Ostensibly small moments and their ethical implications in research with care experienced children and young people

Abstract

Over recent decades, a focus on children’s rights has led to their increased involvement in research. However, ethical reflections on dynamics which shape and produce children’s voice within research encounters remain under-explored. Social work research involving children on sensitive topics must balance their right to participate with avoiding harm. This paper reflects on two vignettes from our longitudinal study on care-experienced children in Scotland, which included interviews and 'play and talk’ sessions with 20 children aged three to 15. The two vignettes, and other examples from research interviews, were selected to illustrate moments that caused us to pause and interrogate the ethical implications of research encounters for children, families and researchers. The first vignette explores how consent and research engagement were negotiated, resisted, and facilitated relationally among the child, researcher and the child’s aunt. The second vignette examines family dynamics during interviews and what happens when the research visit creates a space for children and adults to ask questions about their lives. By analysing both vignettes, we consider how ostensibly small decisions and points of interaction during research interviews had outsized implications for the research. We explore how we enacted ethics, including by using peer support to reflect on the choices we made utilising an ethic of care and an ethic of justice as helpful theoretical lenses. We discuss how children communicated their views and choices to us, using subtle signs, and what we learned about listening and responding to children and their families when confronted with difficult ethical moments.

Keywords

ethics care experienced children critical reflection research relationships ethic of care ethic of justice

Introduction

How we as researchers view and position children is a question of ethics. Over 20 years ago, Christensen and Prout (2002, p. 481) recognised that, “the perspective on children that a researcher works with has important implications for his or her research practice”. It influences each stage of the research, including whether and how children are involved, which children are included or excluded, how consent is sought, and the choice of methods.

The United Nation Convention on the Rights of the Child and the sociological turn in childhood studies, often associated with the “new sociology of childhood” in the 80s and 90s, signified an important development in research related to children, emphasising children’s right to participation and acknowledging children’s agency and voice (Kraftl, 2013). This was underpinned by an ethic of justice, which foregrounds equality and individual rights. Using an ethic of justice was important to challenge the under-representation of children in research and a view of children as passive and vulnerable. In recent decades authors have troubled any move towards a simplistic understanding of children’s rights and voice, which fails to critically reflect on how children’s agency and voice is expressed and facilitated differently to those of adults. While acknowledging that an ethic of justice continues to play an important role, there have been calls for greater reflexivity and critical analysis to make visible the messiness, relational entanglements and power dynamics which shape and produce children’s voice within research encounters (Chapeau and Join-Lambert, 2023; Cooper, 2023; Holland, 2010; Spyrou, 2011).

In this paper we respond to this call by reflecting on two vignettes from our fieldwork with children. Our paper uniquely contributes by discussing ethically important moments and their implications for research with children and young people who are part of adoptive, foster and kinship families and participated in a longitudinal study on experiences of permanence. We discuss what we learned about listening to children, how children’s participation was situated within existing family dynamics, and how we needed to navigate differences in what caregivers and children knew about children’s stories. We argue that paying attention to moment-to-moment decisions is important in all research, but particularly in qualitative longitudinal research when the aim is to build ongoing research relationships.

Drawing on an ethic of justice, and an ethic of care alongside literature from critical childhood studies about children’s voice and agency helped us to reflect on decisions and interpretations before, during and after our research encounters with children and their families. The first vignette explores how consent and research engagement were negotiated, resisted and facilitated relationally between the child and researcher, as well as the child’s aunt. The second vignette explores what happens when the research visit acts as a catalyst for change and creates a space for children and adults to ask questions about their lives.

The interviews on which we draw for this paper took place between 2016 and 2023 and coincided with an increased focus on children’s participation in decisions about their lives in Scotland. The Independent Care Review listened to over 5000 experiences before publishing The Promise (2020). Over half of those 5000 people were children, young people and adults with care experience, and families. A core foundation of the Promise was ‘Voice’, including the statement that “children must be listened to and meaningfully and appropriately involved” (Independent Care Review, 2020, p12). The concept of voice is complex and how children’s voice(s) are listened to, heard, responded to, and reported within practice and research needs to be interrogated. Given that we all use different voices at different times, how ‘voice’ is enacted in research and practice may unintentionally privilege children whose voices are easier to hear, including because they express themselves in ways that adults find easier to recognise (Murray, 2019), and this is explored in Vignette 1.

Qualitative social work research with care experienced children: An ethic of justice and an ethic of care

As research has increasingly involved children, there has been growing attention to how processes can best take account of their needs in ways which are ethical, for example thinking about at what level and in what ways children can participate, how to facilitate consent and assent and the risks and benefits of being involved in research (Alderson and Morrow, 2011; Harcourt and Sargeant, 2011; Smith, 2021). Given that social work research with care experienced children often involves sensitive topics, it necessitates an increased focus on ethical practices, balancing an ethic of justice (including the right to participation) with an ethic of care (valuing relationships and not causing harm).

