Nurturing ideas, practices and knowledge circulation in child and family social work: results from a collaborative project

This article reports from a research and development project aiming to improve support for parents with children in out-of-home care in Sweden. The project was carried out in collaboration between the authors and around 60 social workers organized in improvement teams during 2019-2021. The aim of the article is to explore the turnout in three of the participating teams. At the start of the project, social work with parents of placed children was described as 'stuck in a rut', in spite of numerous alerts on improvement needs. As parent support can concern a wide range of actions, and as there was no specific evidence-based programme to recommend, the collaborative project focused on nurturing new ideas and practices. In the initial phase, the teams formulated about 30 ideas covering new forms of support and improved prerequisites for a shared parenthood. A fourth of these ideas were turned into new practices that were tested in the services. The most frequent practices concerned information, crisis support and contact visits. The findings indicate that the breakthrough of new practices was dependent on a new translation of parents' rights and parent support which resulted in a new understanding of how to perform support without outcompeting a child's perspective. The translation process was highly influenced by the project interactions and knowledge circulation in which service user voices seem to have been especially vital.