This master’s thesis addresses the mutual process of collaboration in social work with a foster family within the framework of an individual working project of help carried out in the family’s home environment. The starting point of the thesis is the postmodern orientation in social work, with an emphasis on establishing a working relationship of co-creation, which highlights cooperation, co-construction of meanings, participation of family members, and an understanding of support and help as a process in which the interlocutors are active agents of change. Special emphasis is also placed on including the child’s voice in processes of collaboration with families.
The thesis primarily focuses on the significance of the collaborative process rather than solely on the content of what is expressed. The emphasis is not only on achieving a specific goal, but on the process in which new experiences are formed and on their transfer into everyday family life and coping with potential future distress. The thesis approaches social work in the home as a context of collaboration in which the process of support and help is situated within the everyday life-world of the family and develops within the framework of their concrete life circumstances.
I conducted a qualitative study designed as a single case study of a foster family with whom I collaborated for five months as part of my field practice. The research is based on the principle of multi-perspectivity, as it includes the perspective of the social worker as well as the perspectives of family members, including the child’s voice, which enabled a more comprehensive understanding of the meanings and experiences of the collaborative process. It examines the implementation of postmodern concepts of social work with families in practice, work at the first and second levels of social work, and the experience of collaboration and its significance, particularly in the context of social work in the home. In this process, professional knowledge and the knowledge of family members as experts based on lived experience intertwine. Data were collected using multiple sources and methods, including diary entries and semi-structured interviews, also incorporating expressive and creative means when involving the child, which enabled the inclusion of diverse perspectives of the participants. The empirical material was analysed using procedures of qualitative analysis and thematic coding.
The findings of the thesis highlight the importance of a mutual process of collaboration with the family, particularly in the context of social work in the home, and the diversity of meanings that participants attribute to the shared process. The thesis shows that a process-oriented and collaborative approach supports experiences of safety, inclusion, and co-creation, and contributes to strengthening the capacities and resilience of family members.
|