An ethic of care and an ethic of justice are sometimes characterised as being in opposition to each other (Botes, 2000). Originating within feminist theory, an ethic of care foregrounds the interdependency of human life and privileges values and practices underpinning caring relationships such as attentiveness and responsiveness to need (Barnes, 2007). Rather than striving for universal rights, an ethic of care emphasises how ethics are context dependent.

A focus on care and needs, as emphasised by an ethic of care, has been criticised for underestimating children’s agency and valuing the accounts of ‘care-givers’ over those being cared for (Holland, 2010). As research access to children is generally through adult ‘gatekeepers’, whose over-riding concern may be to protect children, those who are younger or are perceived as having had (or are currently having) difficult experiences, may be excluded. While social work research routinely includes the views of older children, there are significant contributions to understanding the views of younger children in care (Clark and Statham, 2005; Winter, 2010, 2012, 2023; Whincup, 2017; Morrison 2024).

An ethic of justice calls for equity, including all children’s equal rights to be included and heard in research. An ethic of care comes from the perspective that holding equal rights does not mean that children should be included like adults, or even in exactly the same way, as an ethic of care pays attention to the different life context and needs of each child. Rather than viewing care and participation as opposites, Dubois et al. (2022) identify how children are both agentic and vulnerable, members of families and individuals. It has been helpful to recognise the interdependent nature of an ethic of justice and an ethic of care to try and create research spaces in which children feel safe to express themselves and feel listened to (Hill et al., 2022; Holland, 2010).

Social work researchers utilising an ethic of care have explored the relational and multifaceted nature of agency and webs of care around children. Their work with children and young people problematises an individualistic perspective of agency and voice in practice areas of domestic abuse (Morris et al., 2020), involvement in social work decision-making (Morrison et al., 2019) and advocacy (Barnes, 2007), and asks researchers to think more critically about how they understand, include and represent the voices of care experienced children (Chapeau and Join-Lambert, 2023; Holland, 2010). Similarly, insights from critical childhood studies highlight how children’s actions and interactions are afforded or restricted by structural and relational environments, which are largely shaped by adults, including researchers (Hunleth, 2011; Spyrou, 2019). Children’s agency and voice has historically been connected with an ethics of justice, focusing on rights and autonomy, but over time understandings of children’s agency have become more nuanced, highlighting how agency is shaped by the child’s context and relationships, and questioning if children’s agency is always positive (Morrison et al., 2019; Wihstutz, 2016).

Micro-ethics to surface ethically important moments

In this paper we are adding to a relatively small but growing body of work that aims to make ethically important moment in research with children visible, and share learning through reflexive practice (Chapeau and Join-Lambert, 2023; Herbert, 2025; Holland et al., 2014; Khoja, 2016). Engaging in reflexive practice to critically assess our interactions with children through an ethic of care and an ethic of justice helped us to navigate and learn from ethically difficult moments (Benaton et al., 2020; Chapeau and Join-Lambert, 2023). As Wihstutz (2016, p. 64) writes, ethical theory is of special interest to understanding how children’s voice and agency is facilitated or constrained by dissecting how adults interpret their own and the child’s actions in moments of moral dilemma.

In their paper on ethics and reflexivity, Guillemin and Gillam (2004) differentiate between ‘procedural ethics’ and ‘ethics in practice’ drawing attention to the importance of ‘doing ethical research’ throughout the research process, rather than only when working on the institutional ethical approval. This work is closely connected to micro-ethics, coined by Komesaroff (1995) within a healthcare context. Micro-ethics focuses on the subtle, often unnoticed, ethical decisions and dynamics, emphasising the importance of attentiveness, communication, and understanding in these situations.

Micro ethics and ethics in practice have been applied in social work research to identify moments which challenge researchers to critically think about their expectations of children, and how far researchers are able (or not) to create safe and engaging research spaces, be attentive to children’s subtle communication, and responsive to the family and caregiving context in which the research takes place (Chapeau and Join-Lambert, 2023; Christensen and Bikova, 2022). Rather than using the term ‘micro-ethics’ in this paper we frame ethically important moments as ‘ostensibly small’, highlighting that while interactions and decisions happen moment to moment, and might seem ‘small’, they can have outsized implications for the trust and rapport we build with children and their families, and in some instances shifts occurred in how families talked about their stories because of these ostensibly small moments.

The Permanently Progressing? study

Since 2014, the Permanently Progressing? study has been gathering information on all 1836 children who became looked after in Scotland in 2012-13 when aged five or under, focusing on children who live with kinship carers, foster carers, or who are adopted. It is the largest longitudinal study of care experienced children in the UK, tracking children’s progress to permanence or impermanence, and their outcomes at key life stages (early childhood, middle childhood, and late adolescence/early adulthood). Phase 1 (2014-18) analysed children’s experiences from birth to around eight. Phase 2 (2020-24) revisited children in middle childhood. Phase 3 is planned to start in 2026.

