Child Health Records as Socio‐Material Instruments of Distributing Responsibility. A Comparative Analysis of Paediatric Documents from Austria, England and Germany

Abstract

Internationally child health records are central instruments of paediatric early detection and prevention of developmental disorders. Regarding children's developmental processes, child health records act as agents of developmental norms, moderate the distribution of tasks between parents and paediatricians and thus materially mediate practices of generational ordering. Drawing on actor-network-theoretical and ethnomethodological approaches to documents as active texts, the comparative analysis of child health records from three European countries focuses on similarities and differences in the conceptions of parental and paediatric responsibilities that can be reconstructed from the documents' form. Referencing normalism theory, the authors work out analytically how health programmes are materialised in documents/instruments, how specific conceptions of the child in development differ and how the construction of parental and paediatric tasks varies in these instruments. In concluding, the analysis is contextualised in different health policies in childhood.

Documentation for students in residential care: network of relations of human and non-human actants

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Life story templates in dementia care: Ambiguous direction and purpose

“…These consist of written, open-ended questions to be filled in by family members or by the older people themselves, and which shape the kind of life story that unfolds. As with other documents, life story templates impact the people who use them, suggesting interpretations and excluding others ( Kelle et al, 2015 ). Documents, Holstein (1992) says, shape and manage reality and can be analysed by focusing on their use in human services, where they ‘produce’ the clients so that they fit with what the organisation can offer.…”

Intertextual Voices of Children, Parents, and Specialists in Individual Education Plans

“…Komter, 2006), mental health care and social work (e.g. Günther et al, 2015), and pediatrics (e.g., Kelle, Seehaus & Bollig, 2015;Schryer, Bell, Mian, Sparrord & Lingard, 2011).…”