Over the past few years, we've taken an interest in "contested hearings" in child dependency court. That's where the children's welfare system wants to remove a child from their home and one or more of their parents/guardians is "contesting" the order. It goes to court and the judge decides. In our county, we've been worried about how traumatic this is for families and children, how contentious it is for child welfare and legal professionals involved and how costly it is for the system. We created a project to study this and try to change it. <cue scary music and maniacal laughter> What we're doing is using our Family Network family conferencing process to bring all the parties together, plus some family services, in hopes of averting a contested hearing. It shares some common aims as a settlement conference or mediation, but it's a different process that is supposed to be more family-driven than system- or professional-driven. The only decisions that stick are the ones the whole group agrees to unanimously. That way no one can get overrun (without their own abdication) and legal requirements cannot be subverted. We think it works. Sort of. The families we've been doing it with are having good results from it. But the relationships among the professionals are as strained as ever. So here's the question. Does it matter, in the end, what it's like for the professionals? Does the animus between social workers and lawyers have an impact on child wellbeing or family outcomes? Does it impact the overall system? Does it add cost? In other words: So what and who cares? What if the social workers and lawyers can't collaborate? What if the farmer and the cowman can't be friends? This is what I'm starting to wonder. The research aspect of this project is incomplete and, most likely, will prove inconclusive simply because the sample of cases will be too small to generalize from. But it will yield some nuggets of insight and hopefully new ways of looking at the issues. A study recently published in the Journal of Public Child Welfare offers an exploratory study of this very subject and identifies a number of factors that contribute to the strain among and between these professionals. Among them are relatively low professional stature (and hence lower pay), difference in organizational cultures, job stressors, inadequate resources, and more. My own findings suggest something more subtle and complex is also afoot. As you might have begun to suspect by now, I take a keen interest in power and how it is constituted within language and discourse. My observations and interviews thusfar suggest that "dependency court" is a kind a theater in which power and truth are contested. Power is about more than just whose side "wins" in the case, but also about who prevails in the struggle to define what is true in the situation and what is true about the participants. This takes place within a little microsystem unto its own in which there is a definite caste. Judges/commissioners are on top, then attorneys, then social workers, then families. It's complicated. Families do wield power in this system, but they do it by proxy; through the language of their lawyers. I'll say more as I learn more. But for now, suffice it to say that, by listening to the actors in this theater and noting how they talk, you can catch a glimpse at the dynamics of this struggle. Perhaps you can change the dynamics by changing the language and patterns of speech. For instance, we got considerable mileage out of one meeting in which we simply forced the participants to speak one at a time and to not interrupt each other. Sociolinguists might argue over whether this level of intervention is sufficient. The sociolinguists I tend to agree with would say there is a larger field, a structural field in which power imbalances are prescribed. In other words, you can't equalize power simply by telling the people to talk differently. What I'm hoping is that I can illuminate the dynamics and, armed with that understanding, rational and meaningful choices can be made at the systems level that, good lord willing, will serve the best interests of children and families.