The study uses mixed methods. We have primarily drawn information on children’s care pathways and legal permanence status over time by analysing Children Looked After Statistics (CLAS) to investigate whether and how permanence has been achieved for the cohort of 1836 children. We have used administrative data to provide the ‘bigger picture’, but this does not provide rich details about children’s day-to-day experiences. As permanence involves ‘feeling’ secure as well as ‘being’ legally secure, we explored experiences of permanence, belonging and support through surveys of social workers and caregivers and qualitative interviews with children and their caregivers in Phase 1 and 2, as well as interviews with birth parents (Phase 2 only). Interviews with children were conducted to understand their experiences of belonging, their connections to people who are important to them and what helped them to feel well and safe.

Formal (procedural) ethical permission for Phase 2 was granted by the General University Ethics Panel (GUEP) at University of Stirling and by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee at Lancaster University. Some participating local authorities/organisations have their own panels, and they also gave permission. Permission to access and link administrative data came from the Scottish Government via the Statistics Public Benefit and Privacy Panel (Stats PBPP).

Research aims: Reflexivity and the use of vignettes

While the results of the wider study have been reported elsewhere (Grant et al., 2018; Whincup et al., 2024) and publications exploring children’s experiences of sibling contact and school inclusion and exclusion are in preparation, this paper reflects on ethics and our learning from interviewing care experienced children. Reflexivity is at the heart of doing ethical research and sharing and reflecting on concrete moments, including with vignettes, helps to make reflexive practice visible (Pascoe Leahy, 2022). Vignettes create space for the lived experience of the research process, by providing a sense for the reader of ‘being there’ and making the positionality and relationships between participants and researchers visible (Rodriguez-Dorans and Jacobs, 2020). The two vignettes shared in this paper, and other examples from research interviews, were selected to illustrate moments that caused us to pause and interrogate the ethical implications of research encounters for children, families and researchers.

Others (Burns and Schaefer, 2025; Richards et al., 2015) have used reflections from fieldwork to surface the ways that research encounters are uncertain and messy and can develop in unanticipated directions. While there are risks involved in exploring that uncertainty, our aim in doing so is to make visible the moment-to-moment nature of ethics in action. Although we did not set out to systematically record our approach to ‘ethics in practice’ via vignettes and fieldnotes, after each research visit, every researcher involved in interviewing children wrote reflective notes. In Phase 2, we consistently scheduled calls to reflect on the experience immediately following each interview. Thus, reflexive practice as a team before, during and after research encounters with children became an integral part of the study. All three of us encountered moments that stayed with us and which we grappled with and continue to mull over. We revisited these moments as a team in regular meetings. The two vignettes presented here were chosen as they challenged us in profound ways to think about how we related to children and the role of the researcher. They were chosen as they both helped us to think about slightly different ethical dilemmas, thinking about children’s resistance and consent in vignette 1, and researcher positionality/boundaries and the sensitivities of navigating family dynamics in vignette 2.

Recruitment of children

This paper focuses on how we enacted ethics in our interactions with two children and their caregivers, but we also draw on our interactions with other children. Twenty children and young people participated in interviews across the two phases. Ten children took part in Phase 1 when they were between three and eight years old (five girls and five boys). We spoke to all bar one of these children again in Phase 2 and interviewed 10 children and young people for the first time. Children and young people were between nine and 15 years old in Phase 2 (nine girls and 10 boys).

All children have experienced separation from their birth parents. Eleven children had been adopted; four lived with foster carers and five with kinship carers. Nineteen children are white British, and one child is of mixed ethnicity. Pseudonyms are used throughout this paper, and some details have been changed to ensure anonymity.

Children and young people were recruited through participating caregivers (foster carers, kinship carers and adoptive parents), who were asked to share information sheets (including our photos) with children. This means that caregivers acted as gatekeepers, and we interviewed at least one caregiver for each of the children who spoke to us. Our interviews with caregivers enabled us to explore with them possible concerns and hopes about the child’s participation, and to tailor interviews by finding out what activities children might like to do with us. However, this had implications for children’s rights to privacy, as we often had some information about their lives before meeting them and this may have influenced children’s choices about whether to meet us and what to disclose (or not) if/when they met us.

