BJSW Advance Access originally published online on June 16, 2006
British Journal of Social Work 2007 37(6):987-1006; doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcl055
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‘Lifeworld’, ‘System’ and Family Group Conferences: Habermas’s Contribution to Discourse in Child Protection
Stan Houston is Senior Lecturer in Social Work in the School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work at the Queen’s University Belfast. Before entering higher education, he worked in the area of child and family social work for around twenty years, first as a practitioner, then as a manager and finally as a trainer. His major interest is the application of theory to practice.
David Hayes is Lecturer in Social Work in the School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work at the Queen’s University Belfast. Before entering higher education, he worked in the area of child and family social work for approximately fifteen years, first as a practitioner and then as a trainer. His major interest is the participation of families in the child protection process.
Correspondence to David Hayes, School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work, Queen’s University of Belfast, 7 Lennoxvale, Belfast BT9 5BY, UK. E-mail: d.hayes{at}qub.ac.uk
Habermas’s critical social theory has been challenged on a range of fronts. However, the authors see merit in his mediation thesis as set out in the seminal text, Between Facts and Norms (1996). Adopting a pragmatist defence of the thesis, we review and demonstrate the effectiveness of what we believe is a coincidental expression of some of its main tenets—The Family Group Conference in Child Protection. Drawing further on Habermas’s work, we then proceed to re-work aspects of the conference’s core processes, thereby accentuating the possibility of empowering dialogue between its key participants: the families (who embody the ‘lifeworld’) and the social work professionals (who represent the ‘system’). In the final section, we argue that moral practice in child protection must be safeguarded by communicational procedures that explicitly address issues relating to the use of power and the need for ‘recognition’ between subjects.
Keywords: habermas, family group conferences, empowerment, child protection
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