Sense Making Through Narrative: A Carer's Experience and the Relevance for Social Work

Abstract

This article focuses on the field of adoption to illustrate how an interpretative methodological approach to a single extract of research text can suggest diverse ways of making sense of an adoptive parent’s experience. We seek to demonstrate an approach to understanding text as narrative using a short extract from a long interview with an adoptive mother. Our analysis of this fragment sets out to show the richness, complexity and ambiguities of the respondent’s experience as they are expressed in her words. An argument is briefly presented for the utility of this approach for social work practitioners working in the area of adoption and fostering, and, by implication, in other areas of social work.

Key words: narrative, adoption, meaning, text, user-centred