‘Play and talk’ sessions and interviews with children

We met with children at a time and place which suited them (home, garden, school), with all except one interview taking place in the family home. In Phase 1, we designed our research so that younger children could participate where appropriate and/or possible. We developed ‘play and talk sessions’ that enabled children to choose from a range of different activities, including talking while playing with dolls houses, lego, or play dough. Materials were used to facilitate the interviews and help children feel at ease, and were not analysed as artefacts or photographed. Building on the work of Clark and Statham (2005) and Winter (2010, 2012) our aim of the play and talk sessions was to explore with children what helped them feel secure in their families with a few key questions. Who is in their family? What kind of things do they and their family enjoy doing? If people who are part of their family live separately from them, do they see them and/or think about them? In three of the play and talk sessions a caregiver was present throughout at the child’s request, and in two sessions siblings participated together. Play and talk sessions were between 30 to 100 minutes long, with most lasting for an hour or more.

In Phase 2, we often continued to be active while talking; for example, playing board games, making jewellery or drawing, while other times we ‘just’ talked, particularly during interviews with older young people (between 12 and 15). We used pictorial cards containing images that represented possible topics: family, school, friends and hobbies, support, pets, and the future. We asked children to “pick a card, any card” so they could choose what to talk about, and in what order (Figure 1). Our aim was to explore children’s everyday experiences, and how these link to their sense of permanence. Children were interviewed once in each phase.

Figure 1.

‘Pick a card, any card’.

In Phase 2, one young person asked to take part by responding to questions in writing and posting this to us, but all other children and young people met a researcher in person. At children and young people’s request, in six interviews a caregiver was present, and one interview was conducted with a child and their sibling. Interviews in Phase 2 lasted between 30 to 90 minutes, with the majority taking between 45 and 60 minutes. Children and caregivers who had taken part in Phase 1 were offered a choice as to whether they wanted to talk to the same researcher or a different one. In most instances, children chose to see the same researcher, and this provided an opportunity for caregivers and the researcher to remind the child about ‘stand out moments’ from when we ‘played and talked’ when they were little. For Islay who was nine in Phase 2, and three when we met during Phase 1, her adoptive mum introduced Helen as ‘the lady who brought the black play dough last time’. Ten-year-old Harry was reminded that his much younger self licked every home-made biscuit before passing them to Helen (who ate them!).

Terminology

Language is important. In this paper we sometimes use the term ‘caregiver’, rather than foster carer, kinship carer or adoptive parent, while children talked about their mum, dad, gran, grandpa, auntie, uncle, foster mum or foster dad. We use ‘birth parent’ to differentiate between birth parents and adoptive parents, however this is a contested term and parents whose children are living apart from them are likely to describe themselves as parents, without the pre-fix.

Positionality

Authors Helen and Maggie have been involved in the study since Phase 1, while Paula joined the study in Phase 2. All have previous experience of doing research with care experienced children and young people and have previous connections to practice, Paula through working in residential care, Helen as a social worker with children and families, and Maggie through work in youth groups and mentoring. Additionally, Helen and Maggie have personal connections as an adult adoptee and through experience of adoption in the immediate family, with Helen’s identity as an adult adoptee being one of the reasons why she was involved in interviews in Phase 1. Our own identities and connections to the topic shaped our encounters with children and their caregivers. This included Helen making reference to being adopted, as with nine-year-old Zara. After enquiring whether Zara knew anyone else who was adopted, Helen mentioned that ‘I’m adopted as well, and when I was your age, I wondered whether I knew anybody who was adopted’. In some cases, caregivers asked if Helen was in contact with her ‘birth family’. It also included sharing other parts of our lives with children when they were curious. For example, many of the children and young people in our study had much cherished pets and were often more interested in photos of Maggie’s cat than in any information about her role in the research. Some children commented on Paula’s accent, as she is originally from Germany, so she started bringing a world map to begin her interviews. Children enjoyed pointing to countries they had been to or telling about connections they had to Germany (learning German in school, having been there or learning about its history).

Vignettes: Reflections on two ethically important moments

In this section we present two vignettes of significant ethical encounters. These were written for this paper based on our fieldnotes, notes from discussions at meetings and the memory of the researcher who was present to create a coherent and in-depth account for the reader. Often unexpectedly we were challenged as researchers to (re)consider our position in relation to children and the adults in their lives, balancing an ethic of justice with an ethic of care. We became acutely aware that what we said (or didn’t say) and how we talked to children and their families shaped families’ subsequent conversations and had implications for building trust and rapport with children and their caregivers during the encounter, immediately after, and before new research visits with the same family.

