DFG-Project: Orders of Knowledge in Help Processes

Project Management: Prof. Dr. Mechthild Bereswill and Dr. Patrik Müller-Behme

Research Assistants: Henrike Buhr and Louisa Veltin

Duration: 01.06.2024 – 31.05.2027

The expansion of users' individual rights to more self-determination and participation associated with the introduction of the Federal Participation Act (Bundesteilhabegesetz) is linked to the expectation that they will be more involved in negotiating assistance measures in the future. In order to receive help, those seeking help must meet the requirements and attributions of help organizations and cope with bureaucratic processes. This means that the legal introduction of participation and its implementation in assistance processes sets in motion a dynamic reconfiguration of the relations between the experiential knowledge of users, the expert knowledge of professionals and social bureaucratic knowledge.

The qualitative study analyzes patterns of interpretation of participation for people who are considered chronically mentally ill and whose experiences of help are characterized by the tension between self-determination and heteronomy. Within the framework of interviews, concepts of participation are collected in relation to the biographical experience knowledge of the users and the expert knowledge of professionals. Furthermore, the organizational knowledge of the social bureaucracy is examined with the help of a document analysis. Actor-specific meanings of participation will be reconstructed and comparatively analyzed. The planned research promises to provide insights into how participation is generated in the context of a reorganization of assistance processes.