Verdier og kommunikasjon i konfliktsituasjoner

Good communication between child protection workers and families is crucial for cooperation and agreement about decisions regarding child care. This chapter focuses on challenges in this communication related to value conflicts – conflicts in which fundamental disagreement is grounded in opposing values. The chapter uses concepts from philosophy of mind and language to understand value conflicts in child protection services. The key theoretical idea is that beliefs and thoughts are different from value preferences. While beliefs and thoughts are mental representations that are true or false depending on how the world is, persons’ values are preferences directly related to activities or objects that are of fundamental importance to them. This means that telling others, explicitly or implicitly, that their values are false involves a categorical mistake and will typically be experienced as a form of value imperialism that undermines cooperation and aims of shared understanding in child protection work. Value preferences related to child care can nevertheless be explored and challenged in various ways, for instance by focusing on tensions between values, or on beliefs that values are grounded in. The chapter uses case studies to clarify these implications in professional child protection.