Vignette 1 ‘Poo poo’: Not at all or not like this? (Paula)

I met ten-year-old Celia at home where she lives with her aunt. We seemed to get off to a good start. Celia seemed excited to show me the living room where she had decided we would be talking. ‘This is going well’ I thought and started to feel confident about the interview. I asked Celia if she wanted her aunt to be in the room with us or not, and she quickly responded that she wanted her present. We sat on the sofa in the living room. Celia’s aunt sat beside us and started to knit. I took out the information sheet and consent form and started to explain again about our study. This was when dynamics seemed to shift as we moved from me being the guest and Celia the hostess to me moving into a position of power and knowledge, asking her to listen. She started to fold her arms across her chest. When I took out the voice recorder and asked about recording our conversation, she shook her head and looked down. I paused and said to Celia that I could see that she felt worried and unsure about the recorder. ‘I know, it looks a bit strange’, I said and started to play around with it. Her aunt now joined the conversation to tell Celia that the recording was to help me remember what we talked about. Celia continued to sit with her arms crossed over her chest, her lips pressed together tightly. ‘It can be strange hearing your own voice’, I continued and then started to record myself talking and playing it back for all of us to hear. I asked her if she wanted to record me. We played around with the recorder some more, and I explained again that only the research team would listen to the recording, and her friends or family would not be able to hear it. After some minutes she seemed to relax and then nodded. ‘Is it ok for me to use the recorder?’ I asked and Celia nodded in return. She then moved closer to me and asked about the signature line on the consent form. ‘Do you already have a signature?’ I asked. Celia nodded enthusiastically. ‘I made up my own signature,’ she said. She signed the form with a big grin.

The interview continued like this for the next 30 minutes, moving from moments where Celia seemed happy to speak, to her demonstrating uncertainty or resistance. I tried to respond to these shifts and explore if these were about a particular theme, my way of interacting, or if she wanted to stop the interview altogether. Several times Celia re-engaged and seemed interested when we changed topic but over time was more fidgety and her answers became shorter and less serious (‘What do you usually have for breakfast?’ ‘Poo poo’ (laughing)). I could see her aunt who was close by looking at Celia sternly and sensed her frustration with Celia’s responses, and so presumably could Celia. ‘She just wants to rush through to get out to the park to play with her friends’, her aunt said. ‘We could continue talking and walk together to the park?’, I offered. ‘No, I am only allowed out after dinner’, Celia said and looked gloomily at her aunt. I tried a few more questions but could feel Celia’s increasing withdrawal and so I asked a last question, and we finished the interview.

Analysis of vignette 1

Reflecting on the interview with Celia afterwards helped us to consider how researcher positionality, child and adult power dynamics and unspoken expectations (including by caregiver and researcher) of how children should behave during an interview all shaped this interaction and influenced how far Celia was able to share her experiences. We found the concepts of thick and thin agency, relational agency, and normative perspectives on agency helpful to analyse the interaction with Celia.

Klocker (2007) places children’s actions along a spectrum of thick and thin agency. Children can express thick agency in environments in which they feel comfortable and are provided with different options. Thin agency describes choices carried out in restrictive environments, where limited choices are predefined by adults (Klocker, 2007). Morrison et al. (2019) note how thick and thin agency are produced by structures, material environments and relationships. Celia has had encounters with social work professionals throughout her life and while Paula is not a social worker, past experiences of encounters with professionals will have shaped how Celia related during the interview process. At the beginning of the vignette, changes from openness to resistance seemed to be linked to times when Celia felt rushed and part of a process predetermined by the adults and materials around her. We will start by critically examining the materials we used, then explore how agency was both facilitated and restricted in the relationships among those present.

The materials used by Paula during the interview played an important role in facilitating or constraining agency. This was particularly noticeable in the use of the audio recorder which Celia was discomfited by and although Paula acknowledged and responded to this, offering to take notes instead, Celia remained silent. Paula not spending enough time to introduce herself and the recorder evoked resistance, while slowing down and being attuned to what Celia was communicating created a space in which Celia then felt able to take part. More generally, it became evident to us that children’s resistance or reluctance was sometimes a communication of ‘Not like this’ or a ‘I am not sure about this’, rather than a ‘I want to stop’ or ‘I don’t want to take part at all’. Two other children in Phase 2 displayed discomfort when first seeing the recorder, one immediately shaking his head when Paula took it out of her bag. Even if they agreed to being recorded beforehand, seeing the recorder, something they had often never seen before, was a different experience for children than for adults, highlighting how children related to the research in an embodied and concrete way. For subsequent interviews we incorporated more visual information, sending a photo of the recorder to families, and building in more time so children could play with and try out the recorder before we asked for their consent to support ‘thicker agency’. This allowed children to explore the recorder and make a more informed decision. We also noticed that thicker agency was facilitated in Phase 2 by building in an extended recruitment time frame over two years and this meant that changes in children’s circumstances led to children sometimes deciding to take part later.

