Hvor bevæger idegrundlaget i det nordiske familiearbejde sig hen? En kritisk diskursanalyse af forældreprogrammet ”De Utrolige År”

Abstract

The Danish government has since 2006 been supporting a particular way of structuring family counselling provided by the municipality. The support, economically as well as politically, targets 18 “parental programmes” and is in the article seen as an attempt to direct the counselling in a certain direction. The article is based upon a critical discourse analysis and explores the paradigmatic assumptions underlying the implicit rationale of the political-administrative governance processes as they are expressed in one of the 18 programmes (“The Incredible Years”). The analysis finds that The Incredible Years is (re-)producing two principal discourses. The first and most dominant discourse objectifies and categorises children in positions with little or no agency at all, and establishes adults as the ones in charge of sculpturing the children. The other main discourse is less articulated, and it places children and adults in a symmetric relation, which establish the subject-categories with an equal amount of agency. Furthermore the article discusses the programme’s influence and its consequences in relation to professional and theoretical knowledge. It explores how the paradigmatic assumptions underlying the implicit rationale in manualized and evidence-based practices are threatening to erode and overthrow practical and experience-based knowledge.