‘What Are We to Each Other?’: Relational Participation as Processes of Positioning, Confirming and Manifesting Relationships

It is generally recognized in research that participation is lacking in social work and is essential to improve. This article presents findings from qualitative focus group interviews with children and parents in Denmark with supervised contact (SC) after placement focusing on what participation is for them. Since SC is a context embedded in conflicting perspectives, enabling a sense of participation can be challenging, making SC an interesting case for exploration. The findings show that for both children and parents, participation is about emotionally engaging in, finding, confirming and manifesting their positioning in the relationship, which goes beyond a traditional rights-based understanding. Based on the new empirical knowledge and anchored in the metatheory of agential realism, the article argues for participation as a relational, dynamic and transcendental concept that revolves around three empirical key aspects: positioning, confirming and manifesting, entangled in children’s and parents’ experiences, emotions and thoughts about ‘what are we to each other?’. Children and parents express orientation towards entering relationships, even though these are challenging. Thus, a major point is the need for further research into the relational and emotional processes of participation with awareness of the importance of the specific relationship.