“Linking”: Its Process and Structure in Child Protection Social Work with Parents Whose Children Were Removed by Authorities Without Parental Consent: Towards Developing “Collaborative” Relationships in Child Abuse Prevention

Abstract

The parents of children who were removed by authorities without parental consent experienced disrespect and were totally dissatisfied with the process. This study is aimed at clarifying the process and its structure where collaborative working relationships were constructed between these parents and the child protection services.

The author collected data by conducting semi-structured interviews with 12 practitioners, mostly social workers. Grazer's Grounded Theory Approach was applied for an analysis from which 32 concepts and 14 categories were identified. The core concept was ‘linking’. Much more, ‘linking’ was found to have three stages: ‘creating a dialogue’, ‘letting the linking grow’, and ‘standing by the family.’ It became clear that the practitioners have approached the family via ‘linking’ in building working relationships.