Personal Stories of Young Women in Residential Care: Health-Promoting Strategies and Wellbeing

Mira Aurora Marlow (), Rita Sørly and Heli Kyllikki Kaatrakoski
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Mira Aurora Marlow: Department of Social Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Stavanger, 4036 Stavanger, Norway
Rita Sørly: Department of Child Welfare and Social Work, Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, 9019 Tromsø, Norway
Heli Kyllikki Kaatrakoski: Department of Social Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Stavanger, 4036 Stavanger, Norway

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 24, 1-12

Abstract: Interdisciplinary social work practice produces and circulates narratives of young women in residential care. The dominant narratives often present negative descriptions of this group, and less attention has been paid to their resistance to these “big stories”. This study’s aim is to illuminate this resistance of young women in residential care and to explore how they narrate their experiences of being children at risk who have become women managing everyday life. This study utilises a narrative approach and includes three selected personal stories: two from the participants and one from the first author’s reflections on resistance. Through contextual analysis at the macro, meso and micro levels, we focus on how personal stories can influence interdisciplinary social work services. We found resistance to dominant narratives on the different levels in the chosen stories. Resistance can create space to reconstruct and renarrate reality together and help understand the meaning and power of storytelling and silence. Participants’ resistance can be a tool to rebalance the power between social work practitioners and service users. Based on this analysis, we suggest that interdisciplinary collaborative social work should emphasise service users’ personal stories to a higher degree and, in this way, increase user participation in residential care.

Keywords: narratives; residential care; social work; wellbeing; young women (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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