How children are cared for to make them care about something in residential child care (CareAbout)

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Mark Schrödter; Dr. Vinzenz Thalheim
• Subject Area: Educational Research on Socialization, Welfare and Professionalism
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 547773365

Residential care facilities are tasked with addressing the multifaceted needs of children across various life domains. Children in residential care may have experienced diverse disruptions in their biography due to instability in their home lives. This could lead to gaps in their learning or difficulties in adjusting to new environments, affirming fragile life trajectories. Thus, residential child care is a field of high and complex requirements. Specifically, care homes are expected to offer immediate crisis intervention and attend to the basic needs of residents with basic care. However, residential child care also encompasses the provision of educational opportunities that allow for an open future. This raises the question of how residential facilities navigate the tension between fulfilling basic needs as well as meeting educational needs. In international research on residential child care, there is extensive conceptual discussion and empirical research on both aspects individually which relate in particular to challenges of meeting educational needs. However, to date, there is no empirical research directly examining the interplay between basic needs and educational needs, the extent to which they may conflict or complement each other, and how they mutually constitute each other. The concept of "care," originating from feminist ethics and increasingly prevalent in residential child care research, offers a suitable framework for addressing both aspects and integrating existing research on related issues. Care theory posits that through receiving care, individuals develop a sense of concern, which may enable them to care about others in a manner conducive to relational autonomy. Research in other fields highlights the importance of the interplay between Heideggerian present-oriented "leaping-in" and future-oriented "leaping-ahead" care, which is now to be analyzed empirically for the first time in the context of residential care. To explore this interplay, a focused ethnography will be conducted in three residential child care facilities. Data analysis will employ Grounded Theory, which examines social practices as manifested in everyday situations to analyze the orientation of care practices toward present-oriented assistance or future-oriented, subject-centered development. The aim is to develop a typology of care that elucidates the various ways in which "leaping-in" and "leaping-ahead" care practices are established, negotiated, and mutually constituted. As institutions shape who we are, the developed care typology will identify which subject formations are made possible for residents through care practices. This is intended as a contribution to the professionalization discourse on residential care and its institutional embedding in the welfare state's care infrastructure.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants