Relational Listening, Listening Barriers, and Listening Facilitation in Finnish Administrative Care Order Preparation Hearings

Abstract

This qualitative study aimed to investigate clients’ listening barriers as well as listening facilitation-related practices applied by social workers in an emotionally charged relational listening situation emerging in administrative hearings. These hearings are filled with tensions that can be assumed to impair the listening of parents and children because in the hearings, final decisions regarding giving a child into care are made. The study examines an authentic child protection situation with three different data sets. Data are analyzed with the thematical content analysis. The results indicate that the clients’ intra- and interpersonal as well as institutional listening barriers can be facilitated by practices applied by social workers in various ways. The study also interestingly reveals how the listening dimensions of social workers are constructed in the relational listening situation emerging in administrative hearings. Even though the study describes the Finnish system and procedure of taking a child into care, and procedural and legal systems are not similar between countries, the core of the social workers’s profession worldwide is relational. Thus, our findings regarding relational listening in social work can be applied widely. Moreover, global similarities regarding the listening dimensions of social workers could be examined in future studies.