A mother’s experience of placing their child into care
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Mothers’ experiences of placing their child into care in the context of mental health difficulties or historical trauma: A phenomenological study
IRAS ID
232098
Contact name
Kate Louise Siverns
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Leicester
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
232098, IRAS reference number
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 8 months, 30 days
Research summary
‘How do mothers’ make sense of their experiences of parenting and making the decision to place their child into care in the context of their mental health difficulties or past trauma?’
The current literature suggests that parents who have experienced mental health difficulties or trauma may experience parenting differently and this may be embodied with inherent difficulties in light of parenting beliefs and behaviours. Research that has explored the experiences of parenting in the context of mental health and trauma has highlighted the complexity of the parental experience and the emotional turmoil that parents can encounter, with parenting itself potentially becoming a re-traumatising experience. Recent figures from the Department for Education (2017) indicate that 26% of looked after children have been taken under the care of the local authority due to: parental illness or disability; family dysfunction; or families experiencing acute levels of distress. Whilst some studies have looked into the experiences of mothers who have had their children forcibly removed there has been no research that has explored this phenomena in light of the mother making the decision to place their child into care.
This study will explore the lived experiences of mothers who place their child into care due to their mental health difficulties or past experiences of trauma. Mothers will be recruited from mental health and post-adoption services across NHS settings, private sector organisations and local authorities. It is proposed that each participant would be interviewed twice to capture rich and in-depth data. Interviews will be audio-recorded and analysed using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA).
It is hoped that findings from this research will help to provide a better understanding of the lived experiences for such mothers and how services and healthcare professionals could best support them.
REC name
West Midlands - Black Country Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/WM/0002
Date of REC Opinion
19 Feb 2018
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion