‘I'm really proud of what I've achieved’: reframing narratives of care experienced parents using appreciative inquiry

This article explores the perspectives of care experienced parents seeking to highlight their positive experiences of parenting. In doing so, we provide a new perspective on methods by combining an appreciative inquiry approach with the use of objects for elicitation to counterbalance negative stereotypes. While research often focuses on the service needs of care leavers, this study instead emphasises those parents who go on to live ‘ordinary’ lives and do not feature in care leaver outcome statistics. This paper describes the research methods that were used to collect these alternative perspectives. We spoke to 34 care experienced parents about their everyday experiences of parenting. Participants were acutely aware of the low expectations that others had for care experienced parents and were motivated to add a counterbalance to negative stereotypes. The use of appreciative inquiry, along with the use of artefacts, contributes new insights into the everyday parenting experiences of care experienced parents.