Care and Education under Surveillance. Mother and Child residential Services and the Formation of Maternity in the Context of Child Protection Policies

• Applicant: Dr. Marion Ott
• Subject Area: Education Systems and Educational Institutions
• Term: from 2013 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 234140002

In recent years the efforts in child protection and therefore in the surveillance of parental care and educational activities are increasing. Looking from an ethnographical perspective on social practices the project inquires the new organization of educational relations between mothers and their children in Mother and Child Residential Services. The project aims to understand, how the childrens wellbeing and the parental competences of the mother are related. We focus on educational technologies and their practical use: To understand how woman as mothers grow in cases of help, we analyse special procedures of child-protection that are applied in the residential services. To analyse how norms of maternal education and care are constructed and how they are negotiated between the participants, we inquire trainings of educational competencies. Different methods in ethnography and institutional ethnography are chosen to explore the relation between the level of analysis of political programmatic and situated practices. Firstly the project aims to analyse professionell modes of use referring to the ambivalence of child-protection and the relationship of trust to the parents in the organizations of children welfare. Secondly the practical processes that relate reciprocally maternity an childrens wellbeing are reconstructed from a combination of gender studies and childhood studies views.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants