Participative Action Research (PAR) Methods for Measuring the Impact of Preventative Child Protection Measures in Communities

Facing growing child protection concerns in communities worldwide, modern child welfare policies and guidelines increasingly emphasize the importance of preventative child protection. The aim is to reduce the need for reactive and invasive interventions in family life by adopting a holistic approach to diverse family situations. Preventative measures focus on empowering parents and their children to establish stable everyday structures, providing early support in parenting, ensuring that these services are easily accessible, and linking them to local community structures. A significant challenge in the international discourse on child welfare lies in defining child well-being, as childhood experiences vary across different social and cultural contexts. Well-being can mean different things to different children. Furthermore, social workers often encounter difficulties in measuring the effectiveness of preventative measures, which is crucial for securing funding, legitimizing interventions, and demonstrating the impact of projects. Being able to assess where positive changes were reached and where adjustments are still needed, poses a complex task. Participative Action Research (PAR) methods can offer valuable support in addressing these challenges by documenting and analyzing the process of change from the perspective of the affected individuals. The goal of PAR is to empower people to document and reflect on the strengths and concerns within their community, engage in critical discussions, and generate knowledge about community issues through accessible methods such as photography, art and storytelling. This approach can also aim to influence political decision-makers and enable communities and families to implement their own ideas for improving child protection structures, which aligns with the three Ps written down in the UN Convention On The Rights Of The Child: provision, protection and participation. This workshop will explore how PAR methods can be used to involve parents and children in evaluating the impact of child protection measures. Through these methods, the process of change can be monitored and documented from the individual perspectives of those affected, fostering reflection through collective discussion, either in a group or a family setting and providing professionals and researchers with valuable information. Participants will be introduced to examples and methods of PAR and will have the opportunity to experiment with them through small-scale exercises. Following these practical experiences, participants will engage in a discussion on how PAR can be integrated into child protection measures in social work. The focus will be on identifying the necessary conditions for enabling parents and children to participate effectively. Additionally, the workshop will address the specific roles and competencies that social work practitioners need to facilitate meaningful participation and generate meaningful research outcomes. This workshop aims to provide participants with both, theoretical insights and practical tools to determine the impact of preventative child protection through participative and community-driven research approaches.