Early interventions towards children in 0-5 years of age – an interactionist approach
Marie Nykjær Brejnrod
Department of Sociology and Social Work, Aalborg University, Denmark
‘Early intervention’ is a term, that in a Danish context is used in a number of different meanings. In the area of vulnerable children it is used both to describe interventions early in the child’s life and interventions early in the development of a problem[1]. There does not, neither in the field among the professionals nor in the social policies,seem to be an awareness of the internal discrepancies in the use of the term.
My study (PHD) of early interventions is aimed at an investigation of how early interventions towards children in 0-5 years of age come to be. As neither the legislation nor the research provides clear answers to the question of which specific children, the child protection services should intervene in, my foucs is on how professionals decide which children should be the subject of child protection services, which children should be subject of another type of (early) intervention and which children it is not necessary to intervene in.
The empirical departure is a Danish municipality and has a primary focus on three professions; nursery teaches, health visitors and social workers. In a Danish context nursery teachers and health visitors are supposed to inform social workers in cases where they suspect that a child might be in need of support from the child protection services.
The research design consists of a small preliminary study of narratives of succesful early intervention of the professionals and observation and audio recording of a number of meetings among professionals. I am observing and recording two different types of meetings: (1) meetings in the daycare facility/nursery/kindergarden held on the basis of the concern of a child with participation of nursery teachers, a facilitator from the municipality, the parents and sometimes a health visitor, and (2) meetings in the child protection services held on the basis of a professional’s concern and notification to the child protection services of a child with participation of a social worker, the parents and the notifying professional. It is planned that the research design later will be expanded wirh some sort of research interaction with the professionals in the form of e.g. group interviews or the like.
I want to study how the professionals at the observed meetings negotiate their concern for the children. How are interventions created in such interactions; which children or families lead to reassurance and which lead to concern and how are reassurances and concerns unfolded in the interaction among the professionals? The paper will discuss my attempts to take a symbolic interactionist approach to the study.
[1]Interventions early in the child’s life labeled early interventions are e.g. day care and preeschool programmes. Interventions early in the development of a problem are e.g. interventions concerned with the detection of vulnerable children thorugh interdisciplinary collaboration between social workers and e.g. nursery teachers or crime prevention interventions targeted young people.