\ndisturbed, were examples of emotional labour common to the  airplane attendant role, and not unfamiliar to\nsocial workers either. And that was the point. Karen Winter was helping us\nunderstand how in social work contexts practitioners often display one\nbehaviour, whilst feeling something quite different, and that how this\nemotional dissonance is made sense of is crucial for the effectiveness of practitioners\u2019\nprofessional performance and safeguarding of their professional wellbeing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The SIG had begun with an introductory activity involving the Kitbag (http:\/\/www.iffpraxis.com\/kitbag<\/a>), a resource being introduced to social workers in England to support them in their direct work with children. Designed to enhance all children\u2019s \u2013and adults for that matter \u2013 emotional literacy \u2013the Kitbag has a feelings card with twelve blobs of colour on it. As the card was passed around the SIG circle each person, holding the Kitbag talking stick, introduced themselves and choose a colour that reflected their emotional state, saying, if they wished to, why. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Currently used in Scottish schools the Kitbag provides children with ways of talking comfortably about their feelings. Following the finding in the Talking and Listening to Children (TLC) research (http:\/\/www.talkingandlisteningtochildren.co.uk\/<\/a>) that less than 20% of the social workers observed used any sort of resource in their communication with children, the TLC team is keen to promote the use of Kitbag to help social workers with this challenging task. Making explicit what we feel is one way of managing the dissonance that comes with emotional labour \u2013 difficult feelings can be named and thought about, rather than avoided \u2018acted out\u2019.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Complementing these morning activities, the afternoon session of the SIG was an experiential exercise involving the participants in a visual matrix (Froggett et al 2015). Used as a psychosocial research method the matrix provides a space to explore the affective and often less easily articulated dimensions of lived experiences. In this instance participants were invited to draw a picture of what was evoked for them by the words children, emotions and research. These pictures were then combined with some beautiful illustrations from a children\u2019s book \u2013 What is a Child (Beatrice Alemagna). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The participants then silently, and slowly, viewed the picture collection, before sitting down and free associating to them, sharing whatever thought or feeling came to mind. As a vehicle for accessing affective responses, visual matrixes can be a creative medium with the potential to generate unexpected and previously un-thought ideas about the topic being considered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what did\nwe discover through the SIG? Emotions are everywhere all the time, sometimes\nmore visible, sometimes less, sometimes articulated, often not.  And children are whole people, with remarkable\nemotional flexibility and capacity to move from one affective state to another,\nin short spaces of time. Such shifts can be unsettling for less emotionally agile\nadults. Holding the whole child in mind and allowing the child to lead us, is a\ntall order, one requiring us to recognise our own emotional responses to ensure\nour own emotional caution or illiteracy do not place unhelpful limitations on\nwhat we are prepared to allow a child to express. Now that\u2019s an example of\nemotional labour in research and practice, requiring us to exercise our\nreflexive awareness at all times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe the\nnext blog might pick up on this theme of reflexivity in research. Let\u2019s wait\nand see. Offers welcomed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Froggett,\nL., Manley, J. and Roy, A. (2015) The Visual Matrix Method: Imagery and Affect in a\nGroup-based research setting<\/a>, Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung \/ Forum: Qualitative\nSocial Research, 16, 3, Art 6 http:\/\/www.qualitativeresearch.net\/index.php\/fqs\/article\/view\/2308<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Children, emotions and research: Reflections on the 2019 SIG To find yourself sitting in a three to a row set-up, with the intention of mimicking being on an airplane, is not perhaps what you might expect when you attend a…<\/span><\/p>\n

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