Celia’s level of interest and engagement varied, and while we brought ‘Stop’, ‘Go’ and ‘Pause’ signs with us, to make it easier for children to show us when they did not want to answer a question, wanted to pause or end the interview, like Celia most children did not use them. We realised that the signs were too explicit. While having good intentions, we had underestimated the power dynamics between children and ourselves in using the signs. Reflexive practise as a team helped us to learn from these experiences. As has been observed by others (Khoja, 2016; Winter, 2012), we became attuned to how children showed their preferences and needs through smaller actions such as changing topics or answering with 'I don’t know’. Using the topic cards (Figure 1) worked better to facilitate subtle communication than ‘Stop’/’Go’ and children were encouraged to put the card to one side once they had finished talking about a theme and this was a subtler way of indicating ‘I’ve had enough of this’, or ‘I don’t want to talk about this’. These subtle signs also made us think about the order in which children chose topics. In most instances, children started with a theme which was ‘easier’ for them, leaving ‘harder’ areas till later in the interview. Children and young people who found friendships challenging often chose this as one of their last cards, while many started the interview by talking about their pets. Some of the older children ignored the cards and seemed comfortable moving from topic to topic throughout the interview, so we used the cards instead as a check-in at the end of the interview for anything else they might want to add in relation to any of the themes.

Thinking about agency through an ethic of care draws out how agency can be produced and constrained in relationships and how researchers and caregivers enable children to access their participation rights or not (Holland, 2010; Wihstutz, 2016). During interviews, the presence of caregivers could act as enablers or as constraints. Celia asked for her aunt to be present, but her presence also introduced adult expectations about the ‘right’ way to take part. Hanson (2016, p471) reminds us that how adults view children’s agency is based on normative views of what behaviours are considered 'right’ or 'wrong’ in different contexts. In the interaction with Celia there were several moments where Paula, as well as Celia’s aunt, reproduced adult ideas of how a research session and interview should unfold. Oulton et al. (2016) highlight the role of family dynamics in research encounters, and that there can be tensions between what caregivers want and the child’s feelings about taking part in research. Celia’s aunt believed in the value of the research and wanted Celia to do ‘well’. Celia was aware that her restlessness and talking about poo displeased her aunt. In hindsight Paula wondered if her decision to change the subject rather than joining Celia in talking about poo (for example asking did you have fried poo or boiled poo for breakfast?) was partly influenced by her assumption that Celia’s aunt would have found this inappropriate. Instead, in the moment Paula interpreted Celia’s talk about poo and becoming more fidgety as a sign of wanting to end the interview. This might be true but assumptions of speaking or playing with children (including neurodivergent children) for between 30 to 60 minutes are based on ‘normative’ (ie adult) ways of doing research, rather than accommodating children’s different ways of being in the world. As the experiences and voices of neurodivergent and disabled children continue to be largely absent from research (Sun et al., 2023), striving for inclusive and child-centred research raises questions about how to be attuned and respond to ‘disruption’, ‘silliness’ and children acting in unanticipated ways during research encounters. In our study where neurodiversity was common, for us as researchers this included eating licked biscuits offered by a child, interviewing in a room surrounded by a child’s pet birds, following where children led (both conversationally and physically – for example to show the researcher a pet or their trampoline moves), and blowing up balloons and then releasing them.

Vignette 2: ‘So, can I have it earlier?’ - Research encounters as catalysts for change (Helen)

I visited ten-year-old Fergus at home with his adoptive mum Jane and his older brother Tom (Jane and Arthur’s birth child), having already interviewed Jane. I had met Jane and Fergus in Phase 1 and reminded Fergus that the last time I met him he was still at nursery. During his interview, Fergus (10) chose to have Jane and Tom present. Towards the end of the interview (after we had talked about friends, school, football and family) I asked him whether he had any photos of his biological siblings or any form of contact with his ‘birth family’, and he said ‘No, I have to wait until I’m eighteen’, to which Tom exclaimed ‘Eighteen’! Jane explained that while Arthur (adoptive father) sent an annual letter via the adoption agency with photos of Fergus this was the only form of contact and ‘we were advised, to wait until you’re eighteen, until you’re an adult before.... I’m not sure what the law is’? The first part of the sentence was to Fergus (and Tom), but the last part of the sentence was posed to me, as a question by Jane. Here, before deciding what to say, I had to simultaneously consider an ethic of care (not to potentially cause harm, while also being responsive and attuned), with an ethic of justice (their right to accurate information). The options open to me were to answer ‘I don’t know either’ (which would have been untrue); to say ‘perhaps you should make contact with the adoption agency and ask’ (the family had no contact with social work or the assessing agency for several years), so ‘ask a hypothetical someone else’; or to answer as truthfully as possible. The third option seemed in the moment to be more ethical and more authentic.

