PARTICIPATIVE RESEARCH EXAMPLE FROM BELGIUM

The research project has led to the representation and dissemination of the research findings, which were produced in an attempt to embrace the participation of the parents in our process of knowledge production. 

For that reason, we considered that findings and representations draw the attention of social policymakers and social workers, who often perceive the individual child as the locus of intervention. Research findings are moreover often represented as causal explanations, in a 'bullet-point’-like way, and focus on facts rather than interpretative understandings. This can discredit the possibilities of democratic debate with actors in our society – including the families themselves – about the complexity of pursuing policy and practice to counter dynamics related to child poverty and about the ways in which policy and practice shape the structures and discourses that influence concrete circumstances of children living in poverty. During dissemination activities, we used the family histories and the visual representations to make sense of the messiness, ambiguity, and multi-layered nature of meaning in the stories while working with the audience. We advocated a perspective of social justice and equality as a point of departure. We raised contentious issues so that our research could provide further food for thought for actors who create the conditions under which children and parents in poverty situations live.  

Nevertheless, we also realised that the weakest point of our research project consisted of the lack of renewed dialogue with the participating families involved during the representation and dissemination activities to create a forum for their ideas in relation to further actions. However, we lacked the funding and time to do this as part of the research project that covered only four years.