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Important Meetings with Important Persons

Narratives from Families Facing Adversity and their Key Figures

Örebro University, Sweden

Carola Skott

The Sahlgrenska Academy at Göteborg University, Sweden

In this study families that have struggled with their relationships to their children have identified people who have had a positive influence on the child or the family. By enabling meetings between the parents and these key figures the participants were given an opportunity to together recall their contact. The aim of the study was to examine the understanding they constructed of these beneficial processes. Interpretation according to Max van Manen's hermeneutic-phenomenological method led to the crystallization of a number of central themes. These themes together constitute the following whole: these are narratives about ‘emerging mutual trust’, which ‘overcomes obstacles’. The key figures or ‘important persons’ have a ‘clear orientation’ in their occupation and they work in ‘the essential everyday world’ to find and establish ‘contexts that nourish development’ in children and parents. The outcome of this is the creation of ‘new narratives’ that replace the old ones.

Key Words: beneficial processes • children's development • narratives • intersubjectivity • qualitative research • hermeneutic phenomenology

Qualitative Social Work, Vol. 5, No. 3, 295-311 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/1473325006067357


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