Photo Elicitation As an Anti-Racist Research Practice As Implemented in a Federally Funded Initiative to Address Racial Inequities in Child Welfare

Background and Purpose: Historically, traditional research methods have been exclusionary and are often based in white supremacy. As such, it is likely that conventional methodologies used in child welfare (CW) research are inaccessible to youth, family and community members, thus excluding their voices and experiences from a system that has tremendous impacts on their lives and wellbeing. However, art-based, and participatory action research (PAR) methodologies offer innovative ways and increased access for youth, family, and community members to amplify their voices, and engage lived experts most impacted by CW as partners rather than passive recipients (Yan et al., 2022). These methodologies can aid in paving pathways to co-construct knowledge with families, youth, and community members most impacted to effectively transform the CW system (Dominguez et al., 2022). This study asked two relevant questions: 1) What common themes emerged from lived experts about their experiences and perceptions of the CW system? and 2) What was learned about the process of utilizing photo elicitation with lived experts?

Method: A group of lived experts who serve on advisory and management teams for a federally funded initiative, which aims to address racial inequities in CW, participated in a photo elicitation art-based method during their team meetings. Photo elicitation encourages participants to think about questions or concepts in a different way, using images and discussion to respond to prompts. Participants viewed an assortment of twenty images of landscapes, buildings, or places that were not directly related to equity or CW and were instructed to choose an image that represented different ways they experienced or perceived the CW system. After the primary photo elicitation activity, participants were asked about their experience engaging in the art-based activity and recommendations for future sessions. Two evaluators used inductive coding to identify themes of participant responses to both the photo elicitation prompts and their experience with the activity.

Results: Common themes that arose regarding their experiences with CW included feelings of isolation and loneliness, and like they must learn and navigate the system with little guidance or support, recognition of the complexity and intricacies of families, and desires for systems, families, and youth to work together to create a system that is caring and supportive of families and that nurtures family growth, abundance, and health. Participants shared that this method made them feel included in the research process. Additionally, it supported and encouraged engagement for participants who may not have "traditional research" experience or feel unsure about their personal “research intelligence,” and centered their voices.

Conclusion and Implications: Our findings from the initiative’s use of photo elicitation highlight the effectiveness of the method in centering voices and experiences and thus amplifying their insights and expertise. The method created pathways for the lived experts to access and engage in the research and to further inform the project’s implementation and strategies. Child welfare practitioners and researchers seeking to authentically include youth and family lived experts as co-researchers and genuinely center their voices can do so effectively with art-based methodologies like photo elicitation.