A Study On The Identity Of Children’s Officers

In 2019,10 departments including the Ministry of Civil Affairs jointly issued a document requiring each village or community committee to have a children’s officer responsible for child care and protection services.The construction of a reasonable identity is the prerequisite for children’s officers to carry out their work,which affects the children’s officers’performance and professionalism in the delivery of grass-roots child welfare services such as helping children in distress.Judging from the practice in various places,most of the children’s officers are part-time workers in the villages or community who are responsible for civil affairs.Due to the intertwining and entanglement of other identities such as full-time work and family roles,as well as being unfamiliar and confused about the work of children’s officers,they face the stable development of identity and the adjustment and balance of multiple identities,which affects the stable delivery of grassroots children’s welfare services to a certain extent.Previous studies have paid less attention to the group of children’s officers,and related research mainly focused on institutional development and policy implementation,and mainly quantitative research,lacking in-depth discussions on the identity of children’s officers.Therefore,this study adopted the method of purposeful sampling,taking 64 children’s officers in 10 districts of Shanghai as the research objects,conducting focus group interviews and one-to-one semi-structured in-depth interviews to understand and analyze their specific manifestations and development process of their identities,and explores the influence of habitus,capital and field on the identity of the children’s officer with Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice.This study discusses the lateral performance of the children’s officer’s identity from the perspectives of cognition,emotion and behavior.In terms of cognition,the identity of the children’s officer is manifested in the conscious recognition and imprint of this identity,deeply aware of the unique value and meaning of the children’s officer,a sense of belonging and identity to this identity,and a clear awareness of the requirements of this identity for the relevant ability and the degree of self-matching.In terms of emotion,the identity of the children’s officer is manifested in that on the basis of meeting the basic expectations for identity,he/she experiences positive emotions such as satisfaction,relief and happiness,and through the accumulation of experience and achievements in the practice of this identity,he/she further feels positive emotions such as pride,joy and moving,and gains a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.In terms of behavior,the identity of the children’s officer is reflected in improving his own knowledge and skills through continuous learning and advanced training,showing a positive tendency to invest in identity practice,having a certain development plan and goal pursuit for this identity,and demonstrating an ongoing identification and loyalty commitment to this identity.The identity of the children’s officer is a vertical development process from administrative setting to identity differentiation and to reshaping identity.At the beginning,the children’s officer did not know much about the responsibilities,requirements and functions of this identity,so he/she could not directly identify with it.After starting this job,the group of children’s officer gradually differentiated into two directions of raising and lowering their identities.Under the dual effects of habitus and capital,most children’s officers have gradually established and consolidated their identities with the increase of time as children’s officers and their practical experience and feelings.Specifically,the influence of habitus on the children’s officer includes three aspects:his own characteristics,family factors and full-time work.The children’s officer has internalized the action strategy of fulfilling his identity from the habitus,and can reproduce the habitus on the basis of inheriting the original habitus.The influence of capital on the child director includes three aspects:economic capital,cultural capital and social capital.It is the tool and the goal pursued by the children’s officer in the practice of identity,and it is also the driving force for the children’s officer to establish and develop an identity.And some children’s officers whose identity is gradually weakened can also reverse the situation of reduced identity and strengthen the consolidation and development of identity.In addition,in the daily practice of children’s officers,they need to move frequently among various fields such as family,work place,village or community and child welfare system,and face the dilemma of intertwining,overlapping and conflicting identities.Some children’s officers can make various identities reach a relatively balanced state through active debugging,which is conducive to the continuous and stable development of the identity of the children’s officer.On the contrary,some children’s officers choose to respond negatively,and their multiple identities are in a relatively unbalanced state,which to a certain extent weakens the positive and long-term identification of children’s officer’s identity.These children’s officers can promote the coordination and balance of multiple identities by re-adjusting multiple identities,thereby promoting the stable improvement of the identity of the children’s officer.In their identity practice,most children’s officers pursue more self-realization at the value level than money and fame and fortune,or striving for legitimacy,that is,symbolic capital.They hope to gain a sense of achievement and satisfaction in the work of children’s officers,and to be praised and recognized by others,reflecting their identity guided by value rationality.In addition,by identifying the consistency between this embedded identity and other identities,the children’s officer understands and negotiates multiple identities,and promotes the complementarity of multiple identities,which reflects the fluidity and contextualized characteristics of the children’s officer’s identity.The identity process of a children’s officer is also a process by which he integrates this new and existing identities and develops a holistic self-concept,reflecting an individual’s positive choices to promote internal coherence among multiple identities.