Self-reports in child protection facilities and their biographical meaning for adolescents

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Tobias Franzheld
• Subject Area: Educational Research on Socialization, Welfare and Professionalism
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 493521473

The project "Self-reports in child protection facilities and their biographical meaning for adolescents" intends to investigate the meaning of self-reports for adolescents in need of protection on the basis of case reconstructions. Case reconstructions that focus on the individual experience of young people provide information about their experiences and subjective attributions of meaning that are related to self-reports. In the project, it is assumed that young people articulate a personal need for protection with self-reports and enter into a process of reflexive confrontation with their own biography. The project is based on biographically oriented child and youth welfare research and links biographical and institutional perspectives in the field of protective measures.The project will examine the question of what it means for young people to report their needs "at their own request" and whether and to what extent a biographical meaning of self-reporting can be made empirically visible. Theoretically, self-reporting is shaped as a biographical entanglement between the need for protection and the ability to communicate. Three biographical levels of meaning will be examined with regard to self-reporting: Processes of growing up, institutional positioning and subjective experiences of crisis. The aim of the project is to integrate these analyses into biographical case reconstructions, which will be combined into case studies. The sample is intended to capture the case-specific typology of the youth biographies studied, but also to make statements about variances and generalisations of the findings.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Switzerland
• Co-Investigators: Professor Dr. Pascal Bastian; Josef Koch; Professorin Dr. Mirja Silkenbeumer; Professor Dr. Andreas Walther
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Stefan Schnurr