This article examines how co-research is enacted in practice by analysing a 15 month research project that explored children’s and young people’s experiences of family work in Finland. Two young adults with lived experience in child welfare were employed as co- researchers and collaborated throughout the research process with four academic researchers. Drawing on diaries, Teams discussions, morning walk conversations, and documentation from workshops with children and young people, we conceptualise co-research through an analytical distinction between the “co” and the “research.” While this distinction is partly artificial, it proved productive for illuminating how relational practices and research practices evolve interdependently. Our analysis shows that sustaining the “co” required intentionally created relational spaces that enabled trust, emotional work, and ongoing negotiation of roles and expertise. The “research” dimension involved shared tasks, methodological experimentation—including the creative “painting with data” method—and collective meaning-making. Across all phases, the boundaries between co-researchers and academic researchers remained fluid, with participants inhabiting multiple positions over time. We argue that distinguishing between the “co” and the “research” enhances the rigour and transparency of co-research by making visible the processes through which knowledge is collaboratively produced. For us, the metaphor of co-research as a kaleidoscope captures both the methodological fluidity and relational accountability central to coresearch. Conducting co-research requires a continuous, dynamic, and shifting configuration of perspectives, competencies, and experiences through which new insights emerge.
This article examines how frontline child welfare social workers determine what counts as credible and defensible knowledge when care and institutional accountability pull in different directions. Drawing on five extended narrative accounts selected from a broader qualitative study of frontline child welfare social workers in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, the article uses narrative inquiry as its methodology. A thematic narrative approach guided the analysis of the accounts, and Critical Race Theory (CRT) informed interpretation. Participants described how institutional requirements and documentation practices influenced their judgment in work with families already subject to institutional oversight. Their accounts illustrate how accountability demands set the terms for what becomes institutionally credible, what is treated as actionable, and who carries responsibility at the frontline. Interpretations of culturally grounded caregiving were also tied to prior system involvement and professional authority. For families already disproportionately represented within child welfare systems, these pressures can narrow relational and preventive possibilities, especially when decisions are expected to withstand later review. The article contributes to qualitative social work scholarship on accountability and discretion by explaining how institutional processes influence the credibility of knowledge and the defensibility of frontline judgment. It also considers how education, supervision, and policy can support relational judgment and culturally responsive care.
