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Personal experiences of vicarious trauma and resilience within child-welfare research: An arts-based reflection
- Source: Journal of Applied Arts & Health, Volume 9, Issue 3, Nov 2018, p. 399 - 409
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- 01 Nov 2018
Abstract
The emotional impacts of being a researcher within the field of child welfare are often unrecognized or underreported, despite extensive discussions of vicarious trauma and vicarious resilience within the therapy literature. This article provides an arts-based reflection on my experience of undertaking doctoral research that explored children’s resources in the context of homelessness and family violence. Songwriting was used as a reflexive method throughout my research to explore my intense emotions, feelings of helplessness, sense of responsibility and desire to changes the ways in which children are viewed, understood and responded to within their family and the service system. Four songs are shared throughout the reflexive discussion as a way of describing the research journey and exploring the ways in which the arts-based process provided a new perspective on the research. Implications for researchers in similar fields are explored.