Visites médiatisées en protection de l’enfance : exploration et transformation des émotions des professionnels, des parents et des enfants

Abstract

This article focuses on the activities of social workers during mediated visits in the context of child protection. Using an example, we describe how social workers work concretely during these visits to explore and transform the emotions experienced by all parties. They do so in the aim of encouraging the meeting between parent and child while fulfilling their missions to protect the child and support and evaluate parentality. In the example we analyse, the social worker speaks of the child’s emotion at the beginning of the visit, and by doing so, the emotions of both the father and the social worker are tacitly transformed. The professionals of this team explore and transform these emotions and experiment with different interpretations as they work to construct a common world, real, viable and shareable with the parents and children, in their presence and with their interventions.

Keywords

• social work
• emotion
• mediated visit