The emotional aspects of children’s social relations

ISSN: 2073 7629

115 © 2019 CRES Special Issue Volume 11, Number 1, April 2019 pp

Special Issue Volume 11, Number 1, April 2019 pp 115 – 134

www.um.edu.mt/ijee

Is there a place for children as emotional beings in child protection

policy and practice?

Gabrielle Drakea 1

, Michel Edenboroughb, Jan Falloonb, Tobia Fattorec, Rhea Feltonb,

Jan Masonb and Lise Mogensenb

aAustralian Catholic University, Australia

bWestern Sydney University, Australia

cMacquarie University, Australia

The emotional aspects of children’s social relations have generally been marginalised in

social science discourse. Children, who participated in the Australian segment of the

Children’s Understandings of Well-being (CUWB) project used various media to

‘voice’ the importance for their well-being of emotional relatedness with family,

friends, animals and places. In this paper we place our construction of children’s

discussion of emotional relatedness in the context of the ‘emotional turn’ in research

and briefly describe how the methodology for our project facilitated an understanding

of the importance of children’s emotions for their lives in the present. We then focus on

the significance for child protection policy and practice, of what children tell us about

feeling safe, as this relates to the importance of agency and relation