Collaboration under constraints: Family supervision in child welfare

The French institutional context of child welfare occasionally requires educational interventions under constraints. In that case, social workers are mandated by the juvenile court to intervene in the family and set up an educational measure. Drawing on sociocultural psychology, more specifically on a dialogical approach to social interactions and discourse, this study explores how the social workers and the families cope with the paradox of constrained help and enter into some form of collaboration. The data are made up of five first time visits by the social workers at the family's home. The analysis focuses on two key moments: the definition of the situation and the formulation of the family's expectations. The analysis examines how the participants position themselves and negotiate the constraints of the situation. The results show that, beyond a one-sided definition of the situation reflecting the asymmetry between the participants, an absent third party's voice the judge's is repeatedly echoed and works as a local resource to preserve the participants' agency. Moreover, the results reveal that the social workers tend to turn any obstacle or difficulty formulated by the parents into an expectation that make their intervention useful and relevant.