Partial Truths: Documents in NSW Children’s Court

1. Partial Truths: Documents in NSW Children’s Court Chris Krogh PhD Student School Social Sciences and Psychology University Western Sydney

2. Words • Words All these words Should be fragrant as the sea of pine As morning stars Fading at dawn above the mountains (Kosovel )

3. Background to the research • PhD; University Western Sydney • Due to be completed later this year • Title: Documents as (en)actors in NSW child protection’s regimes of living. • Question: “What do child protection court documents do to the people closely involved with them?”

4. Breaking the title apart • NSW child protection • Viewed ‘ecologically’: all the agencies, strategies, people and ideas that seek to prevent harm to children or respond when it does occur. • In this research: the NSW Children’s Court • Documents as (en)actors • Documents ‘do’ things and make things different • (see, for example, Cooren, 2004, Latour, 2005, Frohmann, 2008) • E.g. Care Application and Initiating Affidavit • ‘Regimes of living’ • Global assemblages (Collier and Ong, 2005) • Governmentality (Foucault, 1991) • Regimes of living (Collier and Lakoff, 2005) • Common Assessment Framework (White, et al. 2009)

5. Research Method • Single unit case study • Document review • Interviews • Parent • Magistrate • Caseworker • Casework manager • Solicitor • Contact worker

6. (Some) interview themes • Documents tell stories • Global assemblages – UNCRC; parenting capacity; attachment. • Documents’ roles in child protection’s processes of regulating parenting (as per Barithwaite et al. 2009). • Gendered responses to child protection processes and documents • Documents have immediate effects • Documents have future effects

7. Interview themes continued • Documents embody inequity • Documents are made up of other documents: police, hospital/health, prison, housing, etc. • What kinds of representations of people can be built from those sources? • Documents invite participants to take up a position – honesty, fairness, considerateness • ‘Regimes of living’ conceptualisations were supported.

8. Where is the child? • In the court process: • Child’s position or experience or representation was not directly explored in this research • Documents are the only way that some people will ever know the child – Magistrate for example.

9. Documents are (en)actors • Documents are integral elements of the Children’s Court assemblage/ecology • this court does not function without them • What role do you occupy when you write? • And then, what position does your writing invite you to occupy? • What are you trying to make better even within highly constrained circumstances?

10. IF YOU ii “If the poets stay silent who will tell you of the flash and flame in that evil moment? If the poets do not speak who will tell you of the demon skin that melted so unnaturally? If the poets run away who will make the words known Epitaph* “Forever carved in stone A shadow thrown on the sand Between heaven and earth, fallen The spirit of a flower”