Listening back to the recording, in addition to several ‘uhms’, there is a lengthy pause before I made the choice to answer Jane in front of Fergus and Tom: ‘The law doesn’t quite say that, uhm, I guess what it says is that if you think that that it's going to be really helpful, then you can ask for that earlier, uhm, it’s what your mum and dad think is best for you’. In response, Fergus said to his mum ‘So, I can have it earlier’? And when she said, ‘If you want’ he said ‘Yes!’ and she suggested ‘we’ll talk later’. Slightly later in the interview, Fergus asked his mum how he had settled in when he moved from living with foster carers saying: ‘When I met you, did I want to stay in the place I was, or did I just go with you?’ and Jane mentioned that she and Fergus had talked about his adoption and birth family the evening before the interview. The interview with Fergus and Jane concluded just as Arthur came home from work, and as this coincided with the family’s teatime, I arranged to interview Arthur a couple of weeks later via Teams.

Immediately after the interview with Fergus, I called Maggie from my car to confirm the interview had ended and we talked over Jane’s question about contact, and my response. I spent time then and afterwards mulling over each of the possible alternative replies to the question. I contacted Jane the week after, to confirm they had received thank you vouchers, and to check how things were after the interview. Jane and Arthur said they had decided to re-contact social work and explore the possibility of sharing more information with Fergus with the support of professionals.

Analysis of vignette 2

Holland et al. (2014) refer to the concept of ‘ethical speedbumps’ which are “moments that bring ethical issues to the forefront in the research process” (p412). In their study involving parents and children who had contact with social workers due to parental substance use, they frame research encounters as interventions in the lives of families, with the potential for distress and support with some families seeking advice from interviewers or help from new sources post-interview. Differently to Holland’s image of a ‘speed bump’, in this instance the question posed by Fergus adoptive mother occurred without a visible or audible warning, requiring a response within seconds. Morrison et al. (2019) asks us to question if children’s agency is always positive and Fergus’s request for ‘could I have it earlier’ could be interpreted as potentially causing harm. Helen’s response acknowledges the responsibility and role caregivers have to safeguard children and hold the process: ‘it’s what your mum and dad think is best for you.’

Given our connections to practice, we sometimes felt a tension between being there as researchers, and our practice experience. Fergus’s vignette is an example where the boundary between practice knowledge and our role as researchers was blurred, and there were other instances. For example, when foster carers described ongoing, long-term bullying of their foster son, Kieran (13), and said they were going to meet the Headteacher, Helen asked ‘Would it be helpful for Kate [Kieran's social worker] to be there or not helpful?’ following this up with ‘then there’s three people fighting his corner’. While this was framed as a question, it was based on Helen’s sense from practice experience that this might help formalise their concerns. Neale (2021, p150) highlights the complex balance between reciprocity and professional boundaries in ongoing research relationships. She gives the examples of a research team offering educational advice to a participant who wanted to go to university. Reflections within the team helped us to explore decisions we made in the moment, and why we blurred boundaries. Here, asking about social work attendance at the meeting related to an ethic of justice and an ethic of care, communicating the right of families to receive social work support, while also wanting to ensure that Kieran and his caregivers were not left alone in such a difficult situation.

Talking about sensitive topics and engaging with complex family dynamics can surface concerns or questions that already exist, even if unspoken, within family life. The vignette with Fergus highlights how at times our research visits acted as catalyst for conversations before, during and after the interview, including families sharing new or different information with children. Allowing us into their family home and sharing their story with us created a space in which families’ existing narratives changed and where children and caregivers could ask questions. As part of the findings of Phase 1 and 2 we reflected on boundary management and the spectrum of communicative openness within and across families (Docan-Morgan, 2010). Some families in our interview sample were very open and talked regularly about children’s birth families and early lives. In contrast, other families rarely talked about this part of children’s lives, which had ethical implications for decisions we made about what to ask children. For instance, although Joe (aged nine) said he wanted to take part in the research interview, one of his first comments was ‘adoption is private’ and so questions about adoption and his birth family were approached tentatively. Decisions about what to share and not to share came for many caregivers from a place of concern and being worried about not being able to hold possible distress in the absence of formal support from social work and other professionals. Bringing an ethic of care perspective influenced how we viewed our responsibility to check families felt able to manage and support questions and emotions that the interview might raise for children (and adults) during and after our visit. It was important to assure families that we were available to answer follow-up questions and to signpost them to services and support if they wanted.

Concluding thoughts

In our findings from Phase 1 and 2, we talk about the ‘ostensibly small’ actions of care, affection and commitment in families that are meaningful for children (Grant et al., 2018; Whincup et al., 2024). Extending this gaze to the research process, this paper has focused on ostensibly small decisions and points of interaction that have outsized implications for research and that shaped how we engaged with children in our study. As Guillemin and Gillam (2004, p265) state: “Perhaps these issues may seem unimportant because they have an “everyday” sort of quality. However, there is much more to ethics than red letter dilemmas, and much is missed by not being aware of this.”

