This article negotiates family therapists´ professional identities in the Family Counselling Services (FCS) in Norway and their experiences when following up parents whose children are placed in public care. A qualitative study following seven family therapists in the FCS, through focus groups and individual interviews, found that they struggle with contradictory positions within their professional identity when following up with these parents. This struggle involves a dichotomy between their personal feelings and their theoretical orientation as systemic therapists. Their dilemma becomes evident when the two systems emphasise different interpretations of the ‘truth’, and when they react to how the welfare system, in general, treats these parents. This study argues that the systemic family therapy approach seems to be useful both for handling the parents’ often fragmented stories, and for reconnecting these parents to society through allowing them to tell their own stories. A particularly demanding challenge for therapists in these situations is that the help they have to offer is inadequate in relation to the complexity and enormity of the needs of these parents. Thus, collaboration with other welfare instances is particularly important in these cases, but this collaboration brings its own complications. Knowledge about each other’s service and mandates is therefore particularly important for constructive and non-judgmental collaboration.
25 s., utgitt av NTNU i 2019.