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The concept of "insight" has significant implications within child protection and welfare court decisions, with the potential to profoundly impact parents, children, and families. Stemming from the field of psychiatry, insight refers to a shift in meaning involving new connections and a level of conscious awareness (Hill et al., 2007). Increasingly, child protection workers, attorneys, and judges have begun employing “insight” and its synonyms in decision making regarding child protection cases. The purpose of this study is to investigate how “insight” functions within the discourse of child protection court decisions and to unveil the ways language perpetuates oppression and maintains unjust power dynamics in these proceedings.
Methods
Using Gee's approach to critical discourse analysis, we examined the use of "insight" in child protection case records involving three parents who experienced child removal in Minnesota between 2017-2022. Collaborating with a child protection law clinic, cases were purposively selected based on their relevance to the study objectives. Consent was obtained from the primary parent in each case, and identifying information was redacted. Through a close reading of case notes and court proceedings, we identified patterns in the usage of "insight" and its synonyms. Our analysis focused on the functions of the "insight discourse" and its influence on decisions, relationships, and outcomes.
Results
Our findings reveal that "insight" was frequently utilized yet seldom defined in these child protection proceedings. The perceived lack of insight was employed as both a justification for child removal and a criterion for reunification. Our analysis revealed that the vagueness and ambiguity of the term "insight" allowed for its wide application in these cases. This allowed professionals to use it as a tool to maintain control over parents and justify their decisions, often without providing clear rationale. Additionally, we observed that the insight discourse was often employed in a manner that privileged dominant cultural and social norms, resulting in biased evaluations of parents' abilities to care for their children. Moreover, the insight discourse functioned to delegitimize parental perspectives that deviated from the views and conclusions of the state authorities.
Conclusions and Implications:
This study is the first to specifically examine how “insight” as a discursive practice is used to produce and reproduce systems of power, surveillance, and control within child protection proceedings. Our results align with research on psychiatric commitments, where “insight” has been described as a way for state authorities to sidestep the moral, ethical, and philosophical complexities inherent in decisions about safety, liberty, and parental rights. The reliance on a poorly defined concept like insight in child protection cases raises legal and ethical concerns. The ambiguity of the term allows it to be easily and frequently employed in these cases, serving to reinforce the power dynamics between state authorities and parents. Furthermore, insight acts as a tool for perpetuating white, middle-class normed behaviors and ways of thinking, while legitimizing state imposition on low-income mothers of color. This research highlights the need for a more transparent and ethically grounded approach to child protection cases.