Previous research involving children has highlighted the unpredictable nature of qualitative fieldwork, particularly when visiting families’ homes, where ethical decisions need to be made in the moment situationally and relationally and where researchers need to be aware of existing dynamics, as well as non-verbal and silent ways that children communicate (Chapeau and Join-Lambert, 2023; Khoja, 2016; Richards et al., 2015; Winter, 2012). Children who took part in our research interviews were aged between three and eight years old in Phase 1, and nine and 15 in Phase 2. A recent systematic review highlighted that while young children are increasingly involved in research, ethics and methodological considerations of voice remain under-explored (Sun et al., 2023). Our study highlights how critical engagement with voice and agency through an ethic of justice and an ethic of care can help guide researchers through unanticipated ethically challenging moments and improve how they involve children in their research.

While an ethic of justice and care could in the moment feel in conflict, we recognize the value of seeing both ethical positions as interconnected. In our encounter with Celia, showing care and creating space to explore her reluctance when faced with the audio-recorder was the starting point to enable her to express her voice. Celia was telling us throughout when the ways we were communicating with her were not working, and listening to her voice/actions more closely could have allowed us to respond more attentively. Our encounter with Fergus speaks to the complexity of children’s agency, particularly when children ask for something which may be viewed by adults as risky or potentially harmful. In such instances, an ethic of care asks us to recognise that caregiver and children’s wellbeing is in many ways interdependent. Branelly and Barnes (2022) emphasise that our ability to give and receive care is shaped by wider networks and that to conduct care-full research, researchers need to pay attention to the specific context in which the research is conducted and in this case the extent to which children and their care-givers have access to care and support.

While children’s agency needs to be recognised, so does their differential status in relation to adults. Rather than turning to fixed and stable notions of voice, this approach aligns with authors who have argued for the value of a relational and situational approach to understanding children’s experiences (Spyrou, 2019; Wihstutz, 2016). This approach is relevant throughout the research cycle, going beyond data collection and analysis to how we (re)present children’s voices in research. To make the relational and contextual quality of interviews with children visible in our dissemination, when using extracts from children’s interviews we provided additional information, including about the activity that was taking place. We often included adult voices (researcher and caregivers) who were part of conversations with children, to make the context of children’s words visible. We also paid attention to care-full representations (Brannelly and Barnes, 2022) and language when writing up the report and summaries, asking ourselves: How would it feel for the child to read/hear each sentence? How would it feel for different adults in their lives: adoptive parents, birth parents, foster or kinship carers?

A commitment to reflexive practice and peer supervision helped us to learn from research experiences and improve how we built and maintained research relationships with children and their families over time. This is of particular importance in longitudinal research where the after with one family is also a new before with the same and other families. As we plan for Phase 3, when our cohort will be in late adolescence/young adulthood, we are aware that the encounters we have then are likely to bring different ethical challenges. Some of these challenges we can anticipate, prepare for, and address in formal ethics processes. Others will surprise us and will require us to respond as sensitively and thoughtfully as possible in the moment.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Thank you to all the children and adults who shared their experiences with us in Phases 1 and 2. We very much hope to see you again in Phase 3. Ruth Emond – for the helpful feedback on an earlier draft of this paper and for discussing the use of topic cards in a therapeutic setting (Emond, 2014) that led to us developing the cards. Adele Laing - for the creation of the topic cards and completing some of the interviews. Martin Howard for formatting the report and other materials. Martin also made and holds the copyright for the ‘Who Helps Me’ cards we used in interviews with children. Lisa Morriss and her team at Qualitative Social Work for the supportive review process and both reviewers for their helpful feedback, allowing us to strengthen this paper.

ORCID iD

Paula Jacobs

Ethical considerations

Ethical approval was granted by the University of Stirling General University Ethics Panel [GUEP364] on 6 March 2018, and thereafter by Lancaster University. Ethical approval for Phase 2 was granted by GUEP on 22^nd March 2021 (22-0551) and thereafter by Lancaster University. Permission to access and link administrative data came from the Scottish Government in Phase 1, and in Phase 2 via the Statistics Public Benefit and Privacy (SPBPP 2021-0001).

Consent to participate

Participants gave informed consent prior to starting interviews (written or recorded verbally). All caregivers and adoptive parents gave consent for children to take part. The youngest participants gave verbal consent and ticked yes or no for whether they were happy to play and talk with Helen or Maggie, whether it was okay to record their talk, and whether they wanted someone with them while they played and talked. Some also made a mark on the card to symbolise their name, while older children gave written consent.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Phase 1 of the study was fully funded by a philanthropic donor. Phase 2 of the study was funded by the same philanthropic donor and the Nuffield Foundation, JUS/FR-000000386.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Data Availability Statement

The participants of this study did not give written consent for their data to be shared publicly, so due to the sensitive nature of the research supporting data is not available.

Disclaimer

The project has been part funded by the Nuffield Foundation, but the views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily the Foundation. Visit .

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